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LeeAccording to the data that were collected by The NDP Group, Mac notebooks costs over twice as much as a computer with a Windows operating system.
The disparity between these two types of computers widened only in the last few months according to eWeek. It notes that, “If Apple is going to continue its market share gains, or simply maintain that 8.5 percent U.S. share, prices must go down and configurations bulk up,” eWeek notes. “The math is simply undeniable.”
The article at Electronista notes that the average Windows notebook is $700 today but an Apple system is above $1,500.
Source: Electronista
those 2 reasons alone are the only reason I haven’t moved to Mac’s. if the price alone came down, personally id probably never own another windows machine again.
Actually this article is not completely true. If you compare spec for spec in some cases Macs are actually cheaper.
That being said, Macs are generally higher quality than the PC they are being compared to. You cannot compare a Macbook pro to a Dell from wal-mart. The specs might be similar but the quality is not. Also when you compare desktop systems you cannot compare a Mac pro to a standard desktop system for many reasons. For one thing the Mac pro uses server motherboards, that cost more than most Dell, HP, or Acers entire system.
Also lets not forget when you call up tech support for Apple you talk to someone that speaks English well. Not so for other brands. This might not mean a lot to some but it does to me.
Now lets talk about what you are getting with a Mac vs. PC. With the PC you are mostly going to be stuck with Windows Vista. The most horrible , bloated , pitiful excuse for an OS ever created.
With the Mac you get nice clean virus and spyware immune OS X.
Lets talk compatibility shall we. With the PC you get a large selection of programs to choose from. Compatibility with pretty much any and everything. At least, you used to with XP.
With the Mac on the other hand, you can dual boot XP or Vista and have all your Mac apps plus all of your windows programs. So there is pretty much no program or app you cannot run.
Now, someone will bring up games, I guarantee it.
I have one word for you….console.
To Heath: check out a refurb Mac. They have the same warranty and are in perfect condition, and cheaper. Use a Mac for a little and you will throw a Vista machine as far as you can get it.
Im sorry gunslinger but your wrong, I could easily get a dell that has 2x to 3x the specs of an imac for about ½ the price; Quality of computer parts is almost a non issue today. A good portion are very stable and reliable. BTW weren’t the mac laptops warping from heat a few years ago?
This article was about the financial aspect of macs not anything else. If apple wants to stay in the 5-8% of the market, they should keep going down the same path, but the share holders might not be so happy.
I’m generally a pc guy, but have used a mac before. I appreciate it for what it is; a good OS that’s very precise and controlled. I personally enjoy the open platform of the windows, even with its compatibility issues. I like the idea of upgrading to a better video card when I want to or heck changing to a different monitor.
Also your rants of Vista comes off as someone who hasn’t tried the OS lately.
KCPDX don’t worry about Gunslinger he continually bad mouths Vista.
Anyway I’ve had the same issues with Macs and incompatibility with software between OS releases. We spent a whole day a few weeks ago downgrading a lot of Macs as their industry specific software will not run on the current version!
Actually I’m not wrong. If you compare machines of smiler type and specs you would quickly see I’m right. Compare the Imac with the Dell xps one. Both are all in one units. Look at the specs. The Dell is $1,439 the iMac is $1,499.00 , thats not much difference at all. Also lets compare the Dell 1330 notbook to the Macbook. When you configure them the same way the price is within a few bucks.
Like I said before what people are doing when they say Macs are more expensive is comparing them to some low quality garbage they get at Wal-mart. They are not the same thing no matter how badly people might want to think that. If you compare spec for spec the Mac comes out to be about on par. I can provide the links to back me up here. I’m not wrong.
Find me an all in one system with 2x to 3x the specs of an imac for about ½ the price and I’ll eat every last word. You said you could. Now understand the midrange Imac has these specs 2.66ghz core 2 duo CPU, 2 gigs of RAM and a 320 gig HDD. This means your machine will have to be an all in one with 20” screen at least a quad core cpu and 8 gigs of RAM with about 600gigs of HDD and all for less than $800
Now as for Vista. Yes I have issues with Vista. And I do bad mouth it every chance I get. I used Vista on my home system for almost a year. I’ll be the first to admit that its gotten better with SP1. But its still not even close to XP. I use Vista daily on both customer PCs and my daughters laptop.
” Quality of computer parts is almost a non issue today”
Say what? I really hope you are kidding here. So all this time I have been buying Corsir ram and I could have been using the really cheap stuff in customers machines?
Now if we are going to start talking about incompatibility with software between OS releases. Lets talk about Vista shall we? Almost no software made for XP worked for Vista when it first came out. Thats a fact.
Seems like The PC/Vista fanboy attitude might be clouding you judgments a little bit fellas.
20″ iMac $1199.00
http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MB323LL/A?mco=NzMyNjMy
Dual core
1 Gig of RAM
250 Gig HD
(Horrible Mouse)
Dell inspiron 518 $749.00
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=ddcwob3&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&kc=productdetails~desktop-inspiron-518
Quad Core
3 Gigs of RAM
500 Gigs of HD
Granted this only comes with integrated graphics and 19″ Monitor, but those could be upgraded to 22″ monitor and Radeon 3450 and the price would be only 899.00
First search i found proves gunslinger wrong, macbook 13″, basic for 1099 with 13″ screen, 1 gig ram, 2.1 core 2 and dvd combo. Dell has the inspiron 1420 with a 14″ screen, 2.0 core 2, 3 gig of ram, and a 250 hd with a dvd combo for 849!! And dont tell me about the quality of this laptop, the company i work for uses 40 of em, and they all hold up well considering our users travel worldwide weekly. But even the xps at 15.4″ screen with 2.0 core2, 2 gig ram, 160 hd and dvd combo is only 999.
I know you’ll use the arguement about included software, but i can get office still and be cheaper. And this is just dell, i can go to frys.com and get even cheaper and still have a quality computer.
And for an imac, you pay all that money for a “pretty computer”, i can build or buy a computer that’ll run circles around an imac way cheaper.
And for the fanboys out there, i cant wait til they do the poll asking how many apple users also own a pc or boot camp, due to the fact their apple wont do all they want it to, and how they cant use it for work or gaming. Do that same poll on pc users and see who has a mac….lol, why different results i bet.
And the gaming response….get a console, I have every console, 5 pcs and 3 macs, and gaming on consoles is not the same as gaming on a pc….i.e. warcraft, and other games only on pc.
Ok, I figured I’d have to provide “proof”
Dell.com
XPS m1330: 13.3″ screen, 2.4 ghz core 2 duo CPU, 4 gigs of RAM, 250 gig SATA drive. Total $1,449
Apple.com
MacBook: 13.3″ screen, 2.4 ghz core 2 duo CPU,2 gigs of RAM, 250 gig SATA drive. Sub Total $1,399.00 Extra 2 gigs of RAM from newegg.com $39.99 Total $1,438.99
Notice how the specs are identical? The Mac is $10.01 cheaper.
Funny how when the specs are the same Mac wins. Again the iMac is mentioned and again I ask to be shown an all in one unit with the exact same specs for much less.
Also lets not forget that with the Dell you are again stuck with Vista, where as with the Macbook you can dual boot XP or Vista if you happen to need it for something.
“Also lets not forget that with the Dell you are again stuck with Vista, where as with the Macbook you can dual boot XP or Vista if you happen to need it for something.”
No you are not “stuck” with Vista, you can dual boot Vista, XP etc!
Though I do side with GunSlinger on the issue of Macs (I have a MacBook Pro for my work laptop) I have found 1 issue with his first post. Sorry GunSlinger.
“With the Mac you get nice clean virus and spyware immune OS X”
My buddy Dave got himself a nice set of pop-ups on his MacBook. Since in the last few years Apple has gone from about a 2-3% market share to 8.1 as of October 2007 (http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/17/apples_u_s_mac_market_share_rises_to_8_1_percent_in_q3.html) and certainly larger this year it has become a larger target to malware writers. Sadly.
Oh, and through BootCamp, I dual boot my laptop with OS X 10.5 and Vista Ultimate. I definitely prefer OS X.
I guess what I should have said is virus and spyware resistant.
As for being able to dual boot XP with Vista on the XPS 1330 , a quick look at Dells site says they have no XP drivers for the 1330:
http://tinyurl.com/3y3kty
So your dual booting with XP idea is out of the question. Nope, you are pretty much stuck with Vista.
Also for the record (so you don’t think I’m a Mac fanboy) I have 5 computers in my home, 4 are PCs, one is a Mac. 3 are running XP , one is running Vista and I dual boot my Mac with XP Pro.
Now lets look at the iMac compared to an all in one with the same specs.
Dell XPS one: 20″ display, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz 4M shared L2 Cache,2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz ,320GB SATA drive.
Total:$1,439
iMac: 20″ display, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, 2GB
Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz, 320GB SATA drive.
Total:$1,349.00
Notice how the Macs specs are slightly better than the Dell, and they are the same type of computer both are all in one systems. The Mac is still lower in price even though the RAM is faster and so is the CPU.
You can argue about what you like all day, but you cannot argue with facts. When you compare the same type of system from Dell and Apple, Mac wins. Here are the links to prove it.
http://tinyurl.com/6dnnen
http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MB323LL/A?mco=NzMyNjMy
I guess what I should have said is virus and spyware resistant.
As for being able to dual boot XP with Vista on the XPS 1330 , a quick look at Dells site says they have no XP drivers for the 1330:
http://tinyurl.com/3y3kty
So your dual booting with XP idea is out of the question. Nope, you are pretty much stuck with Vista.
Also for the record (so you don’t think I’m a Mac fanboy) I have 5 computers in my home, 4 are PCs, one is a Mac. 3 are running XP , one is running Vista and I dual boot my Mac with XP Pro.
Now lets look at the iMac compared to an all in one with the same specs.
Dell XPS one: 20″ display, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz 4M shared L2 Cache,2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz ,320GB SATA drive.
Total:$1,439
iMac: 20″ display, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, 2GB
Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz, 320GB SATA drive.
Total:$1,349.00
Notice how the Macs specs are slightly better than the Dell, and they are the same type of computer both are all in one systems. The Mac is still lower in price even though the RAM is faster and so is the CPU.
You can argue about what you like all day, but you cannot argue with facts. When you compare the same type of system from Dell and Apple, Mac wins. Here are the links to prove it.
http://tinyurl.com/6dnnen
http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MB323LL/A?mco=NzMyNjMy
Also its very unprofessional to remove ones post if they prove you wrong.
XP drivers for the Dell laptop are available:
http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_general&thread.id=253132
So you can dual boot the XPS 1330!!
Plus there are many other laptops with both XP and Vista drivers.
Looks like they are available, just not directly from Dells site.
But the whole point of all of this was to prove that when you compare the same specs from other OEMs Apple products are not that much more expensive. They are certainly not the 2-3 times more that certain people and certain “tech news” groups have made them out to be.
People tend to compare tend to compare some low quality budget wal-mart PC to the Macbook or the iMac without any regard for specs, computer type ( all in one, tower 13.3″ notbook ect.)or quality. Thats wrong and very biased.
If you or anyone else does not like Macs for whatever reason, great. But people should not make up things to prove why they don’t.
As of this writing Apple does not make a traditional tower PC to compare to other OEMs.
They make a server grade desktop in the Mac Pro, and all in one, a 13.3″ notebook, a highend pro notebook, an ultra lite, and their low end budget mini. So to compare an HP or Dell mid tower PC to any of these is not a fare comparison.
Also, and this is my opinion but its shared by many. There is no comparison between OS X and Vista or XP.