Mac v. Microsoft TCO

NickFitz writes "MacWorld UK has some comments from industry analysts on the question of whether Total Cost of Ownership, Microsoft's favourite metric, is lower for Apple Mac versus Windows. The MS website has no figures to refute the claim that 'An Apple technician may cost twice as much, but he comes to see you half as often.'" Bottom line: neither platform is the clear winner.

Comments

Techincian count

[goombah99]

At my 10,000+ employee facility, we have loads of overworked microsoft techs and way too few linux techs. Whenever our institution tires to force us to standardize on a platform the techs vote and of course windows always wins because there are so many techs.

if you actually normalized their numbers by number of machines they support I suspect that the mac techs would win. Hard to say about the linux techs. Linux techs tend to support giant computer farms. They have huge problems getting them all working nicely but they arent running around putting out virus and worm fires every week or searching for some stupid third pary driver.

Fishing?

[microcars]

Take a look at this catalog looks like plenty of stuff available there to me.

plus, you might want to read the story here about the NY Vespa dealer that decided to go with Mac and Filemaker Pro rather than deal with the Windows software that was "offered" by the Manufacturer.

Why did they choose to use Macs and Filemaker Pro when an existing Windows package was available?
Here's a quote from the story:

"And the default choice for their new Vespa dealership was a PC-based software package, "because that's all the manufacturer had to offer,"

"When we talked to other dealers about the Vespa software package, everyone complained of horrible setup problems, errors, crashes. We checked the software vendor's update schedule, and every few weeks there was a new update. Not to mention the huge investment -- a seven or eight thousand dollar setup cost, plus an annual fee of several thousand dollars. And that didn't even include hardware! "

It appears this shop looked very closely at TCO and even though a Windows package was available, they chose not to use it!

My wife works in Real Estate, she uses a Mac. She has no problems.

The other agents are constantly hit up to buy all these little Windows apps that will "help" them work better and more efficiently, but mostly these apps just line the pockets of the IT guy who is recommending them.

Her TCO by using her iBook is MUCH lower than that of the agent in the next station who was told she had to buy a $2000 sub-notebook in order to be competitive.

I'm not even going to mention all the time everyone ELSE wastes patching their Windows computers while my wife just keeps working.

"...Next thing I tried: Fishing? Fishing is not the most obscure hobby. You are out of luck using a Mac to enhance it: 15 titles for Pc, NONE for Mac.

No Fishing apps for the Mac? How sad.

Re:Mac: almost no software.

[Mullmusik]

You're right. Windows is the best platform for specifically running a flower shop. If someone's going to buy a computer for that, go Windows.

For most people however, (i.e. 'the majority of software needs' as opposed to the majority of programs) their needs can be met with existing software on the Mac or Linux, or for that matter more obscure OSs.

This lack of specialized apps thing is a tired old red herring, since there are (IMO anyway) specific apps on the Mac which are not available on other platforms, or are the best apps of that type on any platform. This doesn't mean it's not possible to do something as well on Windows, Linux, or whathaveyou, and this situation is constantly shifting, but it continues to be true for some specialized field or another. I'm sure we could all come up with specialized apps which are the best of their type which only run on defunct platforms, but that doesn't mean that going on ebay and finding that ancient box is the best choice. There are many other factors.

Sigh...

[Mildew Man]

I don't know how this can be debatable.

Everything that I have heard and read show that Macs are cheaper when factoring in TCO. In addition to less support (how many times have heard "...my company has 1000 PCs with 100 PC support techs and 2000 Macs with 3 Mac support techs...") and longer lasting hardware ("...we have a SE/30 that we still use as a mail server...") to increased productivity ("...virus? What stinking virus?...It just works!)

Here's a few examples I found when googling for info on Mac vs. Windows TOC:

Macs Shine In Total Cost Of Ownership
"The TOC (total operating cost) for the Wintel machines amounts to $253.86 per year, every year until it is retired," Canterbury told Sellers. "The Macs run us $53.25 per year. Quite a difference and one our board and parents heard loud and clear."

Return On Investments between the Macintosh and Windows platforms.
[NOTE: of course this is where the Mac shines but I think that it translates to other areas of general productivity]
"This benchmark supersedes a common but misleading bench-mark: cost-of-ownership. An ROI benchmark correlates the cost of ownership and productivity of media producers to revenue and profit. Detailed ROI analysis reveals that a Macintosh-using creative professional produces $26,441 more annual revenue and $14,488 more net profit (per person) than a Windows user of comparable skill engaged in similar work."

Why most people should buy a Macintosh rather than a Windows PC
A study from technology research company, Gartner has found Apple Macintosh computers to be up to 36 percent cheaper to own and run than competing PC products. The study utilised Gartner's Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) methodology, which takes into account the direct and indirect costs of owning IT infrastructure.

And there are just so many other ones that I grow tired of providing the information

An older study from 1988:

[bob_calder]

quote found here:
University of Wollongong
In 1997, Gistics, Inc. published the following*:
Macintosh users:
spend 38 fewer hours per year 'Futzing" with files
save US $4,950 annually on support and training
use more tools (14.3 versus 8.3)
Save US $2,211 in three-year cost of ownership
Earn US $5.01 more per hour
Earn US $12.22 more revenue per hour of labor
Create US $14,550 more profits per year per person
Earn 32 percent more net profit per project and
Achieve platform payback in 7.2 months (versus 13.9)

*Page 56 Vaughan, T. 1998. Multimedia, Making it Work, Osborne McGraw Hill, Berkeley

Re:Slightly OT: Mac question

[wilko11]

In most cases yes. Apps on the Mac fall in to two broad categories:

• Apps that are installed just by dragging them off their distribution media
• Apps that have an installer

Apps in the first category (like Mozilla) are great, you just drag the application icon to your disk (or to the trash to "uninstall"). This is because an appliction on the mac is really a directory/folder containing the things the app needs.

Apps in the second category often update system folders (having first asked for your administrator password - we have Unix privillege separation here) or need to copy to a number of folders, but if you can determine what the installer did you can reproduce the installation just by copying the same files - there is no magic here. (There are also tools for windows that will "observe" an installation, including registry updates, so that the app can be "deployed" to thousands of desktops in a corporate by automated distribution software.)

Amazingly Microsoft Office X for Mac is a "drag and drop" install - just drag the folder off the CD onto your hard disk. The "service packs" for Office X are installer based however - they need to check for pre-requisitve Office versions and copy selected files.

That's the core argument

[bcjanes]

That says it all for me. I recently switched to Macs for that exact reason. I spent several years running linux (as a desktop for personal productivity), and before that OS/2 with a brief side trip running Windows (that didn't last very long, was way too unstable compared to what I was used to). When you count the time I spent adminning/fixing/configuring other operating systems verses what I spend on my powerbook, Apple and OS/X are hands down winners for me.

Re:Slightly OT: Mac question

[Anonymous Coward]

It's cooler than that.

Native Mac OS X applications are acutally folders in disguise.
Take Keynote for example (Apple's presentation program for example) - it looks like a single file on your system called Keynote.app (actually the finder hides ".app").
But .app "files" are really folders, and if you hold down the control key when you click on it you get a context menu to "show package contents".
If you look inside you see all kinds of stuff, folders for language dependant resources, default preferences files (in XML no less) and even folders for different versions of the application for different versions of the OS (OS X vs. 9 for example).
They stopped using the whole resource fork stuff, because this method is file system independant. You can copy keynote.app to a network share that doesn't support resource forks, and doesn't know about the magic .app extension, and it just appears like a bunch of folders. Copy it back to another Mac, and presto, it's an "application" again.