During the past year or so my laptop has been acting up. I bought the laptop about 3 years ago. It’s a Toshiba Satellite 15″ with Windows XP Pro. and has worked without too many complaints other than the fan, which is very loud. You only need to use the laptop for 5-10 minutes to figure out how annoying a loud fan is. With this in mind, I’ve been debating on buying a new laptop… maybe even an Apple! I’m very intrigued by Apple and their “ease of use” claim, especially since I bought an iPod which was much slicker to use than the previous iRiver MP3 player I had. The one glitch is all the people out there that claim Apple computers are extraordinarily expensive compared to a PC. Rather than listening to everyone else, I’ve decided to compare the cost of 2 Windows based laptops and one Tiger (that’s the Apple OS for those of you that don’t know).
To start, there has to be a baseline to compare against. I decided to take the components of an Apple MacBook Pro 15″ and price out a similar computer with Dell and Sony, two well known computer manufactures.
Note 1 — A remote control is not an option with Windows XP Professional. However, I did add $29 to the total cost of the Dell in order to get the best comparision. The $29 cost is equal to what is available with a Dell with Windows XP Media Center Edition.
Note 2 — Upgraded memory on the Apple to 1 GB to equal the Dell, however, the Apple memory components run at a higher megahertz.
Note 3 — Upgraded hard drive space on the Apple to equal the Dell.
After analyzing the information, there are a few things that stick out to me. First of all, the Apple has faster memory, a better graphics card, an iSight camera built in, and is half a pound lighter than the Dell and Sony computers. The Dell has a faster DVD Burner and 5-in-1 card reader. Cost is where there is a big difference. The Dell laptop costs $477 less than the Apple.
Those of you that have met me know I’m horrible at making decisions. Lucky for me I don’t have to make a decision today, which I won’t. If I were only interested in cost, I would obviously go for the Dell. But the Apple has a few components that would otherwise close the gap considerably between the Apple and Dell/Sony.
Since I’m not stuck on getting a 15″ laptop, during the next few weeks I’ll take some time to compare 17″ laptops.
he is so not lying-he CANNOT make a decision….
Thanks Connie, I can always count on you for some encouraging words
. But lets be honest, where others take a couple of days to make a decision, it takes me a couple of months. Is that so bad?!
Not to cloud any decision that you may or may not have made, here are a few things that you need to consider. Spec for spec is great for creating a baseline as a starting point. As I tell all my reps, if you are competing off a spec sheet, you really miss bringing value to the customer. In this situation, you K, are the customer. Let’s peel the onion back a little more. One thing that I see that was not covered was the software and ease of use factor. From what I can tell, there is more standard software and cool gadgetery that comes with the Mac. The fact that Mac’s are less prone to virus’ and worms is a huge factor. Another advantage that Mac’s have over PC’s is the fact they are more stable and do not crash as much. I will say that PC’s do have an advantage when it comes to availability of software and diversity of software. My first computer was a Mac Powerbook 6200 with a whopping 75 mghz processer in 1994. I have since switched to the dark side of PC’s but am looking forward to a return to Mac with my next computer purchase. If you break out $477 over 36 months, that comes out to $13.25 a month. Dude, I know you spend that on coffee every week. For the ease of use and reliability factor, I would pay a small premium. Just my two cents.
Thanks Chad. I appreciate your using numbers to appeal to my analytical side of the brain. So far I am leaning towards a Mac. One other factor is the chance to learn a different system. I’ve been using Windows for so long it’s just no fun anymore. And I get to see so many different platforms (OS/390, Tandem, Unix, etc) at work. The one operating system I’ve never had a chance to learn is the one running on Apple computers, currently named Tiger.
By the way, I’ve completed an analysis of the 17″ laptops and the numbers are even closer, but very expensive all around. I’ll publish a blog later in the week showing the numbers.