Apple's Price Beats Dell and Hand-Assembled Computers

It bowled me over.

~Ulrika~

Hmmm sounds like a waste of electric and I am a girl who thinks with my brain and not a boy who thinks with his lower parts.

lol oh wells

How dreadful that must be, to have to only choose one or the other.

And anything else you'll either promptly ignore, rank on someone's spelling, or use circular logic like you have:

Ulrika: The mac costs less than an equivalent Dell.

Responder: A Dell of those specifications doesn't do any more than a computer without multiple processor cores.

Ulrika: It does on the mac, see, I can make videos and music and surf the net much faster with it. Everyone needs a computer with multiple cores. It doesn't matter that it's expensive.

Responder: No, not everyone needs something with multiple cores. I play a lot of games. I'd have to spend a lot more to get a mac to do get it to do that well.

Ulrika: The Mac costs less than an equivalent Dell.

Responder: We already went over that.

Ulrika: Well prove me wrong then.

Responder: We're not trying to argue that.

Ulrika: Well then I'm right then. The Mac is a better deal than a PC.

Responder: No, it's more expensive to get it to do the things I need.

Ulrika: We're talking about the things that I need a computer for, and millions of people buy macs.

Responder: And millions of people buy PC's to play games. What's your point?

Ulrika: The mac is better than the PC.

Responder: Why?

Ulrika: Because the new mac is less expensive than the same equivalent in a Dell.

Responder: Not back to that again. Jeez!

Ulrika: I don't appreciate being treated like that. You're an idiot because you didn't spell "lose" right.

Some people don't like erotica, just like some people don't like pickled pork rinds. Its all okay, everyone is different.

Ha ha ha! Despite several posts by two different people correcting you (and you yourself posting a definition), you still are misusing the term "circular logic". You remind me of that PC guy in the Apple commercial who keeps misusing "touché".

~Ulrika~

Funny how you can dismiss what people say based off grammar and spelling. How superficial. Were you an English teacher before you became a Macevangelist?

That's also what's known as misleading, because your topic - and the post that went with it - left out the fact that you were only interested in one specific comparison, and not the larger picture, despite the fact that your title suggested otherwise due to its non-specific nature.

Fun fact: Something can be both true and factual while still being misleading. This is the essense of marketing.



If someone is so narrow minded that they cannot look past one of the most common spelling mistakes in the english language and actually focus on the discussion at hand, they aren't worth my time in the first place.



That's self evident at this point.

If she can snap-lump "boys" into one derogatory catagory, I can invent my own.

And nobody here better admit they like pork rinds of any sort, much less pickled. Do I need to dig out The Sneeze's experience with those?

These OS wars things never go anywhere, but I still think your completely blowing smoke about the price issue.

I am a relatively poor person economically speaking and the same computers you talk about being expensive in the states cost even more in my country.

I have no wealthy friends, and live on the bad side of town with all the crack-heads and losers yet I have never heard of anyone buying one of these mythical 800 dollar computers unless you are talking about one without a monitor/video card etc. I am not denying that technically they exist and that you are wrong in arguing that point but in the real world this is mostly just a lot of hot air IMO. A hypothetical that does not reflect what peopel actually buy or spend.

If your thinking of buying a computer that is "average" in my neck of the woods, you probably should be budgeting for a couple of thousand dollars. A bit under for a Windows one, a bit over for a Mac. My Commodore 64 cost that, My Atari, My XT, and all my Windows PC's cost that, and all my friends computers cost roughly that for as long as I can remember.

People can post till they are blue in the face about how they saw this or that ad or offer, but I still have never met this fantasy person that bought a Windows computer for 800 bucks complete with all hardware and software and used it for years with no problems and no need to upgrade. They just don't exist AFAIKS.

On the other hand I know lots and lots of people that bought a Mac (albeit for more money), that they took out of the box, turned on and used it for five or six years with no problems, no upgrades and bought no software for it. To some people that is a good deal, regardless of the higher sticker price.

*raises hand*

Only two years so far on the one, but it's never had a lick of problems, and for what it is it works great.

Actually for your Joe-Average home user, the new G5's are over kill. Those aren't 'home computers' or 'gaming machines'. Those are computers meant for professional work.

Plus, the article mentioning it's cheaper than the "home built" system? Um, did they DO any shopping around or did they just pick a site or a site with the highest prices??

Xeons still are NOT gaming CPU's. Period. Never were. There are NO games that would take advantage of two dual-cores.

And folks- keep in mind, Ulrika isn't a gamer. A Pain-in-the-ass maybe, but not a gamer (even tho she's fun to argue with). She's using the machine for a bit more professional use.

Besides- she'd get Pwned easily

I'm sorry, the C64 never cost that much. It cost around $800 when it first came out, and by 1985, it was closer to $300. The Amiga 3000 was around $2,000 when it came out though.

In the past I might have believed in premade computers when all computers had a proprietary base, but anymore, I don't believe in buying a pre-made computer. I build it myself, and I suggest for the people that don't know how to do that to get a friend to build it for you. That's how you save money--and once you have all the components for that machine, you can nickle and dime upgrades as they come along and spend less than $500 every year and a half to two years on hardware and still keep up with the latest games with reasonable framerates--and if you're not a gamer, you can cut that back to $500 every 4 or 5 years.

If you want perfect framerates for the latest games, you may have to spend closer to $1,500 in the beginning and then $400-$500 a year on upgrades.

Well if you want it paraphrased, a closer short form of what I said would be:

"Macs are slightly more expensive, but they are better quality and therefore worth it."

Most intelligent computer-savy people I have met in my life with any depth of experience on both platforms tend to agree with that statement, and I have never seen any good information that would disprove it or provide a strong opposing argument.

The implication inherent in most of the opposing views expressed here, that Macs are somehow overpriced is particularly false. Apple doesn't have huge profit margins and produces an extremely high quality product for pretty much exactly what it costs to produce something that good.

"Worth it" is subjective, however. Worth it to you, clearly. Worth it to me, not in a million years.



Again, subjective. Overpriced has less to do with profit margins and more to do with return on investment for the purchaser. I, personally, get nothing back from a mac that is worth the extra money spent, therefor, to me, it's overpriced.

The computer I'm using right now cost about $1000 (if I include the monitor, it's $1,200) and I'm able to play the latest games just fine. You can't do that with Apple products--the most you could get for $1000 is a computer that's attached to a monitor that can't even run the latest games at any sort of reasonable framerate. Monitors NOT made by apple are now in the $180 to $300 range, if you get them from apple the lowest cost monitor, 20 inch, is $700 for a 16ms latency screen even though the new standard is 8ms and 4ms--I can get a non-apple 19 inch 2ms latency screen for $350.

The forums are closing so i cannot resist, in good fun:

as opposed to being an abrasive 35 year old male, underemployed at some coffee bar with pretentions at being a comptuer savvy rockstar philospher pretending to be a a german woman on a controversial virtual reality platform?

hehehe sorry J/K

Nahh for gaming purposes macs are over priced in terms of costs versus relative capability..apples profit margin on a per unit basis is irrelelvant..its irrelevant to apple to..its the I-pod thaty keeps them in business.

Well hell you can get a damned playstation three that is more capable than a i-mac.

playstation 3? hell the original X-Box was more capable

Agreed, same with my 2003 network and PC's at home (mini network, use it for testing). 90% of so-called 'windows problems' are (as one wonderful internet movie called the) twelve-o-clock flashers (Every clock on an appliance in their house flashes 12:00).

Most the folks I hear whining loudest have ZERO basic knowledge of computers and would have trouble with a remote control (I just had someone PAY me to reinstall a video driver...a frigging video driver...5 mins work because they could not insert the driver CD, watch it autstart and click 'install driver' without someone holding their hand). And the guy had the nerve to claim 'windows sucked' when it was clear the person that sucked was the chump that couldn't figure out how to reinstall the driver that he had deleted and admitted to deleting.

(not directed at the OP) Run a (non-Symantec) antivirus and firewall, and a simple antispyware program. Keep these programs updated, turn on autoupdate for each. Don't install ANY filesharing programs. Don't install every freebie screensaver and program under the sun because its 'cute'. Stay off porn and warez sites. Do the above, and you won't have problems with a PC. Or, if you're too damn dumb to follow a few safety rules and learn a MINIMUM of how to click a driver installer...get a Mac, you're perfect for the handholding they provide.

See Fmeh? Part of the problem is- the Mac users dont get it. It's like yelling louder so the deaf guy can hear you.

Their arguement seems to be: My Mac just works. However, they seem not to understand the idea behind "just works" and "works pretty damn good". Like the LCD Latency thing- maybe they're so used to having flickering & ghosting when/if they "get their game on" they suppose its that way for everyone?

Maybe the reason they dont seem to understand the part about upgrades is, they cant afford to OR no need to.

Or maybe its just denial? Sure, you just spent $2000 on a Mac. But your neighbor just bought the same or more in a PC and spent less $$, so you keep telling yourself "It's still better". Thats their Mantra.

and YES- for the computer illiterate or not-so-technically inclined, a Mac is a much better solution. If it werent for the Clueless PC home user, I wouldnt be making a few $$$ here N there.

You didn't get the joke! I compared you to the PC guy in the Apple commercial because you keep misusing "circular logic". We're talking about Macs. Get it? We've come full circle.

Or as you would say, I've used circular logic.

~Ulrika~

I didn't leave anything out. The article clearly states that Apple's price is lower than Dells and a hand-assembled computer for equivalent hardware. It could not be more clear. In fact, now that that has been cleared up for you, are there any other questions you have?

Easy there. No sense in loosing control over something so small.

~Ulrika~