I was resistant to updating to Windows 10 because of how Microsoft tries to control every aspect of my computers and little home network. BUT, when installing Win10 on my new SSD, I rejected ALL of the options at the start of the process. Now, I'm happy how it worked out. Win10 is better at handling graphics than Win7. BTW, putting the operating system and program software on a 500 Gb SSD (<$200) was amazing. System starts & stops very rapidly and programs open almost instantaneously.
I gotta agree with you about what a difference an SSD makes, with either platform really. Dramatic difference that is worth the extra bucks in my mind.
Before I went PC my last Mac laptop came standard with a 250GB internal SSD, one of the first laptops to come with one as standard equipment. That drive and its speed spoiled me. When I shifted to PCs and made my first purchase, an HP desktop computer, it was back to a larger but much slower 1TB HDD that I really had to get used to. Found myself trying to open programs while Windows was still booting up. For business reasons I later had to get an Acer laptop dedicated to do one job only, and when it came time for me to get another laptop for daily use I just HAD to get one with an SSD as I never got used to the bootup time Windows requires.
Recently, to meet my long-term drone image storage needs (which mount up fast after every flight) and also to keep all of my media files in one place since the video editing software I use links back to the original file and its location as the source during editing and therefore cannot be moved, I got a
very portable 1TB SSD external USB Samsung drive from Amazon for like $350. Superfast, lots of storage, and fast as lightning. Fits in your front pocket. Used in conjunction with my SSD-based Dell Inspirion laptop running the latest i7 chip set and a powerful graphics card, I have no problem rendering images, video editing, or doing what else needs to be done after capturing images with a drone and processing them.
Despite all of that, as PatR stated in his post and I have to agree with, "...Macs are the best for video and graphics." And yet, as SoCalDroner correctly and truly stated, the costs of buying Macs are a BIG consideration, too. Such high, hard-to-explain costs automatically take Macs out of the running for the majority of consumers choosing a computer platform to go with, regardless of whatever obvious benefits Macs may offer over their PC counterparts. The point of diminishing returns is reached early.
Oh but to live in a perfect world.