If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Posted on 04/27/2006 6:42:38 PM PDT by Swordmaker
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Interesting. Of course in the productivity section both will more than likely have MS Office loaded. And I like Office for Mac better myself.
I remember when all the good games only ran on a Mac. Believe it or not, but games are one of the main driving forces behind hardware improvements.
Remember Chop-Lifter,Just Awesome!
Hahahaha! I stunk at that game!
A fine choice!
They will repulse the pests that prey upon your less-capable trees. And beer made using their needles will rise your spirit.
I've always wanted a loaded laptop. Butttt, I also want cast aluminum wheels and cool tires for my car. And maybe a new bathroom downstairs. And new tile...
Very interesting comparison chart. Well done. My only beef is that I think the 5.5 hours of use off a battery charge is kind of a fantasy. In real world use I would expect much less time. My G4 17 inch Powerbook can't even play a movie from beginning to end without needing a battery swap and I doubt that power management or battery life has improved all that much since I bought it.
I wouldn't call the Dell the winner for the LCD resolution, but the loser. The dot pitch is so tiny that running a Dell at native resolution is begging for eye strain. OTOH, running an LCD at non-native resolution hurts my eyes even more, so I'm stuck squinting at the native resolution.
And,
But Macs are overpriced, under powered boutique computers!
Battery life is like gas mileage -- not absolutely realistic but good for comparison. The normal benchmarks count the fact that for most average use a computer is waiting for the user, so the processor can go into a low-power state (and CoreDuo has excellent low-power management). Running video takes a lot of constant processing power and disk access, so it drains the battery very fast.
Having a lot of RAM on your machine for cache vastly increase your battery life. In fact, there's a Windows program out there that caches DVD playing to improve battery life.
BTW, for this comparison, Apple's standard battery has more watt/hours than Dell's standard, but less than Dell's $79 upgrade battery.
Another plus forgotten for Apple: Its CD/DVD drive is slot-loading.
And don't forget the classic...
"The light weight of these Mac laptops is required only because of the limp wrists of their gay owners!" ...
Which I just made up on the spur of the moment to beat Hank Reardon to the punchline...
One more criticism. Your chart doesn't take into account the monetary value of the time you spend dealing with Dell Tech Support just to keep your computer running at anything like normal.That would probably add another $1,000 to the overall cost of ownership of a Dell.
All true, of course, but it is annoying to have to swap a battery on a plane just to finish watching a movie. That being said, I'll be looking at one of these beauties in about a year.
This is a bit of a silly comparison, as the price of the Dell has been padded with add-ons and software just to get the prices to match. The Dell, by itself, is cheaper.
You can actually get a wide-screen Dell Precision M90 with a free 19" external flat-panel monitor, for less than the Mac Book Pro.
Now, there are other reasons to buy the Mac, obviously. If you want to use Mac OS X, you have no other choice. And, for some people, that makes it worth the price.
But, I think it's dishonest to pretend that Macs are price-competitive with even Dells at this point.
I'm not sure about the 17" models, but my 12" iBook gets simply amazing battery life. Four and a half hours, on average, under real-world use conditions.
By comparison, my HP PC notebook gets about two hours if I'm lucky.
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