Just as long as what’s in Flash is “simple animations and the like” and not something I absolutely need in order to access information/get work done, I’m happy with it.
LOL - neither of those machines are “high-end” laptops. I wouldn’t pay a thousand bucks for either of them. They have the minimum acceptable RAM and small hard drives. The Mac’s graphics chip - which is listed as a “Video card” - is not a discreet video card at all, it’s just an integrated chip. Also, calling it “GeForece 320M 256MB” makes it sound like it has its own dedicated video memory - it doesn’t. It just reserves the space in the 4gb RAM. The Dell is also an integrated chip and it’s an older spec that can only do Dx 10. The current standard is Dx 11.
Oh, and whoever specced that Dell with Win7 Ultimate was an idiot (or was trying to make the Mac look good). Win7 Home Premium is appropriate for a normal user. Win7 Professional is for people in certain specific enterprise settings. Ultimate is people who enjoy spending a lot of money on their computers. Ultimate is unnecessary for the normal user and choosing Home Premium would shave a couple hundred bucks off the price.
High end machines have actual graphics cards that can perform at the current standard, large - and maybe even multiple - hard drives, 8 or more gb of RAM, and, if you want to get swanky, actual sound cards. The machines in this comparison are not bad machines - but they’re not ‘high end’. There’s no point in paying a $1000 or more for something that’s only middling powerful. Given that you can get comparably specced laptops for hundreds of dollars less - there’s no way to argue that these machines aren’t overpriced.
People don’t really pay the extra cheese for a Mac because of superior technical performance, the extra money is for convenience, reliability, and ease of use. Yes, for that exact same $1099 you could custom build yourself a top-performing PC but that’s not the point. Mac products are luxury items. You pay extra to not have to deal with installing drivers and patches and having to tinker around with the guts of it to make it just how you want it. You buy it, you take it home, you turn it on, and that’s all you have to do. It’s an Infiniti G35 coupe compared to a Nissan 350Z-- it’s essentially the exact same car, but you pay $4000 more for a few extra bells and whistles that mostly just make it look pretty.
OK, maybe “high-end” was not the right adjective. I paid over $2000 for my first MBP in 2006, so I got a higher-end version. I priced it out with the Dell for the exact same specs, and the Apple was at the same price point. But maybe Dell wasn’t the best comparison. I don’t remember the price difference being more than $300 for the same specs and, like I said, I far preferred Mac’s OS. The fact that in four years I’ve never had to run a virus scan on my computer is enough for me to pay a significant premium. YMMV, of course. There are ways to keep your Windows machine clean. I was never good at it, and spent significant time cleaning up shit on my computer. Granted, I got good at cleaning off crap and even managed to make maybe a thousand dollars total off this skill, but it’s skill I would have preferred not to have to have learned.
But you don’t have to do that stuff with a Windows machine, either, is the thing. If that’s what people are paying for, they’re getting ripped off.
I’m not going to get into the specifics of arguing 2008 prices, but I’m going to reiterate that if you’re paying more than thousand bucks for a machine that doesn’t have a graphics card - you got ripped off.
Here is an actual high end computer:
Falcon Northwest TLX
15.6" LCD Panel 1920x1080
Core i5 Mobile 520M 2.40GHz
8GB (2x4GB) 1066MHz DDR3
GeForce GT 330M (1GB)
802.11 B/G/N & Bluetooth
320GB 7200RPM
64Bit Windows 7 Home Premium
Price: $1742.53
A comparably specced 15" Macbook Pro is $2349.
For the 17" version, the base model Falcon DRX is about $900 more than a base model 17" Macbook Pro - but the base model DRX has significantly faster CPU and a better graphics card, more memory & better hard drive. Once you upgrade the Macbook Pro as far as it will go, it’s priced at $2990 compared to the DRX’s $3400 - and it still has a less powerful CPU and graphics card. In other words, it’s not even possible to buy a Macbook Pro that’s as powerful as the Falcon’s base model DRX.
That’s the number one problem with comparing Macs to highend computers - Macs themselves are just not very powerful machines. But they’re priced like they are top of the line.
The number two problem of course is that’s so simple to find comparably configured Windows machines at wildly different prices. Hell, it’s easy. There are so many different windows configurations possible it’s no problem to find one with similar specs and a high price. I mean just look at that article’s comparison of the supposedly high-end Macbook Pro ($3049) vs the HP8710 ($3661) - the very next paragraph points out that it found a comparable HP machine for $1818 in HP’s consumer market. That article chose to compare the expensive HP with the Macbook Pro and decided that the pro was a marginally better deal. But how honest was that when they could have compared the Pro to the exact same configuration for $1000 less if they compared it to the consumer priced one instead?
So just because you can find a PC computer comparable to the Mac in specs or pricing doesn’t mean that either machine in the comparison is a good deal. And the fact that there are a billion possible PC configurations makes price comparison even chancier.
Bottom line: Macs are nice machines but they’re not as powerful as their premium pricing suggests. It’s trivial to find PC machines that are more powerful at comparable prices. The main reason to get a Mac is if you want the Mac OS. Is it worth hundreds of dollars more than a comparable Win 7 machine? No, in my opinion. I’d rather have raw power of a Falcon. But I can see the attraction of Mac OS for those who like it.
What I’m saying is, you can’t on the one hand, admit that you’re paying $4000 more for something to mostly make it look pretty while also arguing that it’s comparably priced to the exact same car.
My bad, they finally added that feature as part of iPhone 4.
How about changing the system font?
Merneith, I wanna see the actual enumerated specs on the MacBook, because what you’re saying doesn’t track at all with my experience.
In addition, as a PC enthusiast and one with personal preferences, I would need a gun held to my head before I would spend my hard earned cash on a Falcon Northwest. More like Dead Shrike Northwest.
OK. I guess, for me the answer is “yes,” which is why I use Mac, despite all my reservations about the company. When I was pricing it, it wasn’t that much more expensive, if at all, than a comparable XP machine. But I may not have been pricing the right brand of computers. If I kept digging, I may very well have found a better deal. But there are things for me that make it worth it–mostly malware control. I don’t care if OS X or Unix is really more secure or whether it’s just security through obscurity. All I know is, in the last five years I’ve never had any problems with malware on any of my Mac machines, and I don’t have a single anti-virus program on any one of them. This makes it worth it for me. Now, maybe anti-PC malware programs have gotten much better
You’re right. Their jobs sound awesome.
Also left out of this discussion is that it is easy to find big discounts on Windows-based PCs, which put them waaaaay ahead of Mac pricing, for which you almost never see the same kind of discounts.
And why is that? I’d suggest it’s because Apple’s computers sell well enough as a result of their own superb reputation that big discounts aren’t necessary in order to get people to buy them.
As someone who’s used Macs for years (not a preacher of Jobs, by any means, though), I get tired of how some people (not anyone on this thread) harangue users like me about how stupid I am for wasting my money and being “locked in.” It’s like listening to an extreme libertarian: “Are you an IDIOT? Don’t you realize how UNFREE you are?!”
Wrong. I’d have to remove the shitty OS and install a decent one. Finder is a piece of shit, and proof everyone who works for apple gets genital herpes from a goat as part of the employee orientation process.
No, because there’s far more competition among vendors who make Windows PCs.
I suppose you have a point there. It’s similar to saying that if a Chevrolet dealer were to put a certain model of Chevy on sale at a big discount over the prices other dealers are charging for that model, this puts their models waaaaay ahead of Lexus pricing.
:rolleyes:
There is competition among vendors of hardware which uses Microsoft software.
It’s entirely unlike how cars work.
Don’t forget Linux.
You forgot Linux.
No need to pour money down the Microsoft monopoly rathole with Linux:
Google to employees: ‘Mac or Linux, but no more Windows’
I like Linux. Used to be an Oracle DBA, everything running in Linux. Don’t ask me which distro it was; I forget. It was 10 years ago.