One of the arguments against buying a Mac is that they are so expensive. It is true that the starting price for many Macs are more expensive than the starting price for PC's, but when you look at the PC's that win awards for being fantastic PC's they are often priced much higher.
In a word or three, you get what you pay for.
Lets take a look at the winners of several PC Pro A-list awards, these computers are the cream of the crop, the best of the best. I'll compare them to the price of an Apple equivalent machine.
Value PC
Sony Vaio VGC-JSE/S £699 - iMac £782
Although the iMac is a little more expensive, it's spec far exceeds that of the Sony.
High end PC
Chillblast Fusion Sidewinder £822 - iMac £929
Some say the Mac can't play demanding Windows games, this has not stopped me happily playing Crysis on my iMac.
Enthusiast PC
Cyberpower Gamer Ultra M2 Quad £1249 - iMac £1359
Yes £110 difference, but with the Mac's ability to run multiple operating systems symaltaniously on several virtual desktops it makes the perfect development and enthusiast PC.
Luxury Laptop
Dell XPS M1330 £922 - Macbook £929
What do you think? there is a price premium, is it worth it when you consider the software combination of Leopard and iLife? My own oppinion is 'yes' it is worth it, Leopard is a stellar OS, and iLife is amazing software impossible to match on other platforms.
Many PC owners 'obtain' software from friends, the price for adding licences for essential virus protection and iLife suite equivelents would cost an arm and a leg with Windows.
2 comments:
And in 3 years you get what you pay for again.
Mate good to see you are back blogging. I think that the point you make about having to pay extra for essentials such as AV etc. is a good one. I think that the remark about having to pay extra for iLife / iWork equivalents is less important. I have what was high end Video / DTP and Graphics etc software from the early 2000's as well as office 97 and 2003 and they work just as well (!) on the latest versions of windows. So in some ways software can last a long time if one avoids upgradeitis. Something I am really quite bad at.
Where the applications are let down is in the underlying operating system, the less intuitive interfaces (the clue is in the plural there folks) of the applications themselves and the quite frankly the less than user friendly Windows interface.
The cost benefit ratio of the hardware has to take these factors into account, along with the time taken to get windows to work reasonably well and get a lot of stuff out of the way of the user. It is perhaps the latter where the Mac really scores.
If one were to factor in the time it takes to maintain windows as a viable system the Mac would win hands down. Think of a going rate of £50 and hour (small business / professional) and factor in an hour a month over three years for maintenance (system reinstalls, bug squishing etc) which is quite realistic. That gives a total of £1800 cost of ownership over two years.
Scary numbers really I think!
Yrs K.
The same figure for a Mac would be considerably lower.
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