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Flash CS5 is the only product that comes with the Flash-to-.ipa converter. It retails for $700. The Mac Mini starts at $600. Last I checked, $600 was less than $700.

TCO + ROI.

CS5 may cost more in initial outlay (BTW, Flash CS5 in Australia is A$597 whilst a Mac Mini is A$849) and that is only becuase you need to buy a PC to run it, and a Dell or Lenovo will provide you with a much more powerful PC then the equivalent Mac PC, even cheaper are the local box retailers if you want a desktop, the A$1500 starting price for an Imac will easily buy you a decent gaming machine (A$200 for a decent Imac will buy you a high end gaming rig with a high end video card).

But TCO, if I buy a Vostro from dell I get 24 hour NBD on-site support. If something breaks I bleed money (and all hardware breaks, it just takes 5 days to get a Mac fixed). Further more I actually get to run an entire business on said Vostro from accounting to production software. I can also easily produce multi-platform products targeting Windows, Linux, Symbian, Android and current Mac's (no guarantee on future compatibility with Apple) with a Mac it is far more difficult to do the same thing. So for the Total Cost of Ownership and Return On Investment, wintel PC's are far superior to Apple PC's.

Flash CS5 is the only product that comes with the Flash-to-.ipa converter. It retails for $700. The Mac Mini starts at $600. Last I checked, $600 was less than $700.

TCO + ROI.

CS5 may cost more in initial outlay (BTW, Flash CS5 in Australia is A$597 whilst a Mac Mini is A$849) and that is only becuase you need to buy a PC to run it, and a Dell or Lenovo will provide you with a much more powerful PC then the equivalent Mac PC, even cheaper are the local box retailers if you want a desktop, the A$1500 starting price for an Imac will easily buy you a decent gaming machine (A$200 for a decent Imac will buy you a high end gaming rig with a high end video card).

But TCO, if I buy a Vostro from dell I get 24 hour NBD on-site support. If something breaks I bleed money (and all hardware breaks, it just takes 5 days to get a Mac fixed). Further more I actually get to run an entire business on said Vostro from accounting to production software. I can also easily produce multi-platform products targeting Windows, Linux, Symbian, Android and current Mac's (no guarantee on future compatibility with Apple) with a Mac it is far more difficult to do the same thing. So for the Total Cost of Ownership and Return On Investment, wintel PC's are far superior to Apple PC's.

As has been pointed out (over and over), Mac pricing is quite competitive when you compare (ahem) apples to apples.

You are joking right? A vanila macbook costs A$1580 for an older C2D (T series) 2.13 Ghz 2 GB of RAM and a 160 GB 5400 RPM hard drive.

The top end Dell Vostro 1320 is A$1199 and this has a newer model C2D (P series) 2.4 Ghz with 4 GB of RAM and a 250 GB 7200 RPM hard drive.

Please tell me how the Dell with a faster HDD, newer and faster processor and twice the RAM is inferior to the Mac which is made out of the same off the shelf components as the less expensive Dells?

Maybe you meant if we compare it to another laptop brand that is selling an image rather then hardware, like the Sony Vaio. Maybe then you have a point and while I've found Vaio's to be as drastically overpriced as a mac the hardware is not lacking (also smaller and lighter then the Macbook), also no-one who buys a Vaio pretends that they are cheap.

As has been pointed out (over and over), Mac pricing is quite competitive when you compare (ahem) apples to apples.

You are joking right? A vanila macbook costs A$1580 for an older C2D (T series) 2.13 Ghz 2 GB of RAM and a 160 GB 5400 RPM hard drive.

The top end Dell Vostro 1320 is A$1199 and this has a newer model C2D (P series) 2.4 Ghz with 4 GB of RAM and a 250 GB 7200 RPM hard drive.

Please tell me how the Dell with a faster HDD, newer and faster processor and twice the RAM is inferior to the Mac which is made out of the same off the shelf components as the less expensive Dells?

Maybe you meant if we compare it to another laptop brand that is selling an image rather then hardware, like the Sony Vaio. Maybe then you have a point and while I've found Vaio's to be as drastically overpriced as a mac the hardware is not lacking (also smaller and lighter then the Macbook), also no-one who buys a Vaio pretends that they are cheap.

Just did this using default configs.

The trick is to overshoot the mac as the better deals are on the pre-configured boxes.

A vanila macbook costs A$1580 for an older C2D (T series) 2.13 Ghz 2 GB of RAM and a 160 GB 5400 RPM hard drive.

The top end Dell Vostro 1320 is A$1199 and this has a newer model C2D (P series) 2.4 Ghz with 4 GB of RAM and a 250 GB 7200 RPM hard drive.

Sorry but higher end PC's win and all of this is before we consider warranties. Even with Mac's their working life is at best 3 years as each new version of CS has higher requirements. So if you expect to remain productive you need to upgrade at the same rate as a PC.

Yes this discuassion has happened a million time and it will keep happening so long as people contest the fact that Mac's are more expensive then PC's

A vanilla Macbook is appropriately priced for what you get.

Oh no it isnt.

A vanila macbook costs A$1580 for an older C2D (T series) 2.13 Ghz 2 GB of RAM and a 160 GB 5400 RPM hard drive.

The top end Dell Vostro 1320 is A$1199 and this has a newer model C2D (P series) 2.4 Ghz with 4 GB of RAM and a 250 GB 7200 RPM hard drive.

Other specifications are the same, 9400M graphics card, 13" 1200x800 screen with the exception of the warranty. Dell gives a 1 year NBD onsite warranty with their business line Vostro laptops, Apple does not. Apple does not know the meaning of the phrase Next Business Day (NBD) they have a hard time with Next Business Week on warranty repairs.

Personally I get the 3 year NBD onsite warranty added on, 1 day of downtime is worth the extra A$200. Lack of a decent warranty is why I can never seriously consider a Mac. Apple does make cheap computers, it also sells them for at least 20% more then most other manufacturers. This difference gets even greater if we compare the 15" models.

How do you figure that?

Zimbra for a 50 seat license: US$1,400

Exchange 2007 Standard with 5 CALs: AUD$2234 (USD1,714.93 at the time of writing).

The site I'm looking at only has CALs available in units of 5, and they're USD$576 for a block of 5.

And that's just a CAL - do you need a license for Outlook as well? I thought you did.

This would SMOKE any $500 PC. And you can even install XP on it.

PC people will scour the web for a way to make a cheap computer work well, when they can find it in 2 minutes on eBay.

USED, meh Lets compare new, I'm certain if I searched on Ebay I could find cheap windows boxes. I've bought HP Opteron servers for A$1000 at auctions before but to get them new with warranties it costs.

An outdated Apple Mac Mini with: 1.83 GHZ C2D, 1 GB RAM, 80GB HDD, Intel GMA 950. A$849.

from the same store:
A somewhat more recent Dell: 2.53 Ghz C2D, 2 GB RAM, Integrated Video, 250 GB HDD A$717

Or direct from Dell's web site today, an Insprion 530, most modern of the bunch: 2.53 GHz C2D, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD, Intel X3100 GMA A$750.

And XP will work with all three of these. so you were saying about low end mac's? Even they have a markup. To get a near comptetaive mac Mini to the two Dell's you need to go to A$1050 or A$1400

But none of these even come close to being gaming PC's as they all have shared memory video cards. If you want a Mac with a semi decent video card you're looking at over A$2000 for an imac with a mid range ATI or Nvidia card, considering my gaming rig with a high end Geforce GTX 285 cost me A$2200 in total.

This would SMOKE any $500 PC. And you can even install XP on it.

PC people will scour the web for a way to make a cheap computer work well, when they can find it in 2 minutes on eBay.

USED, meh Lets compare new, I'm certain if I searched on Ebay I could find cheap windows boxes. I've bought HP Opteron servers for A$1000 at auctions before but to get them new with warranties it costs.

An outdated Apple Mac Mini with: 1.83 GHZ C2D, 1 GB RAM, 80GB HDD, Intel GMA 950. A$849.

from the same store:
A somewhat more recent Dell: 2.53 Ghz C2D, 2 GB RAM, Integrated Video, 250 GB HDD A$717

Or direct from Dell's web site today, an Insprion 530, most modern of the bunch: 2.53 GHz C2D, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD, Intel X3100 GMA A$750.

And XP will work with all three of these. so you were saying about low end mac's? Even they have a markup. To get a near comptetaive mac Mini to the two Dell's you need to go to A$1050 or A$1400

But none of these even come close to being gaming PC's as they all have shared memory video cards. If you want a Mac with a semi decent video card you're looking at over A$2000 for an imac with a mid range ATI or Nvidia card, considering my gaming rig with a high end Geforce GTX 285 cost me A$2200 in total.

This would SMOKE any $500 PC. And you can even install XP on it.

PC people will scour the web for a way to make a cheap computer work well, when they can find it in 2 minutes on eBay.

USED, meh Lets compare new, I'm certain if I searched on Ebay I could find cheap windows boxes. I've bought HP Opteron servers for A$1000 at auctions before but to get them new with warranties it costs.

An outdated Apple Mac Mini with: 1.83 GHZ C2D, 1 GB RAM, 80GB HDD, Intel GMA 950. A$849.

from the same store:
A somewhat more recent Dell: 2.53 Ghz C2D, 2 GB RAM, Integrated Video, 250 GB HDD A$717

Or direct from Dell's web site today, an Insprion 530, most modern of the bunch: 2.53 GHz C2D, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD, Intel X3100 GMA A$750.

And XP will work with all three of these. so you were saying about low end mac's? Even they have a markup. To get a near comptetaive mac Mini to the two Dell's you need to go to A$1050 or A$1400

But none of these even come close to being gaming PC's as they all have shared memory video cards. If you want a Mac with a semi decent video card you're looking at over A$2000 for an imac with a mid range ATI or Nvidia card, considering my gaming rig with a high end Geforce GTX 285 cost me A$2200 in total.

This would SMOKE any $500 PC. And you can even install XP on it.

PC people will scour the web for a way to make a cheap computer work well, when they can find it in 2 minutes on eBay.

USED, meh Lets compare new, I'm certain if I searched on Ebay I could find cheap windows boxes. I've bought HP Opteron servers for A$1000 at auctions before but to get them new with warranties it costs.

An outdated Apple Mac Mini with: 1.83 GHZ C2D, 1 GB RAM, 80GB HDD, Intel GMA 950. A$849.

from the same store:
A somewhat more recent Dell: 2.53 Ghz C2D, 2 GB RAM, Integrated Video, 250 GB HDD A$717

Or direct from Dell's web site today, an Insprion 530, most modern of the bunch: 2.53 GHz C2D, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD, Intel X3100 GMA A$750.

And XP will work with all three of these. so you were saying about low end mac's? Even they have a markup. To get a near comptetaive mac Mini to the two Dell's you need to go to A$1050 or A$1400

But none of these even come close to being gaming PC's as they all have shared memory video cards. If you want a Mac with a semi decent video card you're looking at over A$2000 for an imac with a mid range ATI or Nvidia card, considering my gaming rig with a high end Geforce GTX 285 cost me A$2200 in total.

And some pubs sell VB for $6/schooner. That doesn't make VB an expensive beer.

http://ht.com.au/scripts/xworks.exe?PART:Q0452 + http://ht.com.au/scripts/xworks.exe?PART:Q0458#Tof - lets you try both versions of XP for AU$620, and it's not like people go to HT for the price. So nothing can ever be able to do in any point, and like the air in which we believe isa significant and growing the heap.The best solution to this has happened...

And some pubs sell VB for $6/schooner. That doesn't make VB an expensive beer.

http://ht.com.au/scripts/xworks.exe?PART:Q0452 + http://ht.com.au/scripts/xworks.exe?PART:Q0458#Tof - lets you try both versions of XP for AU$620, and it's not like people go to HT for the price. So nothing can ever be able to do in any point, and like the air in which we believe isa significant and growing the heap.The best solution to this has happened...

If someone said Microsoft Office costs $499 would you correct them?