I work in a mixed environment of PC/MAC in a school district. I can see that supporting the MACs is much more expensive than support the PCs.
All the TCO studies I have seen places MAC costs higher than PC costs but people are typically willing to pay these costs either because they are unaware of the concept of TCO or they feel that it is worth it (and I agree with them for certain purposes) or finally because they have pledged loyalty to the all holy church of Steve Jobs (MAC users are sooo fanatical).
$1000 to move a PC? … back that up m’boy. I have done entire labs of machines with lower billed costs including productivity loss so I would like to see the numbers on that. Could you also tell me the names of the guys doing the work so I can never hire them?
You know, I’m curious myself. Frankly, I’d guess it evens out. PCs tend to thrash themselves more often… though that’s not always true. But when a Mac crashes, it tends to be more serious, and there’s less you can do about it to recover data and programs and settings, which is a cost in and of itself. The major difference would be replacement hardware, which is a commodity part for a PC, while not so for a Mac. On the other hand, these days, Macs and PCs share about half the hardware… memory, some video cards, hard drives.
**
Please, let’s not start this flame war. We’ve kept it down so far.
Conclusion: Macs are much cheaper to support than PCs, even in mixed Mac/PC environments. It further points out that PCs are not a heterogenous environment, the interoperability between different versions of Windows is more problematic than Mac/PC interoperability.
The biggest factor in TCO is support cost, not purchase price. If you want the precise TCO figures, you’ll have to buy the report from http://www.gartnerweb.com
Furthermore, Macs are quite competitive with PCs on price, often coming in with more features and performance for the same bucks. Read this shootout: http://www.aapltalk.com/shootouts/index.html
Doesn’t much matter which is easier to support in a mixed environment. The problem is the existance of the mixed environment, which makes support harder. Can I do it? Sure. But eight out of ten can’t. And yes, having mixed OSes is also a problem. This is why you pick an OS and stick with it. If you upgrade, roll it in gradually, but with precision.
As for those numbers… no, I’ve had issues with the way the Gardner Group reports things. I’m no expert, but I’m fairly familiar, my father has been in market research all his life, from Resturant Business to Bruskin Goldring to J. D. Power and, well… to what we’re doing today, which I don’t think I should talk about. (But god is it cool.)
And the more I learn, the more I agree with Mark Twain.
There are lies.
Damned lies.
And statistics.
These numbers may be accurate at this point in time, but at the time PCs were being adopted, they were not. And so… the race is lost, as far as most businesses are concerned. Because changing midstream is a good way to fall off the horse. Plus it’s a waste of existing infrastructure.
If there’s a strong competitive advantage, then go for it. If it’s parasitic, don’t bother.
And, of course, it’s a bear to find people to custom code applications for Macs. Unix or PC, much easier. Though with increased use of HTML/Java/Perl style applications, things are becoming less platform dependent… though IE 5.5 breaks a lot of stuff.
CHOKE!
Good lord, I just looked at the bootleg report from early '95.
It’s Win 3.11 era.
That means, back in the day when modems were barely supported, before Com+.
When every program had a different video driver, and people did strange and odd things with kernel interrupts and programming on the bare metal for any application.
When every application behaved in a different manner, and there was no user interface definition.
Of course Macs get the Ease of Use award. That was the point!
You know, that was only six and a half years ago.
Which is, more or less, eternity.
Yeesh, Chas. Do you spend Sunday mornings going door to door with pamphlets on this? Let it go, man.
The point of the OP was: it’s her money. She gets to buy what she wants. Your opinion on the matter is entirely unneccesary. If she wants to buy a $5000 ice sculpture and lick it until it goes away, it’s her money to spend.
Shoes. We seem to be in agreement on not scrimping on shoes.
Music is an odd thing. You don’t want to be an audiophile and spend 30k, most of the time, but scrimping too much is a waste. Good speakers, good amp, and the rest can deal well enough.
Tires… honestly, spending extra money on high-brand tires doesn’t seem to do much for me. Except for rain tires. On the other hand, if you’re talking about scrimping on retreads… bad idea, yes.
Brakes. Good point, yes, you want it done well…
But where do we spend the little extra and have it pay back?
Caffeine counts, yes.
If you had your druthers, a nice Aero chair is all they’re cracked up to be. And considering most of us spend more time there than in bed… (Six to twelve hours at work sitting, compared to 4 in bed)
Basically, you want to spend a little more for quality on anything you will spend large amounts of your life using?
Or when you will spend very little comparative time using it, but expect rewards out of proportion to the time spent. (Ice Cream, yes?)
You know you’re a geek when you’re bootlegging TECH SUPPORT ARTICLES
“I’ve got Pearl Jam, live in Seattle!”
“Yeah? I’ve got rammstein, live in Hamburg!”
“OH YEAH? I’ve got Comparitive Performances of Macs vs PC is a business environment…ON DISC!”
I second the toilet paper advice. Well, except that I don’t use the stuff with Aloe, but GOOD toilet paper is definitely worth it.
As far as Macs vs. PC: I have spent less money on repairs for my Macs. My iMac runs Photoshop better (Photoshop crashes semi frequently on the PC, it almost never crashes on my Mac). These are the MAIN issues for me. My old 266 MHz iMac ran Photoshop faster than my 450 MHz PC. (I did a test on my two machines. I know this for a fact.) These are issues for me, and me only. YMMV. I don’t frickin’ care about the latest games, but I do care about Photoshop. I made these choices based on my own experience, and my own feelings and opinions. (But I still like my PC. And I hear that HomeSite 5 is coming out! Woo hoo!)
My friend actually does spend money on things that are important to him. He spent an obscene amount of money on some wicked-fast SCSI hard drive with 20,000 RPM? Something absurdly fast, anyway. He also has a very nice car.
He just doesn’t understand why I’d spend “more” for a Mac. He loves tinkering with his PCs so much, and it seems like he doesn’t understand that my priorities aren’t the same as his. Mac and PC are not interchangable. For me, it’s about the computing experience, and about the “user friendly” factor, and a few other intangible things.
Things not to skimp on:
[ul]
Shoes (it’s better to have 10 pair of well-made, comfortable shoes, than 300 pair of crappy shoes in every shade of the freaking rainbow)
Paint
Hair dresser (Trust me, if you pay $5 to get your hair cut, everyone knows that you spent$5 to get your hair cut.)
Carpet
Ice cream (I’m with you, seawitch)
Mattress (you spend 1/3 of your life on it.)
Sheets (See above. 250 count or more, 100% cotton. There will be no inferior poly/cotton blend sheets enveloping THIS bod.)
[/ul]
I don’t own a MAC, but I’d still worship at Steve Jobs’ tabernacle any day. He’s hot.
It’s the best I can do for free, you can purchase more recent reports direct from Gartner. If you want to shoot down the assertion, you’ll need actual facts and research. But you won’t get any ammo from Gartner, because their more recent reports all show the same results. I would like to read the alleged CNet report, but so far, nobody’s given a link. At least I’m providing factual info.
No, honestly. It doesn’t matter which is objectively better.
The question is, what’s better for what situation?
Photoshop, until recently, always ran better on a Mac. There are issues with OS X, and I don’t know if they did the special whatever that they were planning to or not. If they did, then it’s a native application taking full advantage of the hardware, and will still run better on a Mac.
Macs are better for some things. And PCs are better for some things. And it’s not just the objective standards of the machines, it’s not just downtime, it’s training, expectation, intangibles, and compatibility.
For Yosemitebabe’s uses, macs are better. For her friend’s uses, PCs are better.
Me, I’m getting in my SUV, with my New Beetle parked in the bed, driving off to meet my girlfriend without kids in her minivan, and then we’re going to go mountain biking on ten speeds.
If it helps any, folks, I’ve got electronic copies of the excerpts Garner Report that Chas.E is referring to. I’d cut-n-paste them, but they’re on my home iMac, and I’m at the office.
But yeah, speaking from general experience and a lot of anecdotes, Macs are overall less expensive than PCs for the total life of the computer. The initial up-front cost is a bit higher, but you make up the difference in having fewer maintenance problems and a longer time before it becomes obsolete. The Mac I owned prior to my current iMac was a Quadra 660AV, which I ran for eight years before it was no longer able to keep up with the latest computer trends and MacOS versions.
I actually collect anecdotes from other Mac users about their machines; feel free to visit http://www.digiserve.com/eescape/mac/Mac.html and browse 'em – there are a fair number of “Why I like my Mac much more than my PC” stories in there.
I would just like to ask Chas.E why a Gartner report detailing the TCO for Mac vs PC in the corporate environment has any relevance to the home user. The home user is not rolling out 5000 units, paying for tech support, training, managing upgrades, networking, file sharing, etc. The home user is a completely different animal than the corporate user.