Really? I don't know a single person who does that, actually. I think that's quite rare. "thousands more than they realize" for the average person is a bit overstating it, I think.
No, no. No. I would say that in this country and most likely in Britain also, "most people" means just that. I believe younger folks are more likely to DIY, but even a lot of friends my own age don't know the difference between a floppy disk and a floppy... appendage. Got a huge virus? They call Geek Squad. Need a new PC "cause the old one is too slow" (e.g. overrun with malware)? Go to Best Buy and pick up a new one, which ships with Vista. Don't like Vista? Take it back to Best Buy, purchase a retail copy of XP, and have them install it for you... all for only
$300 for XP Pro, and another
$129.99 - $229.99 to get it installed. Want an anti-virus installed while they're at it? Don't worry, it's only an extra $159.99. How about wireless? Oh, that'll be another $169.99.
I haven't actually met anyone who does those things either... Buying a computer with Vista then buying XP, then paying to have it installed?? That's pretty ridiculous; I doubt there are more than maybe a couple weirdos in the world who would actually do that lol.
Talk to
Fred about that, he works for
Geek Squad. They have a line of customers that stretches out the door at just about any given time of the day. Do you think those companies can make billions of dollars doing what they do because there's
"maybe a couple weirdos in the world who would actually do that lol"? Dude, no offence, but wake up. :doh:
I still associate a windows PC with cheaper price than a Mac because, why would you want to use a mobile version of a processor? And a 2.5" HD instead of 3.5? What's the point of that? Well, I get it, the Mac takes up less space on a desk as a result, but that seems like unnecessary luxury to me. That's like buying a luxury car instead of a car that just does the job. The bottom line is comparing the specs and price like Ghostman_1 did. Only your point #1 is truly valid, I'd say.
I build all my own hardware because I can get more for less that way, and I can build to my own specs instead of Apple's. Their hardware is well-designed and well thought out though, which is a lot more than I can say for Dell, HP Sony, Acer, or any other big OEM. Keep in mind I'm not even an Apple fan. I don't own a single Mac, iPod, or otherwise. In fact, there are 3 servers, 2 desktops and a laptop in the room with me, and all 6 machines run some distribution of Linux. I spend a lot less time and a lot less money then both Windows and Mac folks do. But that doesn't mean RHochstenbach is wrong; he's absolutely right. Macs are cheaper in the long run then Windows PCs for almost everybody.
I have been in IT for about 10 years or so, and I'd been using various MS products since the age of 6... that's a long time before Windows really caught on in the early 1990's. So, you can trust me when I say that though I dislike Windows, I know a lot about it. Until I switched to Linux several years back, I was a full-time Windows user. Do you know how many hours overall I'd spent Working on my own PCs in those last few years alone? Defragmenting, scanning for viruses, sweeping for spyware, fixing registry problems, trying to recover files when the system was shutdown uncleanly, disabling internal spyware-like services builtin to Windows, tuning memory management in order to get a few more FPS in games, loading and updating drivers in a very specific order to help avoid massive system instabilities, trying to get a large amount of audio and video codecs to play nicely together without breaking something... etc,
ad infinitum. I never even thought about these things until I moved to Linux, and discovered that once it's setup, it
just works... and works well. Maybe I wasn't paying somebody else to do it for me, but I was wasting a metric ass-ton of my own time fixing my own OS. My time is worth too much to run Windows. How much is your time worth?
My workstation is usually up for months without a reboot, and that's fully-patched and up to date, mind you. I
never have crashes,
never lose data,
never worry about malware of any kind. I don't need to defrag, and don't need to juggle DLL's to get every codec in the known universe working together. I can play several dozen videos at the same time if I want, several 3D games without any hiccups, I can compile 2-dozen different kernels at the same time and still watch movies, listen to music and play games at the same time. And all on an OS that is [legally] free, a lot faster than Windows, and a lot more reliable. In other words, you never realize exactly how bad Windows sucks until you're out of it. Macs may be pricey up front, and they may not be quite as good as Linux is, but they are a lot more stable and reliable than Windows PCs. And for people who aren't technically inclined enough for Linux, a Mac is well worth it.
And a post script... you can run Mac OS on PC hardware if it's similar enough to Mac hardware. It runs quite well. Attached is a screenshot of OS X Leopard running on my $500 Vaio with 100% Intel chipset. (I only ran it for a day and then put
Debian Sid on it, but I'm just making a point here).
