Posted on 11/07/2007 2:16:36 PM PST by Swordmaker
Let's put to rest the myth that an Apple computer will set you back more than a Windows PC. In fact, it'll cost you less.
It's time to buy an Apple computer. Indeed, it's been that time for the past five years, at least, but only now, slowly, are people waking up to this fact. Thanks to Apple's relentless flash -- the John Hodgman ads, the iPods, the iPhones -- its Macintosh business is now in league with that of the biggest PC companies in the world. Everyone who's used it agrees that Leopard, the operating system that Apple released late last month, is to its chief rival, Microsoft's Windows Vista, roughly as Richard Wagner is to Richard Marx. This simple truth is dawning: If we forget about computer-industry network effects and monopolistic business practices, if we forget Apple's various ancient missteps -- if we're going just by what's better -- the ages-old Mac-vs.-PC debate is over. Long over. Yell it from the rooftops: The Mac has won.
And yet, you're not buying an Apple computer. Most of the world isn't. There is probably a single overwhelming reason you're clinging to Windows. Macs are expensive. This is what you've been told, and in your research, it's seemed to check out. If they acknowledge it at all, Mac fans will rationalize the higher prices by noting that you're paying for quality. Buying a Mac, folks say, is like buying a BMW (Apple CEO Steve Jobs regularly compares the Mac's market share with that of German luxury cars). But what if you don't want the BMW of PCs? What if you can only afford a Chevrolet?
The present article is an attempt to prove to you that, on price alone, the Mac is not the BMW of computers. It is the Ford of computers. I am not arguing that the Mac is cheaper only if you consider the psychic benefits conferred by its quality. Rather I'm going to illustrate something more straightforward: Even though you may pay a slight premium at the cash register for a Mac over a comparable Windows PC (a premium that gets slighter all the time), it will cost you less money -- real, honest-to-goodness American dollars -- to own that Mac than to own that PC.
Why this should be has to do with an economic truth that has not recently mattered much in the computer industry, but that, in an age of eBay and unyielding obsolescence, is now crucial. It is resale value. Macs fetch far more on the aftermarket than do PCs -- and after years of use, you can offset that cash-register premium by selling your Mac for a better price than you could your PC.
Consider this example: Last Thanksgiving, you could have purchased a fairly well-outfitted Windows desktop -- the HP Pavilion Media Center A1640n -- on sale from some retail outlets for $699. The machine came with 2 gigabytes of memory, a 250 GB hard disk, and it ran on a quick 1.86 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor.
Around the same time, you might instead have picked up Apple's top-of-the-line Mac Mini, which came equipped with a processor slightly less powerful than the HP's (a 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo), a far smaller hard disk (80 GB), and less memory (512 MB). The Mac Mini would have set you back $799, or $100 more than the HP.
A good way to gauge the current market value of a computer is to check how much buyers have been willing to pay for similar models in auctions recently completed on eBay. Doing so for the HP shows prices ranging from $236 to $257 -- let's say a rough average of $250. Sales of the Mac Mini, meanwhile, go from about $445 to $550. Let's assume you can unload yours for $500.
If you used your HP for a year and then sold it, you would have spent $449 to own it -- that is, your purchase price of $699 minus your sale price of $250. The Mac Mini, for the same year, would have set you back far less: $799 minus $500, or just $299.
I ran such comparisons on many Windows and Mac systems sold during the past four years, and in nearly every one -- whether the machines were laptops or desktops -- the Macs sold by enough of a premium over comparable Windows machines to make up for the greater amount you would have paid when buying them.
In the spring of 2006, for instance, you could have purchased a nice Dell laptop -- the Inspiron E1505, with a 1.66 GHz Core Duo processor, 1 GB of memory, and an 80 GB hard disk -- for $999 directly from Dell. At the time, Apple's roughly comparable entry-level MacBook -- 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 512 MB memory, a 60 GB disk -- went for $100 more, $1,099.
Even if you'd treated your machine very well, you'd be lucky to sell the Dell today for $550, while MacBooks have recently sold for $710, $740, $790, and even $800. It would, in other words, be a cinch to sell the MacBook for $100 more than the Dell Inspiron, thereby making up the purchase-price difference you paid earlier (and likely even beating it).
Apple fans have long understood the amazing resale value of their machines. Windows users, on the other hand, might be scratching their heads at my argument; in the Windows world, selling your computer (rather than recycling it) is almost unheard of. After just a year or two of use, a Windows machine gets so gummed up with spyware, viruses and other nasty stuff that it seems malicious to ask anybody for money for the thing.
When I say that it is time to consider buying an Apple computer, what I really mean is that it's time to consider that computers can live longer than what we in the Windows camp are used to. It's time to realize that a 2-, 3-, or even 4- or 5-year-old machine is still intrinsically useful -- if not to you then to someone else -- and you'd do well to take this value into consideration when choosing what to buy.
Last year, the Web entrepreneur Daniel Nissanoff published an intriguing book called "Future Shop," in which he argued that by making all goods more "liquid," eBay and other auction sites would profoundly revolutionize how we shop. The coming "auction culture," he writes, "will shake up the status quo by reshuffling brand values according to how well a product actually sells in the secondary market." Instead of choosing what to buy based on its price tag, we'll take into account "how much it will fetch on eBay next year, which corresponds to how much it will really cost you to own it up until then."
Tech geeks tend to purchase computers as if brands don't matter. As long as the specs are in order, they argue, you can buy a bargain-basement PC and rest assured that it'll work out for you -- the logo on the case doesn't mean a thing for how it runs.
Nissanoff's thesis -- not to mention the completed sales on eBay -- upturns this argument. Even for computers, brand matters. This week I compared prices of several machines from Dell, Gateway and other PC vendors against Apple's lineup of Macs. In most cases comparable Macs sold for within $100 more than the PCs.
But the Apples had something extra: that logo, the design, the history, the clutch of fans willing to snap up any products the company makes. You'll need another computer in a year or two, and at that time, when you go to sell your current machine, Apple's intangibles will count for a great deal -- much more than $100.
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Let’s see...I’ve got a 3.2 gigahertz Intel processor, 2 gigs RAM, LITE-ON DVDRW SHW-160P6S [CD-ROM drive]
TSSTcorp CD-R/RW TS-H292C [CD-ROM drive], 160 gigabytes of HD, Creative Sound Blaster 5.1, HP vs 19” monitor with XP Pro with less than $400.00 invested. Apple can’t beat that.
The article presents a stupid argument. Most folks don’t sell their PCs every year. Purchase price is the only real gauge of what you’re paying and the Mac will set you back at least 50% more than the comparably equipped PC.
Aside from the logo you really don’t get that much more for your money.
Worse, if you become a “Mac person” you’ll end up virtually computer illiterate and unable to use real PCs in the real world.
Most PC folks can at least get by on a Mac. The reverse is, in my experience, rarely true.
I have both Macs and PCs scattered around the house. Macs are nice, but not worth the price.
Unfortunately I’m just about to shell out 3K+ for a Mac tower because my wife can’t seem to do her job on the PC that we just bought for 1/3 of that. . .
What brand or did you build it yourself from spare parts?. XP Pro alone is almost $200 isn’t it? Intel Celeron CPU at 3.2 is 50 bucks. Now, what about DVD burning software like TOAST, photography software like Photoshop, movie making software like Pinnacle etc.
These software packages all come Standard in Leopard.
Don’t get Mac if you don’t want one, but it IS the best value for the moola! This comes from someone who’s been building their own Windows machines for about ten years and just got tired of all the crapola with Windows everytime I built one, drivers, HD’s not being recognized etc.
They do work!
This is pretty goofy “proof”. For one thing people don’t replace computers every year, or even every two years. And even in things that people do replace regularly analysts know that high resale value doesn’t make it cheaper, it makes the second more affordable but that’s different. Then of course there’s the lame assumption that Windows users just throw away computers when they’re replaced, simply not true, we might not resell them but that doesn’t mean they stop being used, my wife has my previous machine, and the one before that will go to one of a variety of friends and relatives.
Computer illiterate? Except for those of us who can write code, or maybe only code in some dialect of C, we're all bloody computer illiterate.
Basically if you use a Mac you don't learn to navigate the ghastly counter-intuitive structure of Windows where all the defaults assume the user is stupid, and the ways to change them are burried (a problem with all MS products, including Office, which even us Mac users have to suffer with), unless you're forced to use a machine with one of the wretched OS on it.
That's a bit like sneering that one is 'tax code illiterate' if one has had the good fortune to only have to fill out Pennsylvania state income tax forms, rather than California state income tax forms.
Really though, BUY WHAT SUITS YOUR NEEDS. My husband has a Sony Vaio with XP (He's a gamer). Linux works for me (basic email, websurfing, and my Avon business). Someone else may need to buy a Mac for what they need. To each his (or her) own.
If I were you, I'd wait a few weeks before springing for the Mac Pro tower - the current models are out of date, and they are due to get upgrades to Intel's Penryn chip very soon.
You omitted the most important specification - the operating system. That factor is far more important than the hardware nowadays.
If the operating system is some low-quality crap like Desktop Linux or Microsoft Windows, then Apple is a much better value.
too many lib genx and echo boomers use macs.
great screens though
Oops - I see that you did specify the OS - XP Pro. Sorry I missed that.
You might become "Windows illiterate", but Windows literacy consists largely of memorizing hundreds of hacks and workarounds specific to remediating the endemic flaws of the operating system. A Mac user would have no particular problem switching to a Linux PC. ;)
“too many lib genx and echo boomers use macs.”
Guess that makes me an echo boomer...I’ve used both for years, Macs are superior.
John Hodgman is PC.
Justin Long is Mac.
It's ironic if the clueless PC guy is the ads' real star.
Exactly. I for one look around my life and I’m sure there is a cheaper product for everything. What a life were you can never choose quality over price. People that do that have a sad existence.
I strongly disagree. In my experience, the average Mac user has better computer literacy than the average Windows user. I frequently work with Windows users, and they are generally ignorant about the workings of computers. When something goes wrong and their in-house "experts" can't figure it out, they contact me - a guy who knows very little about Windows, but still gets their problems solved. Ironically, they wouldn't be having the problem in the first place if they used a Mac.
This machine was for the kids (15 and 11) so I took the eldest to CompUSA to help pick out a computer. On a Saturday there were about a dozen shoppers and little staff. We looked at the HP's, Compaqs, Acers, and store brands. A couple of machines were higher-end, but pricey. Few of them were fully functional. We couldn't find anyone to help us. When I started adding up all that we would need (new version of Office, new anti-virus, etc.) it was closing in on $2K. We could have cheaped out, but Vista ran like a dog on machines with less than 2 GB of RAM and built in graphics. My son really didn't like Vista. He was used to XP and called Vista "confusing." We then went to the Apple Store. Same day, but a world of difference. There were about a dozen employees servicing at least two dozen customers. The store was clean. The machines were all working. We were assisted right away. We ended up with a 20" IMac with 2 GB of RAM for about $1400. We did add IWorks for $79 which includes Office compatible word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software. The new Leopard OSX is amazing and, according to my son, easy to use. If we feel an urge to use XP, the Mac comes with with Boot Camp and after installing his old copy of XP, it runs much faster than his old computer.
I have been a Wintel person since before Windows. I have owned many computers and have managed NT and Server 2003 networks with over 30 users. Between an expensive OS, constant threat of viruses and spyware, driver issues, hardware issues, etc., Microsoft has pushed me over to the other side. I will probably still deal with Windows at work (when I am on someone else's dime) but for my money, my time, and my sanity, I am buying Macs from now on.
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