“Macs are indeed less expensive to own than Windows PCs. . . by a range of $273 to $543 depending on the type of computer”
No Sh*it?
PCs are indeed less expensive to own than Macs. . . by a range of $273 to $1000 depending on the type of PC.
And YOUR expertise is superior to IBM, the owner operator, maintainer of 90,000 plus Macs and 200,000 plus Windows PCs, in exactly what way to make this determination so that we should believe YOUR claim over their experience and expertise in this determination of fact?
The discussion here is completely irrelevant except within the very narrow confines of the article that Swordmaker posted. I have no idea about the actual expenses from the IT Department of a large corporation, and those expenses have no relevance at all to home users such myself or most of the rest of us on this forum.
A few months ago I purchased a little Windows 10 laptop/tablet computer at Walmart for $99. It has a little 10” screen and a keyboard that can be removed. It came with a free version of Microsoft Office. It is great for creating Word Documents, surfing the internet and playing games.
It is very handy and it has been used daily since that time without difficulties. Supposedly it was on sale, but it remained available for $99 for months. Currently they are $118, but I expect that they will be in the $69 range for Black Friday. I can guarantee that there were no comparable Apple products available that were not several times more expensive. And the situation has not changed.
My primary laptop is a Lenovo and cost $399 six years ago. It gets used several hours a day and is still going strong. I was able to upgrade the processor to an I5 easily because the computer has access through the back panel. I also doubled the memory to 8GBs with no difficulty. The laptop also has a PCMIA slot that I have been able to use numerous cards to expand its uses. There were no comparable Apple products at the time that were not several times more expensive.
So it is kind of interesting that in a corporate environment that Apple products can be comparable in expense over their lifetime, but it is completely irrelevant to myself and most other home users. This is especially true when we already have an investment in software compatible with the Microsoft operating system.
The choices available to those of us using Microsoft operating systems are nearly limitless both in software and hardware. This matters when one is interested in peripherals such as PCMCIA "expansion cards", 3D Printers, CNC Routers and Milling Machines, eprom programmers, robotics, automotive analysis interfaces and so on and so on... This is not to mention open source operating systems and software which gives nearly limitless options to those of us who use hardware originally designed for Microsoft operating systems. If you are using Apple products your options in all these areas are severely limited by comparison.
So yes, severely limiting your options by choosing Apple products may very well make sense in some corporate structures. But at this point I will continue to choose products that give me the most options and also can be found at a much cheaper initial cost.