TDiddy

We've decided that at minimum, we need an external HD to get by with all the home movies and photos we want to work with. Sarah's work laptoop just doesn't cut it. We then thought that we might look for a second laptop for the sake of convenience. I wanted to check out macs, but a similarly spec'd Dell is just under 2K, while the mac is close to 3K (17" monitor, 2GB ram, 200 GB HD). How come?

HaveBlue

Someone has to pay Justin Long for the rediculous "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials.

bob200587

I hate Apple, they've pissed me off for the first and last time. I will never buy any more of their poorly made products.

Good Times

if you're looking at mac laptops they're going to be far more expensive compared to pc's for several reasons.

1. it does not employ fans on their cpu's so you don't hear the buzzing over time compared to pc's.
2. thin and light design application means $$ (esp considering all of them are 1" thick)
3. the OS is much more stable compared to Windows
4. since the newer macs are intel based you can run windows via Parallel or Boot Camp which runs faster on the mac than on a windows machine oddly (based on same hardware spec)

I work in an environment full of PC's and personally use my mac for both home and work. The stability of the OS has really drawn me to do more things instead of the "control-alt-delete" pain. Though I do use the PC a lot I just like the overall finish and usability of the operating system.

Choosing between a mac and a pc ultimately comes down to what OS you're more comfortable using. I've been a mac using since 2002 and will not go back even though my company is still all PC based.

Cons:
Expensive
Not a lot of users using them (percentage compared to those using windows)
Not a lot of applications compared to the pc world
not windows OS

Pros:
virus free (virtually. there are some but compared to pc's it's zero)
easy to connect to devices (cameras, phones, printers) you name it it's easy
great support at the apple store
if you want to run winXP you can! (best of both worlds - this virtually makes it even with a bit more to offer)
if you want to make albums (video or photos), the built in software does some amazing stuff! (iPhoto and iMovie)

mac's new OS is due in the coming weeks (no set date yet but I'm expecting 1st quarter 07). http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/

If you're a mac fan, you will enjoy the new OS.

If you have an apple store near you, drop by and ask the apple staff to walk you thru their line. They'll gladly help you thru all of the applications and explain/describe how each application works. Check out the apple store and read up as that'll help you understand the basic lingo prior to hitting the stores.

I will say that everything you want to do, you can do on either OS. It's just a matter how easy it is to use. Some are more accustomed to using a PC and will favor a PC while others will say the other thing. It really all comes down to what you want to do as the playing field is pretty much level now.

CJM

B/c mac's are apparently better. This isnt the case, they are a niche market and imho I refuse to buy one till thier programs cost what others do (theya re often double the windows versions) and they are compatible with the windows world.

drguitarum2005

Good Times hit it about right on. i've used macs to some extent for most of my life and finally made the personal switch last summer and i have 0 regrets. i feel it is infinitely better than all the PCs laptops and desktops i've had and not to mention smaller (though im aware i could have just gotten a smaller windows laptop). you will find people who have had bad experiences with macs but you will find that with ANY product. if they were truly such a bad product, they wouldnt be as prominent in the market as they are today. just my .02

midiwall

Agreed one & all. I doubt that I'll ever buy another PC for home use. I have three Powerbooks and am looking to replace my music server with a Mini.


What are you looking to do? There's a pretty good sized open source/freeware market out there for OS X and Linux.

Tim-in-TX

For the same reasons one buys a Toyota: quality, reliability, stability, overall ease of use and long term resell value. I just moved from PC (have had Dells for 10 years or so and will never buy one again) to Mac and love the Mac. And now that the new Macs with the Core 2 Due processor will also run Windows and Mac platforms simultaneously, I can have the best of both worlds without actually buying another PC. If you run both platforms though, get the Parallels (http://www.amazon.com/Parallels-Desk...9?ie=UTF8&s=pc) program, it allows you to run both platforms at the same time, and you can go from one platform to the other with one or two key-clicks.

drguitarum2005

x2 on parallels. ive been running that program for many months and i love it. it allows me to run the few programs for class that arent mac compatible

Scottiac

Yummy! All the makings of a good religious war!

None of this has to do with why Mac's cost more, the original topic.

Short answer, "because they can". They don't have competition in the hardware sector like the PC side does, so their prices are not forced down accordingly.

And since the PC and Mac adherents are almost 100% likely to remain loyal to their side of the fence, there is little economic push from the PC side of the economic sector to force them to be strictly competitive. As long as they are in the same relative order of magnitude, they consider themselves well positioned.

ldivinag

i was waiting for someone to say this.

i used to hear the term MAC TAX, in reference to the apple's way of pricing macs.

apple did try to start a mac clone market few years ago. but when steve jobs took over again, he immediately killed that.

dwh91102

Tdiddy whatever you decide windows, or mac, please do not get a dell. I personally think there are nothing but crap, good luck gettin one fixed if it does break. Theres nothing like getting into a screaming match with some **** in india, I paid $$$ for 3 extra years of coverage on mine, what a joke. I wouldn't walk accross the street if they were given dell's away. This time I built my own pc.

TDiddy

well sarah found out that she could expense an external HD, so one is on its way to the house. The mall has been a zoo all week, and the apple store is jammed with punks using it as an internet cafe, so i haven't been able to look at any in person yet anyway.

Griffeycom

iTrader: (1)

Dell has GREAT customer service compared to Apples. Anytime I've called Apple I've been treated like a two year old, yelled at, or been "wrong" and they're "right". (but when my bank shows my credit card charged xx times and not once like they say I know IM RIGHT).

Best way to handle dell customer service to avoid the India people is through their web-chat. They do real well with that and get you fixed up within a reasonable time. Though, I wouldn't buy a desktop from them because I can build a better one for about the same price. But I plan on buying my college laptop from them.

But anyway, after my experience with Apples quality, customer service and OVERPRICED PRODUCTS, I will never buy anything from apple again. I only didn't keep my Zune because it is so much thicker than my iPod, once the Zune thins down, I'm replacing my iPod with one.

Oh and iTunes, BLOWS.

tulsa_97SR5

Tom, another idea is to setup a file server at the house. I have a really old dell pc, at leat 7 years old. Dropped a pair of 320gb drives in there, set it up in a raid 1 array, so they are fully mirrored. Put linux on there, ubuntu server. It's a great way to have a failsafe place to store all our pics and movies and such. If you have an old pc lying around (this dell goes for about $30 on ebay) it's just the cost of the drives. If I could do it over I would have picked up a SATA controller for 40 or 50 and would have much much faster write times, but it's still pretty great.

calrockx

If you know how to work a computer, PCs are stable and eeeeasy.

I HATE the Mac OS.
I like the software availability for PCs.

I'm in a Mac infested industry, but thankfully both my jobs use PC and I'll stick to PC at home.

External HDs are handy. I picked up an 80 gig one recently for 40 bucks, go rebates.

91_4x4runner

With the invention of the first easy to use personal computer (the Macintosh), Apple (Jobs and Wozniak) had a firm grip on the market. They later produced the Apple II, which was another great personal computer, and gave Apple somewhere around 85% of the market. They then released the Apple IIe and Apple III which were kinda just flops, and Apple started losing it's business and the other competitors caught up and took the lead (Dell etc.). Apple then released the Lisa, which was targeted at company executives etc and was a decent computer, though it carried a price tag of 10,000-20,000 dollars. Apples fate was pretty much secured after the Lisa and they've been a small niche since. With a high quality product with aesthetics and utility combined, a high price tag usually follows. Apple hit the nail on the head with the release of the Intel mac, and it will probably be gaining quite a bit of market in the coming years.

The fact that OS X is built on a quite old, stable core (UNIX) makes it a good tool as a server, but reliable as a personal computer. Mac's generally don't seem quite as speedy as PC's because of it's bulky, outdated Mach kernel. There was a rumor for a while that Apple would be switching to a different kernel with the release of Leopard, but after seeing a preview version, that doesn't seem to be true.

midiwall

heh... umm, it depends on what you're trying to do with them. There's some fringe software out there that will REALLY push the PC architecture to it's limits and find every nook and cranny of instability.

Case in point, there's NOTHING easy about tracking down why ProTools won't run on a given machine.

Also... I spent two decades chasing problems on a PC 'cause they were "easy" to diagnose. At some point though, you wake up and go "ya' know, I'm really sick of this crap". And then you buy your first Mac.

calrockx

Eh...
I use my PC for graphic design and the general everyday stuff. I've pushed it fairly hard, working on 2gig PSD files with tunes playing, browser browsing and other programs open.
I use Mozilla Firefox, have an anti-virus program, and a couple anti-spyware/adware programs. They run in the background. I'm careful about what I download or accept on my computer. I know my way around Windows. I haven't had any virus or stability problems, so yeah, I'm happy with PC.

I'm gonna custom build my next computer, that'll be nice to have the hardware exactly suited to what I want.

But Apple sure does make a nice portable MP3 player and software.

arjan

It's always easy and fun to complain about microsoft. Keep in mind that XP runs on hundreds if not thousands of different flavours of motherboard/ cpu combos. Stability issues are often caused by drivers which don't exactly follow the rules.
Apple creates their operating system for their hardware. It's a lot easier if you control both ends (hardware - software), but it is more expensive in the long run because of the lack of competition.
I try to stick with intel motherboards with intel chips. Intel seems to deliver good drivers for their hardware and it makes for fairly stable computers.
I am not after extreme performance but after stability.
My computer runs for months on end with Win XP without problems. I just turn the monitor off at night.