Alex Wilhelm, writing for The Next Web about the rubbish that OEMs offer customers:

Instead of building computers that are beautiful and high performing, we have been subjected to mutated bits of cheap plastic from HP and Dell.
I must wholeheartedly agree with his entire article. My experience with nearly ever Windows PC has been horrible compared to that of a Mac. For instance, my MacBook Pro's touchpad works great and I've not had a single issue with it. Then when I change to my friend's Lenovo I'm appalled by the horrible quality of the device. I try to move the cursor and it skips from here to there as if there's a piece of dust on the it. This is totally unacceptable for a PC.

As for battery life, every PC that I've used is lacking in this area. I've not used one single Dell, HP, etc that has provided me with "great" battery life. However, when comparing this to my MacBook I must admit that the battery on it isn't all that good either. I do notice a large increase in the rundown time, but I still don't get the full amount of time that Apple says I should. According to their technical specifications page, I should receive 7 hours of wireless web browsing off one full charge. I've owned this MacBook for a little over a month and I cannot honestly say that I've been able to use it for a full 7 hours without it dying. Typically, the laptop dies after an average of 4-5 hours. My brightness is usually on half and I the keyboard backlight is completely off. I must say that this is a bit underwhelming, but compared to an average PC from Dell, HP or some other OEM, it suits me just fine.

And now on to ultrabooks. Sadly, I haven't used a MacBook Air enough to compare it to the competition, but I can definitely compare these "high grade" ultrabooks to my current Macbook Pro. In my personal opinion, they could be a lot better for the price. Firstly, some of them are just plain ugly. Secondly, the ones that aren't ugly either underperform or are built of cheap, flimsy components that will eventually fall apart. In any case, they're not worth the hype -- not for anyone.

In conclusion, OEMs need to step up their game -- by a lot.