Apples vs. Cashews
April 25th, 2005A friend sent me this link. Very interesting methodology for comparing computer pricing between Dell and Apple.
You know Blurbomat is into Macs, but it’s nice to see somebody looking at the pricing like this. Macworld did a similar comparison with the Mac MIni, but I’ve been wanting to see what it was like across the board. We get Dell catalogs and while I’m always amazed at the low low prices, once you start looking at what you get, it takes a savvy shopper to get a good deal, regardless of platform/vendor.
The lesson (remember He-man and how he’d always come back after the break to teach the lesson?) seems to be that the argument about pricing is over. And He-man wins because Skeletor is all wrapped up in his corrupt DLL. o
April 25th, 2005 at 2:19 pm
And remember those episodes where He-Man and Skeltor would team up to fight a common enemy? That rocked. It made me feel all warm and tingly inside.
Oh wait - yeah - computers and stuff …
April 25th, 2005 at 3:21 pm
Um… I’m really not going to wade into the Mac vs. PC debate. I’ve come around to see great and not so great things about both. I do have to say, however, that this survey is completely ridiculous. My girlfriend bought the Dell 600M about a year ago and , by trimming it down a bit, got it down to $1400. I recently saw them on sale for well under $1000. The site specified that he added some software to make things comparable, but I find this hard to believe. What he did was add the sometimes costly PC equivalent of whatever a Mac comes with. Sometimes this makes sense, but it’s disingenuous to say that your average user would want all of this software or PAY for all of this software. Some things are unnecessary or have free or low cost equivalents.
If you don’t believe Macs are more expensive (with the possible exception of the Mini), you’re living a lie. I would have found the article more compelling if he had accurate pricing of what most savvy users pay for each, with the Mac coming out more expensive, and then showed us why the Mac was still worth the money. This however, is like when Republicans tell you that we need more tax cuts - the math doesn’t add up.
April 25th, 2005 at 4:00 pm
Knock yourself a pro, Slick. Gray matter tight be TCP’ing, man!
April 25th, 2005 at 4:32 pm
On a tangential note: the pending release of Tiger is the first OS X upgrade I’ll have as a Mac owner. So, er, how long should I wait to buy it before all the bugs are shaken out?
April 25th, 2005 at 6:50 pm
Scott: I may be mistaken, but once you purchase Tiger, you should be able to upgrade for free.
I’m not sure, however; a friend of mine is an engineer for Mac and she just sends me the updates, but I think you can go to the site to get them.
April 25th, 2005 at 7:03 pm
My first computer was a Mac. I learned my way around
computers using it, and I was in love.
I surfed the net using Netscape 2.0, which called for 16 MB RAM. I had 12. It was an awesome machine.
It was finances that brought me to the Evil Empire.
The MSDN library account from school got me free legal O/S and other software. I am not overly impressed with the hurry up and push it out, maybe fix it sometime later attitude of Microcrap, but I recognize its pervasiveness in the business world.
Oh, heck, put me in the whores section. I feel so cheap.
April 25th, 2005 at 7:06 pm
By the power of Grayskull!!!!!!!!!
Logan got the Shuffle as a vendor gift. It’s great for running and transfering music from his office to my laptop easily. However, the arm band for running is $30. For a piece of elastic. It’s over 1/4th the price of the damn machine. It angers me, obviously.
I’m going to duct tape it to his arm.
April 25th, 2005 at 8:01 pm
I (heart) my Powerbook. This is my first year owning a Mac…after a lifetime of microsoft loyalty. And I could NEVER go back. Never. Ever. Eew.
Nice article, I enjoyed the read.
April 25th, 2005 at 9:38 pm
Thanks for the link — it’s a good read!
April 25th, 2005 at 10:18 pm
I just wanted to add, as a Dell owner, two things.
1. Although I’m perfectly happy with our computer, if/when I buy a laptop, it will be an Apple.
2. Those Dell ads that say “complete package for $499″, well, it’s bullshit because if you want anything decent, once you start adding it all up, it’s at least $1000. To get decent memory, speed, burners, you gotta shell out the cash. So next time, we’ll probably go Apple for our desktop, if we go the desktop route again. Oh, and a third thing — we just had to buy a firewire cable and card which we wouldn’t have had to do with a Mac since they come with all of that already. So there’s another $50-60 right there.
April 26th, 2005 at 6:40 am
I was a lifelong Dell user. I advocated the Dell to anyone who would listen. We had 3 Dells in our family and thats what I was given at work. When my desktop finally decided to up and quit on me, a very good friend took me gently by the hand and led me to the wonder that is the mac. No push, no slick ads or pressure. Just basic information and education. I always thought they were a cheesey and less professional computer. But I saw the light and am now so very in love with my ibook that I also purchased a mini mac for the rest of the family. They are wonderful products and I ended up spending the same price on the two computers that I was looking at for replacing the old pc with one Dell.
April 26th, 2005 at 9:57 am
I’m a very happy Dell user, with a recently purchased 600m and an Axim to boot (when is Apple going to get into the handheld market???
Anyway, I’m appalled by what I read here: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/04/microsoft-paying-religious-right.html
Basically, Ralph Reed is on retainer to M$.
shit.
April 26th, 2005 at 11:12 am
I am technologically handicap. and that is why I bought a Dell 600M almost a year ago. and I did beacause it was a fairly decent price arround 1300.00, and they gave me financing. Im poor as hell and that was the only way I could afford a pc. but in the almost year of experience with dell i can sure tell you… IT SUCKS. everytime i have a technical problem (witch is like every two months, my D drive just stop working or it wont shut down, or its really slow) I have to wait 45 min in the line to finally speak with someone that learned english in a 6 week training school. and most of the times I ended up figuring the problem myself.. but that is not the only thing. a month ago I was looking at the statement and since I started paying my $50/month i had only paid $90.00 from the total balance, the rest was the 29.9% interest.. I was so upset that I asked my parents for a interest/hassle free loan. they gave me the money and because dell has no stores I called and made an over the phone payment. I was releaved but the next day I cheked Dell’s online balance, it showed that I owened $2420.00 I called and was for almost 3 hours over the phone with diferent Indian/South American “Cosumer service” reps that refuced to transfer me to a supervisor, which told me that everything was cleared up. but a week after my balance was still $2450.00 I had to spend almost 5 hours with 20 diferent reps oer the phone. to finally get my balance to 00.00. I hate Dell and all of his non-eglish speaking personell. I would rather paid 4 times that price and get decent treatment. I havent recieve my cell phone bill for that month..
April 26th, 2005 at 11:18 am
note: the problem was that they didnt put my payment as a credit but as debit… how stupid is that? I ended owing twice as much as I had before. and I have to tell you that the Dell cashed my check… 5 days before everything was cleared up. and never got an appology
April 26th, 2005 at 11:05 pm
I’m very happy with my Dell system, and customer service has been good by and large, but I did spend almost $3000 in the end, building on the “deal” they advertised. Still, not bad considering that my first computer, a 486DX with 250 megs of disk space and 8 megs of RAM, with a 14″ colour monitor bought in 1993…woohoo!…cost me $1850 and it was a no name.
April 26th, 2005 at 11:09 pm
p.s. I’ve considered going Mac now that software is built to be compatible, but I think it’s still out of my price range. Isn’t a G4 (G5?) around $5000 CAD?
April 27th, 2005 at 9:25 am
I’m a designer and and avid PC user. I work on both at the office but at home use a PC. The reason I haven’t switched is NOT because of the cost difference in hardware but the cost associated with buying all new copies of software for the apple. When you’re talking about new copies of EVERYTHING, well, that just blows. Not that companies are getting smarter about building registration requirements in licensing, it makes thing much more difficult to get hacked copies making the ultimate decision to buy PC or Apple software an inevitable concern.
April 27th, 2005 at 9:43 am
As with most things, the cheaper something is doesn’t always make it better! I’ve tried many kinds of computer, but I’ve been using Macs since I was 11 and not much even comes close for reliability. My fiance has had to repair countless PCs of various kids, in the time I’ve had my Mac and had NO probs with it.
As a graphic designer, I also wouldn’t have an ugly-ass Dell on my desktop anyway!
April 27th, 2005 at 9:55 am
Scott: Tiger won’t have ‘bugs’. Although you’ll get future free automatic updates (your Mac can do it by itself online), Apple don’t release software riddled with bugs. Not like ‘Microcrap’. LOL.
I personally can’t wait for Tiger…and Panther was excellent enough but this looks fantastic!
April 27th, 2005 at 12:45 pm
My father-in-law does scientific consulting and his business is entirely premised on having a working computer. He is constantly battling with drivers and IRQs and incompatible hardware on his Windows machine. I only gloat a little bit when I explain that, while I may be able to supply hand-waving help with his current problem, I have no practical suggestions because my Mac just doesn’t have these issues. It’s like he’s suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome, he knows he’s being held captive by bad people, but he can’t make himself escape over to the good guys.
April 27th, 2005 at 8:05 pm
minxlj says
Scott:Tiger
Hnh hnh hnh
That’s an Oracle joke.
I am so pathetic.
April 27th, 2005 at 10:03 pm
Tiger will most assuredly have bugs. Most of them will likely center around printing and networking with a Windows/Microsoft based network. And Font Book. I can’t wait to see what holy terror they’ve done with Font Book.
April 27th, 2005 at 11:42 pm
I own 2 laptops - a Dell and an iBook.
My Dell, for which I paid $2000, is *no longer portable* as its battery lasts, at very best, 1 hour. However, even if it had sufficient juice, the fan blew out twice and now I must keep a portable fan (yes, a separate cooling unit) blowing from behind it because I refuse to pay >$100 bucks for yet another temporary fix.
My iBook, for which I paid $1000, rocks. I originally purchased an iBook G3 in 8/03. Apple’s warranty (”Applecare”) covered *all* expenses associated w/ repeated logic board problems (3 in total). Ultimately, this past March when my 1.5 yr old iBook suffered its third logicboard issue at 8:15p.m. on a Friday night, a very apologetic Applecare representative processed a BRAND NEW iBook G4 for me that was >50% faster and had twice the storage, etc. The replacement computer cost me nothing. Not. One. Thing. AND, I received the $200 I paid for Applecare BACK as well because Apple wanted “to make clear how serious they take these problems”.
So, now, my slump-your-back heavy, darn-near-useless Dell pathetically sits on the righthand corner of my desk with a little tiny fan behind it, waiting for me to launch SAS (the obscenely expensive statistical software I don’t have on my Mac).
My light, cute, beautiful iBook follows me everywhere. No need to travel with a power cord (or a fan, for that matter), as the battery routinely lasts 5-6 hours. I pick up a wireless signal from darn near everywhere.
I may be a PhD student in a *business* school, but I will not join the lemming march to the PC world.
April 28th, 2005 at 4:48 am
Scott- on your question regarding how long to wait before buying tiger… buy it ASAP… As you, I’m sure, have your software updater set to automatic, Apple will work out any “kinks” there. The major flaws and bugs have been worked out all ready by beta testers… There are also those out there who got copies of it by not so ethical means, and they have been playing with it for almost a month.
I agree with dj blurb- most issues will result from it not playing nice with Windoze… but thats what happens when youhave to translate from our OS into the language of the dark side.
April 28th, 2005 at 4:34 pm
I’m buying an IBook this summer. No clue what the heck I’m doing. Never used an Apple before. But I can’t wait.