BS. Just another unsupportable fabrication by the Mac Moonies...
I am a former IT consultant and presently, CTO of an international natural resources corporation and I have held several similar high level IT positions in the past and based upon my personal experience, I can say that, without a doubt, Macs have a much lower TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) than similar PC's. They are also much, Much, MUCH more dependable. Even as an IT consultant, where all of my work was PC's and UNIX systems, I maintained my own mission critical stuff on Macs. After all, every hour that I would have spent chasing PC problems on my own system or just rebooting, would have been an hour that I could not bill out to a client.
In one company where we had some divisions that were exclusively PC users and other divisions that were exclusively Mac users, almost all of our help desk calls (97-98%) were PC related, while only about 60% of our computers were PC's. Furthermore, help desk calls concerning Macs were usually solved quickly, over the phone in that initial call, while more than half of PC related calls required multiple call-backs and often required a tech to attend the problem computer, either in person or remotely. Although at that time, the Macs cost a good deal more as a capital expense item than comparable PC's, the ongoing maintenance costs (including down time and productivity losses) of the PC's, soon passed even the most expensive Macs, that just sat there and ran without so much as a hiccup. On top of that, all of my staff with any kind of certifications were PC or UNIX people. We had no need of special training for Macs.
We are a 100% Mac shop at my current company and my staff is about 10% the size that it would be if we were a PC shop and with the exception of the network guys (router, satellite, etc.), they do not have to have nearly the level of expertise as would be required of PC techs. That translates to even further cost savings. Interestingly, the few calls that we do get now are, almost exclusively, how-to calls concerning Microsoft Word, Excel and Entourage (Outlook for Mac) and have nothing at all to do with the Mac, itself (questions about Word text styles, defining shortcut keys, Excel macros, etc.).
When it came to TCO, the more expensive Macs of the past had it all over PC's at the time. Now, with Macs being competitively priced and more stable than ever, while PC are flakier than ever, that TCO gulf is widening rapidly.
SYDNEY 12 June 2002.
A study from technology research company, Gartner has found Apple Macintosh computers to be up to 36 percent cheaper to own and run than competing PC products. The study utilised Gartner's Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) methodology, which takes into account the direct and indirect costs of owning IT infrastructure. Direct costs include all hardware and software costs for desktop and mobile computers, servers and peripherals as well as upgrades, technical support and annual depreciation. Indirect costs cover the costs of end-users supporting themselves and each other, end-user training time and non-productive downtime.
The report compares the TCO for the University's Mac environment with its PC environment. It also compared the University's Mac environment with similar sized PC installations around the world. The research was conducted at Melbourne University in the Faculty of Arts which included 4676 Apple computers and 5338 Windows based machines. The relevant cost comparisons were $ 14.1 million and $ 18.9 million respectively. Apple systems cost just $ 1953 per year to support, Gartner found, compared with annual costs for Windows based machines of $ 2522.
Apple Computer Marketing Director, Arno Lenior, said the findings illustrated how medium to large sized organisations like Melbourne University could save time and money by investing in Macs over PCs. There is a perception that Macs are more expensive than PCs but this report proves what we've long believed - Macintosh is the most cost effective and efficient platform available, said Marketing Director, Apple Computer, Arno Lenior.
In examining direct costs, Gartner found that Macs required less technical support and the hardware and software costs were lower. Gartner found that this translated into direct savings of 25 percent over similar sized organisations using personal computers. University of Melbourne IT staff were able to manage more Macintosh systems per person servicing 30 Apple computers for every 23.2 Windows based computer. Macs are designed to be easy to use. The report highlighted this, proving that Mac users at the University required less formal training and didn't rely as heavily on technical staff as PC users. When something did go wrong, the technical staff solved the problem faster on Macs than PCs, said Lenior.
The Gartner report found that the Mac's efficiency and ease of use resulted in additional indirect savings of 43 percent. When combined, the Total Cost of Ownership for Melbourne University's Macs was 36 percent lower than similar PC environments elsewhere. Perhaps even more importantly, when questioned on how they felt about their networks Mac users at the University were happier than their PC counterparts.