Of Course Macs Are More Expensive… Aren’t They? – “So despite all the urban myths to the contrary, when you actually compare Apples to comparably equipped Dells, the Apples are not only tastier-looking, but they’re less fattening, too! Every single one, which I have to admit surprised me a little bit.” Skim it.
Aside
Okay I’m a pretty avid shopper, and I’m going to go ahead and say this guy goes in with a chip on his shoulder and comes out with some pretty crappy math. I know for sure that I could get a 600m with 150 bucks worth of upgrades for 750 bucks when it’s on sale. He’s also put windows XP Professional on both laptops, which contain functionality most people don’t need, but specifically retarded when comparing the consumer lines. I could go on, but it’s pretty blatantly biased in terms of choice. It’s pretty much a “Get the Facts” situation, where he isolated a situation specifically engineered to utilize all the features in OS X that most people won’t use. Give me a task, and I’ll find you a dell that can get the job done for cheaper.
First, I think that Windows XP Pro is a fair upgrade when placed against Mac OS X. More than that, you’ve suggested that, say, if someone needed a system that could do video editing and nothing else, you could find it cheaper than a Mac that could do video editing and lots more. Well, that seems like a great comparison.
Frankly, it depends on what you want. Macs don’t give you as many configuration options. I can’t opt-out of Quicken if I don’t want/need it. Of course, is it fair to compare a Dell with no financing software to a Mac with Financing software?
Frankly, if I were doing the comparison, I would have added Adobe Acrobat Elements. I mean, Mac OS X can turn documents into PDF so why not add that capability to the Dell? There is no software like iMovie that he adds.
If there is one thing this comparison shows it’s that it depends on what you are looking for in a computer. If you are looking for a more bare-bones box, Dell will sell you one and Apple won’t. If you want all of your capabilities, Apple’s boxes are cheaper.
Openoffice does PDF output. You could run GNU Cash for financing. Hells bells you could install linux on the thing and get everything software wise that you wanted for no additional cost.
The XP Pro isn’t a fair upgrade for the ibook for sure. What is crippled in home edition that you need? Joining windows active directory domains? Mac OS X can’t really do that easily either.
The fact of the matter is, for the vast majority of users, with a vast majority of possible options and uses, the dell is going to be cheaper every time. Plus the software purchased from dell is more expensive than the street price.
And what’s with adding adobe photoshop elements or paint shop pro studio. Paint shop pro is way better than anything the mac comes with naturally, and you could run win gimp anyway. I’d say wordperfect is more advanced than iworks for word processing.
I can make any system seem more expensive if I go around buying expensive versions of software to replace free versions that do less. Why not add Chessmaster 8000 in there to compete with Apple’s little chess program?
Let’s try the same logic the other way around.
I got a 17″ LCD, Inkjet Printer, P4 3.0 GHZ machine with 256megs of ram and Windows XP for 380 bucks last week. Lets compare how much that would cost with the mac?
Lets say a Mac Mini G4 1.25GHZ is as fast as a P4 3.0 GHZ for arguments sake. 499. The cheapest display I can get is the 20″ Cinema display which is 799. Now I need a keyboard and a mouse, that’s another 60 bucks. Total 1365 or so. I’m almost a grand over. This can be done ad nausem, and in the configurations that people actually USE, dell is gonna be cheaper 99% of the time.
In the event someone needs to join a domain controller, AND make dvds, AND do their personal finances, AND play nanosaur, AND use some kind of encyclopedia because the web is broken or something, and is a horrible shopper and can’t wait a week for a dell to go on sale, then maybe he’ll end up paying 100 more for the PC assuming he wants a high end system.
I guess the succinct way of putting it is, if you grab the base configuration of every Mac and say, make me a dell that does EVERYTHING this does you’re going to have to overshoot and thus, the dell will be more expensive. If you go to the base configuration of every dell and say, give me a mac that does EVERYTHING this does, the mac is going to be more expensive. It’s just a ridiculous way of comparing prices.