Puncturing the "PCs Are Cheaper Than Macs" Myth

jcatcw writes "The recently converted Scot Finnie went notebook shopping. At the high end of the notebook spectrum, in order to get comparable power and features, a Dell machine comes in $650 over the Apple, and it was clunkier and weighed more. Sony couldn't beat the Apple either. Midrange and low-end machines, though, turn out to be pretty comparable, with more choices in the PC arena but some good values if you happen to want what Apple has decided you need. So, if you're talking name-brand hardware, it's just no longer the case that PCs are cheaper than Macs."

Comments

Re:To the average person

[MBGMorden]

They won't know that the Mac Mini has a dual-core processor, or a better video adapter,

their lowest end Mac is priced to compete with those $499 to $599 PC systems with Intel branded dual core processors, ATI video adapters, etc Just an FYI, the Mac Mini's have cheapo integrated Intel 950 graphics. The original PowerPC Mini's had ATI graphics chips, but Apple went cheap on the graphics for the newer systems (despite raising the cost $100).

Aside from it's processor (which is admittedly good), and it's size (which is an upgrade-limiting gimmick that I'd rather not put up with), the Mini really isn't that good of a machine. I'm gonna pay $600 for a glorified laptop with no display and only 1 RAM slot that's already been filled? Don't think so. If they made it in a larger case (dare I say a mini-tower? If Newegg can sell them for $25 it can't raise the price of a mini that much), added another ram slot, and a darned PCIe slot that worked with STANDARD (read: PC) video cards, then they might have something on their hands.