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Apple Laptop Upgrades Costing 200% More Than Dells
An anonymous reader writes "C|net is highlighting the astonishing cost of Apple laptop hardware upgrades, compared to Dell — in some instances, Apple is charging 200% more for upgraded components, such as memory and hard disks. Either there's a serious difference in the quality of components being used, or Apple is quite literally ripping off those who aren't able to upgrade hardware themselves."
Just pay your neighborhood friendly computer geek to install the upgrade for you. You aren't forced to go through the Mac store.
This is also true of Apple desktops.
Simple check: Go to the Apple store, and price a Mac Pro 8-core with the basic amenities; 2 GB ram, the recommended HD. Then price it maxed out; one HD of the largest size (1/2 TB last I looked) and 32 GB of RAM. Finally, take the original price and add 32 GB of RAM in 4 GB sticks (the Mac Pro can take 8 sticks) from a reputable online store. The difference is astonishing.
I have a recent Mac Pro, and I expanded it the sensible way; the amount of money I saved by doing that is staggering. I've had absolutely no problems.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It's true that Apple gouge on upgrades, but it's hardly a new phenomenon. They were doing it 4 years ago when I bought my first Mac and were doing it well before then too. It's a form of price discrimination, similar in that way to rebates and coupons. Those willing to expend more effort (fit their own RAM, fill out a rebate) effectively pay a lower price which allows the store to sell to a broader range of customers while maximising profit.
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An 8-headed display Mac Pro is $3239. To which you add four 1TB drives, and RAM, both from elsewhere. You chuck out (or sell, it's very good hardware) the 2 GB stick of RAM and the HD it comes with.
RAM is $699 per 8GB (as pairs of 4GB sticks @ memorysuppliers.com); so you need $2800 for 32 GB; a 1 Tb drive is $190 (WD Caviar GP WD10EACS Hard Drive @ buy.com), so you need $760 for four drives. Total:
$3239 - macpro w/wifi, 8 display outputs (4x ATI 2600 XT 256MB), 2.8 GHz
$2800 - ram
$ 760 - drives
---------
$6799...
Same configuration (32 GB, 4x1 TB drives) from the Apple store:
$13,989.00
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Yep, but also watch out when Apple has specials. When I bought my MacBook, I was going to get the base model and upgrade the HD and RAM to get it to be nearly the same as the middle model.
But they were running a special at the time (I think it was a Back-to-School special). For about $200 more, I could double my RAM, upgrade my HD and get a slightly faster processor. So I just paid the $200 upgrade as it would have cost me as much just to buy the parts.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Sorry to burst your bubble but I just took apart 2 macbook pros over the weekend, to see exactly what the hype over the hardware is all about. Besides the well engineered layout of the mobo, there is nothing special about the components that apple uses. They use the same Samsung/Micron DDR2 memory module as Dell, Lenovo and other vendors. They use the same Hitachi hard drives, which from my experience is inferior compared to Seagate drives (Thought I have heard that some macbooks do come with seagate drives). The processor is the same Intel processor as everyone else. So while the Macbook pro as a whole is a good laptop, I would have to disagree that its hardware components are far superior compared to Dell or other PC counter parts - it's the same hardware after all.
kool aid stains are showing.
The RAM that comes in the Apple products is the SAME RAM that comes in the Dell products.
its made in the same country and in the same plant, on the same assembly line, and purchased through the same distribution channel.
It's a commodity.
Or are you goingto tell me that Micron makes a special "Apple only" ram that they rigorously test to make sure is the very best stuff out there and then only offer it to Apple while at the same time taking the reject ram and selling it to their other oem customers?
not likely.
They'd be down to selling ram to apple only pretty quickly if their failure rate was that bad for the others.
I'll also point out this holds the same for Seagate and hitachi for hard drives.
Aside from where their labor is done, we just had an article on here recently detailing how apple pays its employees LESS than its competitors..."
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
The last time I checked (Consumer Reports), the only thing Apple has over other vendors is better customer service: not technology.
What? Consumer Reports showed them as having a very significantly lower failure rate during the first year than any other vendor (as of early 2007). That was the last real study I saw them publish on the subject.
Get a Fumoto valve, never worry about dropping the plug again
Yeah the Xserves are insane. I called them up asking whether I can upgrade the drives myself and they said that you have to buy at least the 80GB units to get the drive trays. A $3000 machine and it comes with one 80GB drive and two useless blanking plates (and only a single quad-core xeon to boot)? Screw that. I just pieced together an 8-core/2GB/2x80GB 1U from Dell for $1700; even if you add $1000 to that for the OS X Server Unlimited-users version, you're still $700 cheaper in specs.
I'm willing to pay a premium to get a better product that works right the first time, but Apple is REALLY milking it on the pro-oriented hardware.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
There are also plenty of other Apple-certified service shops who can upgrade memory and whatnot without voiding an Apple warranty for those who can't do it themselves, so even if you buy a Mac, you've still got choices with regards to upgrades.
You assumption has no basis in reality, yet you were modded up. /. does us all proud.
£90.01 from the Apple configurator. Doing the same upgrade with a Dell XPS M1330 costs just £30.01
30 * 3 = 90
30 + (200% * 30) = 90
Therefore, 90 is 200% more expensive than 30
using the Apple Web site will cost an extra £120. Doing that same swap with the Dell XPS M1330 costs just £40.01.
40 * 3 = 120
40 + (200% * 40) = 120
Therefore, 120 is 200% more expensive than 40
Who knew that "200% more" and "3 times as expensive" worked out to the same thing!?
I didn't read TFA, just assuming they mean 100% more expensive.
Not only does your ignorance do you proud, /. proud.
the person who modded you up does all of
/math, learn it.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Actually, I'm willing to forgive it because it doesn't affect me. I just bought a MacBook. I like it. I had three options: for $1100 I could have a 2.1 Ghz Core Duo, 1 GB of RAM, 120GB HDD, and a CD Burner. For $1300 I could upgrade to a 2.4 Ghz Core Duo CPU, double the RAM, add 40 GB to the HDD, and get a DVD burner. For $1500 I could get a 250 GB HDD and a black case (otherwise it was identical to the $1300 version). I did the math real quick and decided that the $200 for the middle option was a good deal, but the extra $200 more for 90GB more HDD was not (Oh, and a black case... can't forget that). I now own a laptop whose features compare favorably with similar Dell offerings; had I spent the extra I'd have been either foolish or not done my research. If Apple can convince people to part with an extra $200 for a case color, I say power to 'em. I'm just not one of those people. I may even drop $100 for a 250GB HDD and upgrade the silly thing if it becomes a problem... but right now I'm not even filling half the drive.
Apple's gear is perfectly reasonable if you pay attention to what you are actually buying; but just like anyone else they'll charge premiums when they think they can get away with it.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
During MS's antitrust case, the judge ruled that Apple wasn't considered competition because Macs and PCs are two different markets.
Using that logic, Apple doesn't have any competition at all in the "mac marketplace".
Bullshit. The most recent mac I purchased came with cheap HYNIX memory.
And apparently unless you are NASA maybe that's a good thing. I oversaw a quarter of a million dollar XSAN install and dealing with Apple Enterprise was a joke. Fucked up quotes, reps (more than once) going on vacation without notice, shipping the wrong product, cocking up the install and not admitting it or sending an engineer out until legal threats were brought to the table.
I found EMC to be way more professional and technically knowledgeable.
Of course this is anecdotal and maybe I just got the moron squad from Apple Enterprise.
Sometimes my arms bend back.