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Mon, Dec 22, 2008 16:24 EST

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Posted by: Shane ONeill in Rants Topic: InfrastructureBlog: Eye on Microsoft
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Pardon me if I'm a little bah humbuggy, but I had a rough week last week. I came home after a long day to find that my condominium had been broken into and my personal laptop and a few other items had been stolen.
Apparently deadbolt locks can be broken. Happy #%^&* holidays.
An unfortunate side-effect of the economic recession is an increase in petty crime, which I fear is only going to worsen in 2009. I live in the city, so that's city living for you. It's unpleasant, but it happens. I now have better locks and an alarm system, but the paranoia will stay with me for awhile.
My laptop was getting old anyway. It was a Dell Inspiron purchased in 2005 running Windows XP Home with 512MB RAM and a Pentium M processor. Not exactly a powerhouse. It still worked fine, but I had been pushing it to the limit lately and it was slowing down.
But the ole Dell was good enough that I wasn't looking for a new computer. Obviously things have changed. I will have some homeowner's insurance money coming my way, putting me in the rare position of maybe having enough money to buy a MacBook without feeling like I'm breaking the bank.
Ah yes, a Mac. I consider myself a PC guy, but I don't recall giving an oath of eternal loyalty. The Mac versus PC debate that I so frequently write about has now hit home. I've used Macs sparingly during my career, mostly when I did page layout at a newspaper. I've never owned a Mac laptop and I'm more comfortable using Windows.
But with a little extra coin in my hands, maybe it's time to leave the comfort zone. I will hopefully get enough money for a lower-priced MacBook.
Yet I remain conflicted. I'll admit that from a consumer standpoint Macs are better than PCs: less buggy, less upkeep, prettier, stronger. But are they $600 - 700 better?
The argument I often get from pro-Mac people is that it's a worthy investment and that when you factor in what you pay for AV software and other add-ons for an $800 PC, the prices aren't that different. I'd say that's fuzzy math by Apple fanboys. PCs are cheaper, period. The threat of viruses on PCs, the fear of Vista sucking and the barrage of patch updates can take an emotional toll, but I think it's rare that you'll ever pay more in dollars and cents for a PC than a Mac.
I also lost respect for Apple in October when it made only tiny cuts to prices for its line of MacBooks, and recently experienced some schadenfreude when I saw that Mac retail sales dropped 1 percent year-over-year while Windows PC sales grew by 7 percent. Apple needs to acknowledge the economic recession, come down from its Ivory Tower and throw a bone to cash-strapped consumers by cutting MacBook prices.
But this cash-strapped consumer and B&E victim will have slightly deeper pockets than normal. So I'm soliciting you, fair readers, both Mac and PC users, to give me some buying advice.
Should I buy a Mac or stick with a PC?
The obvious answer - which nobody seems to state specificially - is found in the value of your time. Computers are tools. If the Mac is a better, more expensive tool, then the question is, will buying the better tool pay for itself with savings in time? Some of that time saved may be involved in Vista, viruses and update hassles and some of that may be other features. If a Mac will save you over 30 hours of time in a year, and you value your time at $20 an hour or more, then it is a tool which will pay for the difference in a year, and the rest of the savings during the term of ownership will be a bonus. If it will not save you that much time (say, you rarely use a computer and the time saving is overstated), then the cheaper tool will do the job.
Simple as that.
Beware the Nividia "bump" chip in the new Macs......
I have had an IMAC for over a year now. I have never had to shut it down because it froze, it is just as fast a year later as it was when I first got it. I download a lot and never have to worry about viruses. Price of owning a PC 600.00-700.00 Being and Apple Owner Priceless. You get what you pay for. I was a PC user for 10 years because that is what I started on. I bought an Ipod then an Ipod touch then a Mac. I was hooked with the simplicity, and performance of Mac products. I never worry about loosing information and it is the easiest and user friendly computer I have ever put my fingers on.... If you buy the Mac you will not be disappointed.
To compare the Macs vs PCs on a hardware specification/$ basis is missing the point (though after jumping onto the Dell website the new Inspiron 13 is $150 more spec for spec!) even at a rudimentary level what OSX & Vista do with these specs makes the comparison pointless.
A better way to compare is on outcomes, the fluidity of my Mac leaves me cursing at the Windows box at work. Whether it's the ease of MobileMe updating contacts across all my devices, iLife making personal media management a reality (most of my PC-user friends don't do this, they could but it's too hard, something went wrong between 'could' & 'will'), or just not having to worry about system issues and 'computing' it's a better experience and, like any well-designed product, more of a pleasure than a chore.
Either way, all this rambling won't help like when buying a car you can obsess about the 5% variance in the top speed you'll never really use or you can see how she drives. If you go for the Mac and OSX doesn't work for you, you can always bootcamp Windows XP/Vista (no driver hassles) or go for a virtualised hybrid.
Good luck with your decision, McD
Will Apple see the error in its ways and reduce prices in 2009, or is that foolish thinking?