Same with pay per view (although easier to do math with), for every television playing an event, that adds to the royalties. However, it is fixed in the fact that there will never be so many viewers that the station goes upside down, because it's proportional to the number of viewers (and they all paid per view). But still, the cost of 0 vs 100 is different. Royalties... just nitpicking anyway. Sorry.
Your missing the point. Royalties are specifically excluded from the cost equation because that's what we are talking about changing the model for.
Are we agreed that Excluding royalties; it costs a fixed (and small) amount to broadcast a PPV movie?
Now its true that for each person that 'buys' it, there is a royalty that gets paid to the rights holder. But after a few years of monitoring sales the cable company observes that it pays an average of x$/month in royalties, and made y$ in profit for itself.
So now, its proposing just upping the cost of its cable box by z$ by an amount big enough to make the same y$ ppv profit and pay the same $x ppv royalty, but without tracking ppv sales, and just letting everyone watch any ppv movie.
Its true that people will watch a lot more PPV movies if this were to happen, but the cost won't go up because the cable company has negotiated not to pay the per viewer royalty, but rather to pay the rights holder a fixed x$. Where x$ was the average royalty they were getting before the change over.
I think one of the reasons 'cancel or allow' is such a beast is that MS was stuck between a rock and a hard place in a way that OSX and Linux weren't. Neither OSX or Linux have a MASSIVE legacy of software that assumes its running as administrator.
If I were to write a program that ran under linux and tried to do something it shouldn't need to do it would just fail. That would be perfectly acceptable on OSX or Linux, because software shouldn't be doing that. Obviously microsoft couldn't have that though, because it would break so much legacy software.
On the otherhand, MS couldn't just allow it, because that's what's gotten us into the security morass we're in. So they erected this annoying cancel or allow barrier. Presumably as Vista matures and the legacy applications gradually get replaced we'll see a lot less prompts.
That said, vista could use some improvement too. And I expect we'll see some of its more egregious cancel or allow scenarios get cleaned up over time. I shouldn't have to re-elevate each time if I'm deleting cruft out of the program folders. Trouble is, if they made it simple, people would just setup explorer to run with elevation, elevate once after login, and then malware would ride on all these computers running with an elevated explorer by default. Its a tough balance to make, and Vista errs on the side of caution; which is probably good given the amount of malware it needs to resist.
An apple fanboy favourite... The problem is that you rarely if ever need a computer with the exact specs of a given Mac and a post pretty far up in this thread laments that, for a given requirement the matching Mac is often mis-specced
So I'm a fanboy? Because I expected someone to prove macs are over priced by producting a computer with the same specs for less? Give me a break. You'll note that I am ALSO the one who lamented that I couldn't get a tower at a reasonable price, due to be forced into a Xeon Core 2 Quad when I need is a core 2 duo in a tower form factor with a pci slot.
Hint: I am defending Apple's pricing for the products they have. I am simultaneously highly critical of their product selection. I am not an apple fanboy.
for a given requirement the matching Mac is often mis-specced, having a powerful and expensive CPU in a system meant for web browsing or requiring a workstation to get a good graphics card.
Agreed. That is the true frustration with Apple. Its not the their products are overpriced. Its that often their products are mis-specced to your application. And there are some very glaring gaps in their product line up.
I think its primarily aggravating to the 'tech savvy crowd' though. As joe-sixpack doesn't seem to be generally affected by it. The reality is that a mac mini or imac suites their purposes quite nicely and is an attractive package at a fair price for what you get. The problem only crops up if you don't fit nicely into apples tiny product line -- then you either have to make compromises, buying a plethora of features you don't want to get the one feature you do want.
You want an gaming computer with an nvidia 8800GT and a Core 2 Duo E6600 and a fast hard drive? You can spec a dell with that for under a $1000. To get that from a Mac, you end up looking at Quad Core Xeons just to get that level of flexibility with the video card, and the price is through the roof.
Bottom line: I don't buy the arguments that macs are over priced. I do however strongly agree that Apple's product lineup is at times perverse, seemingly designed just to piss me off.
With Windows, unsupported means that it didn't receive Microsoft Seal of Approval (regardless of whether the driver itself is in alpha, beta, or production stage, and regardless of whether it correctly uses published API).
With Linux, the kernel, something would be unsupported... because it is impossible to support the driver (i.e. it's a binary blob with no source code available).
No. In both cases, unsupported means the VENDOR doesn't support it.
You seem to be conflating this with Microsofts driver signing inititives and testing labs but that's got nothing to do with it. You can load unsigned drivers in Vista. (although in x64 you have to jump through a hoop to make it happen, but that's beside the point.) Most of the problem drivers in question are, in fact, signed.
We're talking a list of definite blacklist outright known to be 'incompatible', not merely 'unsigned'. Microsoft has TESTED the drivers and found they didn't work with SP1, and so it 'blacklisted' them, so users computers wouldn't fail. It requires users update to newer versions before it will install SP1.
Most of the blacklisted drivers ARE Windows Logo Certified and passed previous WHQL testing. But they broke in SP1. Whether that's because Vista changed something or because the drivers were buggy all along and it just was unmasked now I can't really say. But its beside the point and doesn't really matter.
This could happen just as easily with linux. A new kernel version could uncover a flaw with an older driver even if that driver was opensource. And that older driver package would be flagged as incompatible with the new kernel, and the updaters would prevent you from mixxing them. Its not exactly as if this has never happened before.
And what happens then? Assuming the community has the time and inclination a new fixed driver will be released. In the case of windows, you have to wait for the vendor to have the time and inclination. But in either case, someone has to come up with a NEW version of the driver because the old one doesn't work.
In this particular case it sounds like new drivers ARE mostly available, so Vista is only preventing you from updating until you install those newer versions.
As far as the users go, I don't see any double standard here. Just normal reactions. If it doesn't seem that way to you, well, prove me wrong and show me a GPL'd Linux kernel module (... that isn't marked "EXPERIMENTAL" or is in alpha stage) that a kernel developer says is unsupported and will do nothing to fix any problems with it.
Whether or not they are willing to fix it is irrelevant. No amount of willingness to fix it is going to magically make the existing version compatible. The -best- they can do is release a new version that is compatible whether its a new version of the kernel or a new version of the driver -- some where a bug or design flaw has to be fixed.
But combination of that driver and that kernel are ALWAYS going to be incompatible, and the package managers by default block you from mixxing packages with known incompatibility problems.
The problem isn't that it might be "your" double standard. The problem is that this double standard is extremely widespread.
When linux won't upgrade because of a package dependancy problem, there is endless help on removing the problem packages etc. When Vista won't upgrade because of an equivalent problem, we get a news article telling us dozens of people are sour on SP1.
Or, God forbid, we just ask the user's permission to load a potentially unsafe driver!
I sense a double standard.
If someone loaded a driver that was known not to work with a given linux kernel and then it didn't work and caused kernel panics, what would we hear? Something like -- you're an idiot, you brought this on yourself, linux even warned you it was incompatible when you installed it, how much of a dipshit are you? What exactly did you expect?
The same thing happens on Windows and we'll hear chants of "Vista sucks because it crashes all the time" followed by a slashdot "Amen!" The fact that its crashing because the user loaded a driver Vista warned him not too? Well its still Vista's fault for some reason.
people tend to eat more at a smorgasbord than if they have to pay for each entree, and this effect would be even greater when they have room for thousands of entrees in their digital stomachs.:)
Right, but think of it this way:
Its like PPV TV, right now you pay per show you watch. Suppose the average person with PPV service buys 6 movies. And the network broadcasts the movie in a timeslot regardless of how many people 'buy it'.
So the costs of providing ppv is fixed. It costs the same to broadcast the movie if 0 people watch it, or 100, or 100,000.
Similiarly the ppv revenues are fixed too. The average person watches 6 movies. If there are 1 million people, they will 'sell' 6 million PPV movies.
So Apple is saying, how about you just keep doing what your doing, broadcasting your movies; so your costs don't change, and we'll provide you revenues of an average of 6 movies per customer, so your revenues stay the same too. The only difference is, lets let the users watch any ppv broadcast instead of just 6.
It costs you the same. You make the same amount of money. And the customers will love it.
At least that's the theory... and its a good one. But it has problems:
The problem is that the assumption that revenues are fixed is BOGUS. If customers are locked into paying for the average number they watched in aggregate at the time the program was instituted (e.g. 6) what happens if the broadcaster thinks the quality of movies has gone up and thinks the average user would be paying for 8 now if they still had to pay for each? What happens if the customers think the movie industry has lowered the qualify of movies now that its sales are gauranteed... so if they were still paying, they'd only pay for 3 now.
Obviously monitoring how many movies the customer actually watches is pointless, because its assumed the customers are watching more than they'd pay for 'a la carte'.
So how does the market self regulate pricing?
I cynically anticipate the worst... the quality of the movies goes down while simultaneously the broadcaster endlessly whines that if customers were paying for each they'd be buying more now, and justifying it by asserting how many movies customers are watching in the all-you-can-eat system -- so the rate must go up.
On one hand you're telling me that you're paying a premium for style. On the other hand you're telling me that you're not paying a premium for a Mac.
You pay a premium for style. Not a premium for a Mac. If you wanted a Dell with out cable clutter you'd pay the same 'premium'. If you wanted a Sony instead of Dell because they look nicer, you'd pay the same 'premium'. Its not a premium for a worthless apple logo; you actually get something from it.
For digital out, I used a reasonable pair of USB speakers. I don't have a component audio system to plug into, but it drives a pair of Sennheizer headphones very well for me.
One of the things popular to do with a mac mini is to hook it to an hdtv. The wireless keyboard, small form factor, wifi support, optical outputs all combine to make it an excellent unit for that niche.
Sorry I didn't spot the 1.6 GHz machine, I was on the Canadian site.
Its the FIRST computer on the page: "Inspiron Starting from $379" -- That's the computer. I'd hardly call that digging. It doesn't say its got a celeron in it, you have to click a few more times to find out that for 379 your getting a celeron, but the computer itself is prominently shown.
I don't know how it makes your point that you can dig through the site for the cheapest bargain so as to say the mac mini is not obsolete.
I didn't have to 'dig'. The Inspiron I linked is the FIRST computer on the page on the 'home and home office' page. The Vostro is the FIRST computer on the page in the 'Small and Medium Business' page. 2 clicks from the home page for each.
It doesn't prove a point that the mini isn't obsolete. It counters your argument that Apple's entry level machines so obsolete that other vendors don't even sell units so poorly speced. Clearly; in reality Apple is a significant cut above the lowest PC's prominently advertised on the dell.com site.
Ironically, I wanted the thing for amateur video editing.
The mac mini is obviously not a video editing workstation.
After shopping around on the Mac site, I determined that I needed to buy a tower machine just to get an entry level system which would meet my needs.
An imac is a suitable amateur video editing workstation. If an imac doesn't meet your needs then you need more than just an amateur video editing workstation.
FWIW I'm in the same boat. I need a tower form factor for a few reasons, but a Xeon Core 2 Quad is ridiculous overkill in the processer. I want an imac spec'ed unit at an imac price in a tower form factor. The imac is good value for what it is, but I need a tower. Apple doesn't make one at that price point. So I bought a PC instead.
The difference is, Windows Vista Home Premium, if I run over to Staples right now, goes for $239.00 (Full version), whereas I can download Ubuntu Studio for a lot less.
Time is money. For me the time to download an iso torrent; if I have to actually wait for it is about break even. And Vista Home Premium OEM is $120. I don't need the fancy retail box, nor to call Microsoft for support, so the OEM version is fine.
Let's see, the going price for Ubuntu Studio, including all the help I could possibly get from the Ubuntu Forum (probably the best support community I've ever encountered) is, let me get out the calculator:
Google a problem in either OS and odds are you'll find a forum where people are discussing it and resolving the problem.
And, if I remember correctly, if my hard drive crashes, or I change my processor or motherboard, Ubuntu's not going to have to phone home to Mr Torvald before I can use it after I reinstall.
How is that a Vista issue? XP does the same thing. I don't like activation any more than the next person but activation is pretty much irrelevant to the quality, stability, or reliability of the OS.
No, vux984, Microsoft Windows Vista deserves every bit of the abuse people heap on it. And then some. If the difference between the 2004 Toyota Camry and the 2008 Toyota Camry was comparable to the difference between XP Pro and Vista, we'd be seeing Toyota plants closing and japanese executives would be committing hari kari.
Get off it. XP had issues at launch too. It was massively bloated compared to the Win98/ME home machines people were upgrading from. Its was a dog on hardware that ran windows 98 perfectly well. Win 98 drivers didn't work and all kinds of weird consumer peripherals had massive issues or were unsupported. ('enterprise peripheral' support at least was in better shape because XP used the same drivers as 2000) but millions of cheap consumer tv tuners, printers, scanners, modems, cheap motherboards, and laptop chipsets, were unsupported on the new OS.
Oh, and then XPSP2 came out and broke gazillions of PCs ability to connect to the internet... The "Limited or No Connectivity" issues after installing SP2 has easily been the worst windows problem I've ever seen. Beating anything Vista got wrong hands down. Most of the big issues in Vista are related to immature drivers.
This configuration for the Dell comes out $40 more expensive, but has a faster CPU, double the RAM, a much better GPU, more than 3 times the hard drive space in a faster drive and DVD+/- writing capability....
You posted AC so I'm not sure if there is a point to responding, but this is pretty much the same PC the other person responded with. It doesn't meet the challenge because it lacks several features.
It doesn't represent better value. It represents a shift in the how the same value is distributed. You give up firewire/BT/gigabit/wifi and a stylish tiny size in exchange for a much uglier bulkier unit with faster CPU, more hd space, and better video performance. That's hardly a net increase in "value". That's just a shift in priorities.
Bottom line: if Dell sold a PC equipped like a mac mini in a tiny shiny enclosure it would probably be within $50 of the price of a Mac Mini.
I could do this w/o breaking a sweat with a whitebox,
Well duh. They have no advertising to speak of, no marketing to mention, and don't spend a dollar on design or engineering. They use off the shelf parts at bulk/wholesale and build machines at a fraction above cost.
There's no question you can get one cheaper. But what does that prove exactly? They also have a fraction of the market, catering primarily to out-of-warranty repairs, the tech savvy, and the gaming/enthusiast.
why would i buy a crap dell or an overpriced mini?
Ask the majority of people around you. After all that's what they bought.
I always feel bad for apple al-qaida zealots who just don't know any better.
Is al-qaida the new hitler? Did you just post-911 godwin this thread?
apple is to computers what aol was to internet: training wheels. Whenever you get enough confidence to take the training wheels off let us know.
Right, because real men use what? Windows XP? Give me a break. Or is windows XP training wheels too, and real men only use linux, that they compiled themselves on hardware they lovingly hand picked? Hate to break it to you, but that's not 'real' men, that's borderline obsessive... or at least someone with a serious hobby.
Regular people just want to use the computer to get work done, not work on the computer itself.
Until then please reserve all of your apple sermons for macworld. Nobody else cares. Not even the scum of the earth, virus writers. ps: the next idiot i hear use the words apple, mac, or i-anything along with the word intuitive in the same sentence will be shot, no questions asked, for mindlessly regurgitating apple marketing hype/jargon as if it were scripture.
Until then please reserve all of your apple sermons for macworld. Nobody else cares. Not even the scum of the earth, virus writers.
Right because virus writers wouldn't be interested in targeting 'newbies on training wheels' as you call them. Oh wait... that's exactly who falls for phisphing scams, orders viagra, and punches the goddamned monkey. The only reason virus writers aren't interested in the mac are the combination that its too small a target. And OSX thanks to its BSD heritage is a relatively hardened OS. So its not worth it - at least for now.
ps: the next idiot i hear use the words apple, mac, or i-anything along with the word intuitive in the same sentence will be shot, no questions asked, for mindlessly regurgitating apple marketing hype/jargon as if it were scripture.
Ah. I think that's the real reason you posted... to get a little trolling off your chest. I was on the mark with the godwin speculation after all.
how fucking big do you think a dell pc is? the screen and keyboard of the mini are going to be the exact same size as the dell's, the only space saving is the box itself and you aren't trying to tell me there's NO WHERE in your study to put that?
What makes you think its in a study? A mini is small enough to put a lot of other more interesting places. On top of the TV, on the island in the kitchen, on a writing desk. There are a lot of places where a tower doesn't really 'go'.
on the sound side of things, they use the same hd tech and cpu fan, the only difference is going to be the psu fan (and maybe the gpu since it lacks any real grunty graphic card). I have dell's at work and they are whisper quiet.
Not really, they don't. The last batch of cheapo pc's I saw hadn't even switched to the fluid drive bearing HDs yet. And in general they use smaller and lower quality fans that may start out whisper quiet but don't stay that way long.
As for your dell's at work - who knows.
Maybe your reference point is 'under your desk in a relatively busy office' not '3am on the desk at home' what you can't even hear in one environment sounds like a wind tunnel in the other.
Or maybe you mean 'whisper quiet' as in 'as loud as someone whispering' which, by the way, is considerably louder than a mac mini.
Try one of those dells side by side a mac mini in a truly quiet environment.. I predict you'll notice a significant difference.
You certainly can't compare the combo-drive mac mini. Is it really a CDRW DVD machine? Isn't that completely obsolete?
For my purposes: yes. For people like my parents: No.
They were just about to get on the CD writing bandwagon to make mp3 CDs... but now they have flash mp3 players, and flash drives, so they don't need them. I think they've burned like 2 CD's. Hell, other than making bootable OS CDs **I** don't burn many CDs or DVDs; I prefer flash drives and external hard drives.
That said, yeah I think Apple should refresh the mini specs. The price diff to a dvdrw is what? maybe 3$.
The cheapest Dell doesn't even sell a 1.83GHz Dual core processor.
Quite correct. The cheapest Dells I can find feature a 1.6Ghz CELERON, with options to UPGRADE to a 1.8 or 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo.
You need to compare something other than the cheapest mac mini. It's antiquated. You can't find a PC that incapable and slow, regardless of Bluetooth and wifi.
Look again. The Vostro above features:
1.6GHz Celeron 512MB RAM DVD-ROM - that's right NOT EVEN a combo drive!! 80GB Hard drive
You were saying?
Granted its 299 not 599. But then its 10x the size, half the ram, not even a combo drive, no wifi, no gigabit, no firewire, no bluetooth,...
Also ditch the Bluetooth and Wifi in a desktop. It's just not needed and can be tossed in with a USB key. It just makes for a stupid comparison. Of course no PC manufacturer offers it in an OEM package. It's pointless.
Really? I won't buy a desktop without wifi anymore. USB dongles are a pain in the ass, and sometimes my PC isn't in a place where a cable is convenient; enable wifi, and boom I'm up and running.
The people buying macs care about style, they care about cable clutter - the fewer the better. wifi also means they can put it anywhere... I know people with a mac mini on their kitchen counter. All they had to do was set up a screen and 2 power cords. Keyboard and mouse (and the mini for that matter) are in a drawer. When they want to use it they pull the kb/mouse out of the drawer. Try doing that with a cheapie Dell with anywhere near the same level of elegance.
Some people care about THAT stuff more than they care about a couple extra GHz or writing DVDs. Hell; I'd buy a mac mini for that purpose or as a 2ndary PC for the house. I don't even need a dvdrw in it; I have other machines that can burn dvds that odd time it comes up.
I agree. You could change the wording to make apples 'premium' and compare them to 'premium' oranges, while calling cheaper units standard and the argument holds up equally well. But you lost me here:
Remember, just because a pc is cheaper than a Mac doesn't mean that it is considered "rotten."
Apparently you've never used a $350 dell special.
Rotten is much too kind. I stand by calling them rotten. There is some real junk on the market at the low end. Fans with bearings that last minutes, pci cards missing half the required resistors, cheap capacitors, optical drives that don't latch properly, or spin up and can't read the disk half the time, poor rf shielding so that you can -hear- your cdrom drive or hard drive spin up through your *speakers*... video chipsets missing heatsinks on the assumption that 'its designed a home pc that will only be on for a couple hours at a time and not be used heavily' -- (Actual explanation given to me regarding a DELL tower that had a failed video card, which had not even a passive heatsink - it was an nvidia card of some sort - geforce2mx440 or something like that.)
joe sixpack never upgrades his PC but he may upgrade his monitor or want to use his old one.
That would be compatible with using a Mac Mini.
Also he may want to have the choice of having more space, more ram,better video or other stuff BTO.
It does accomodate more ram. You can add a bigger HD with some effort, or with no effort attach a 750GB external firewire drive and still take up far less space than a dell mini-tower. Better video is the one thing it won't do. Don't buy a mac mini if that's a priority for you. Its not for everyone after all.
If you need pci expansion slots, then its not a good fit for you. Hell, that's why I use a tower myself. But that doesn't make it a poor value, if you don't need expansion slots (and most of us don't), then its a non-issue.
NO MOUSE or KEYBOARD is a joke next to other systems.
I think the keyboard and mouse included with dell is a value of about 15$ dollars total.
If this is THE important value differentiator to you, which I assume it must be since you capitalized it, then you need to give your head a shake. People buying a mini can use the usb kb/mouse they already have, or wander over to bestbuy and pick whichever one they like.
Your link took me to a page featuring the inspiron line, from a A749 to a A1199 pc. Which are you talking about? I assume you've decided to compare to the A1199 because you mention it being only 50 more than the A1148 mini-superdrive.
So, right off the top, you've gone way outside the paremters for the challenge. The mac-superdrive is like the black macbook; it -is- overpriced for what you get relative even to the other macs. But ok, I'll run with it...
lets compare shall we:
bigger HD - check better cpu - check ram - check (although Vista needs more than Leopard, so that's a bit of a wash) 3d card - check lcd incl. - check dvi out - check (although its not clear the incl. lcd actually supports dvi) os home premium - check
Hmmm... overall, I'd call that a fail. That's not to say its a bad unit, but it doesn't exactly come close to meeting the dell challenge I issued.
lets look at the base line mini "combodrive". for $50 less dell gives twice the hd space and a 19" monitor
That dell also ships with Vista home basic; there goes your $50 less. And its still 8x times the size. Getting that down is worth 175 (the value of an LCD) to a lot of people.
And the HD space; the value of that is pretty small even if you need it. And not everyone needs it. Its worthless if you don't fill it. I recently upgraded my parents PC, and after 6 years they still had less than 20GB of data (and that was after ripping their CD collection; so they won't keep growing at that pace unless they buy a video camera and start making movies). So for them whether the new unit has 80, 160, or 320 is pretty much a non-issue. They'll benefit from a faster CPU, they'll benefit from wifi... but not a bigger hard drive. And guess what, the mini is targeted at people like my parents. Its not a power-users PC.
so all you are paying for is the wank factor, thank you very much.
You must mean to say "instead of a faster CPU, more ram, bigger hard drive and bundling a cheap as dirt monitor" your dollars are instead being directed towards "faster networking, firewire, wireless network, bluetooth, and a much quieter and smaller form factor", at about the same price.
please stop spouting nonsense about mac's competing with pc's on price.
I would if you'd show me a PC with the -same- specs as a mac mini that's significantly cheaper. Showing me a PC which trades a bunch of the specs away in exchange for a faster CPU and bigger hard drive at the same price point just proves my point.
After you cram all those missing features back into a dell its going to cost quite a bit more. So you can either drop the LCD to bring the price back down, and then you've still got to credit the mac mini some $$$ for the value of beign 1/8th size... so there goes the value of your cpu/hard drive/ram upgrades.
At the end of the day the mac mini is very price competitive. But its true the specs it focusses its value proposition on aren't where dell emphasizes its value.
"An awful lot of PCs are those $300 dell specials. [fanboy stuff removed]... so Dell picks up a lot of unit sales eroding Apples 'market share by unit'."
I'm not sure how its fanboy stuff. I'm not suggesting that only Apple makes good hardware. Far from it. Sony and Lenovo both for example make laptops that are in the same league as Apple hardware, in terms of style or quality -and- price. Hell, even dell makes some really good quality stuff, but most of what they move is at the low end.
And its the competition at the low end of the market 'the crappy stuff' that moves a lot of units without generating a lot of dollars, that skews the market.
I have to sell oranges during a year when there's a bumper crop, and lots of other guys are selling pretty much the same oranges. So I sell oranges at 50 cents.
That doesn't work for me, because despite the competition in the PC market, they aren't selling oranges for.50, they really are selling 'rotten oranges' or at least 'bruised oranges'. Nice ripe oranges are still 1$.
Take the Sony VAIO AR790U/B -- its $3300, and is spec'd comparably to a top of line 17" Macbook Pro with -upgrades-. Toshiba has its Qosmio G40 at $2600 in the same space.
Well, 1144 after I added bluetooth and a webcam. And I couldn't add gigabit at all, nor DVI output.
Oh, and it weighs 50% more too.
But I mean its a laptop you carry around; who would care about size/weight?
And care to place a bet on which one has a longer lasting battery? The macbook offers comes with 55Whr and is rated at 4.5hours. The Inspiron? Comes with a 56Wh battery. And with all that extra mass of specs, I bet it sucks through it much faster too.
That dell is still a great value... but its hardly 'omg its so much better value than a mac'. The value is just shifted to specs away from size/weight. Amusingly, you can easily upgrade a macbooks RAM and hard drive. Care to try and shrink the Dell's size? The dell does feature a better video chipset... and the macbook can't match that... but the pro can, albeit at a higher price point -- but the pro comes with a host of other stuff too.
at lest that $300 dell uses desktop parts unlike the $600 mini.
You'd be assuming that someone who buys a mini would be pleased with a loud bulky cheaply built tower why?
And for $600 you can get a dell that is a lot better and it has slots to add video and other cards to it.
A lot better? Give me a break. I challenge you to put together a Dell for $650 (or $750 including monitor, since with a lot of their budget PCs you can't unbundle it) that matches the mini's specs. I challenge you.
It must have bluetooth, 802.11g wifi, firewire, at least 4 usb ports, gigabit, optical audio in and out, DVI video out, Core2Duo w/ 2MB cache, 1 GB of RAM.
The mac mini only has integrated video so GMA950 is what you need to meet or beat there, and the small slow laptop hard drive should be a nobrainer to beat too.
Since its a PC not a Mac, I'll forgive you leopard, but you'll need at least Home Premium, no Home Basic. And make sure it comes with a restore disk.
And even if you managed to do it, then ask yourself... can you also make it virtually silent and fit into a space about the same as a stack of 5 CD jewel cases?
I'm not saying you can't get a good value for $600 from a dell. And theres no question that $600 spent the right way can result in a PC that's better than a mac mini for, say, games, for example. But spec for spec, Apple is very good value, provided your needs line up with the features they offer.
I agree there are some big gaps in the apple line up... where is the fast core 2 duo tower that I can put expansion pci cards into for around $1200 for example. The imac is good value and the right specs, but the wrong form factor since I can't expand it... that's why I still use a PC tower. My laptop otoh, which I don't require to be expandable, is a mac.
With mac's expandability isn't their market; except at the extreme high end. That tends not to go over well with the 'tech crowd' like the one here, but in practice, joe sixpack never upgrades his PC anyway nor plays FPS shooters, so for them this gap is not much of an issue.
Man, you make Vista sound really great. I'm gonna run out and buy a copy!
He probably just has a lousy printer driver. I've never had spoolsv crash. (Oh and spoolsv crashing probably doesn't affect his system, it probably just restarts itself but posts a message saying it happened.) (I have seen a couple other services fail and restart themselves.)
Meanwhile, just the other day I saw this post: Ubuntu 7.10 won't start up 'kernel panic'...been running Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" for about a week. I got this message on startup yesterday.
[ 17.894410] RAM DISK: ran out of compressed data [ 17.894466] invalid compressed format (err=1) [ 17.895094] Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown block(0,0)...I can't load my computer, I'm currently running off a LiveCD...
I guess I should quip: "Man Linux sounds really great. I'm gonna run out and install it."
Vista doesn't deserve the abuse people heap on it. Or, if it does, an equal helping should be heaped onto Linux's and OSX because in my experience, all 3 oses are pretty good, but none are very close to perfect.
Say it isn't so. Everyone knows macs are just as cheap as PCs!
I know your just being funny, but I figured I'd explain it anyway...
An awful lot of PCs are those $300 dell specials. Apple doesn't make products that crappy, but Dell moves boatloads of them... so Dell picks up a lot of unit sales eroding Apples 'market share by unit', but because the price is so low and Apple hangs onto more of the higher value sales, the erosion effect of these low end units on their 'market share by price' is considerably less.
Lets compare apples and oranges;)
I sell oranges at $1 I sell apples at $1 As you can see "Apples are no more expensive than oranges."
I also sell rotten oranges at 50 cents. I don't sell rotten apples.
So if I sell 100 apples, 200 oranges, and 200 rotten oranges:
Apple has 20% of the market but 25% of dollar value.
but it ain't the best performing application in embedded systems.
It ain't the best performing application on a full blown desktop.
I was hoping mobile devices would stay away from flash long enough to force web developers to provide non-flash required systems - so that all of us could choose to have flash on or off. Most sites shouldn't absolutely require flash just to navigate around.
The "uncle" selection thing it plain terrible, it's slow as hell. I'm much faster navigating through explorer by using only my keyboard.
Hmmm... mine is instantaneous. As are most I've seen. Don't know what to say to that.
Alt+up isn't as fast as pressing backspace.
Agreed. However, 'backspace' to go up is:
a) inconsistent with how backspace works throughout vista; they changed it to be consistent with everything else
b) backspace to go back is a logical and natural mapping for what that key should do. ie... if some one said to a new computer user 'guess what backspace does' its pretty reasonable they'd guess 'go back' over 'go up'.
c) going back is a very common task. perhaps even more common than going up. (and in many cases going back is going up), so maybe 'back' should have the easier keystroke than 'up'.
d) alt-up arrow is also a natural easy to remember mapping, and while its not as fast as backspace, it is, as i said, 'not bad' either.
No it doesn't. Every time you open an unknown directory it will apply a profile and simply ignore your "default" settings. So a new/unvisited directory with a lot of images will be opened in thumbnail view, even though you made list view the default.
Ah, you are talking about the auto template discovery, not the per folder views. Turning off folder settings for each folder doesn't make every folder revert to 'list view every time'. It makes every folder revert to 'whatever template vista would apply by default every time'.
Personally I think the 'vista way' is actually pretty good, but I can certainly not see any reason to force it on people, and agree that the UI really should have exposed the setting for this.
The creation of expletives and censorship of them is really thought crime lite. There are no 'real' curse words, but those we choose to define for ourselves. It's a shame with how shallow most peoples vocabularies are to begin with that we feel the need to prune them even further by declaring certain words off-limits in public speech.
What exactly is wrong with having words that by convention are too crude and shocking and impolite to be used in regular public speech? Personally I think it -helps-. When a politician says 'we're fucked' on TV that means something special. By having words that are assigned as taboo, we give them extra weight and force. And that ultimately makes the language more expressive not less. If 'fucked' and 'screwed' could be used interchangably, we'd lose that expressiveness.
It enrichens the language that some words are 'maximally vulgar'.
Slashdot Mirror
Same with pay per view (although easier to do math with), for every television playing an event, that adds to the royalties. However, it is fixed in the fact that there will never be so many viewers that the station goes upside down, because it's proportional to the number of viewers (and they all paid per view). But still, the cost of 0 vs 100 is different. Royalties... just nitpicking anyway. Sorry.
Your missing the point. Royalties are specifically excluded from the cost equation because that's what we are talking about changing the model for.
Are we agreed that Excluding royalties; it costs a fixed (and small) amount to broadcast a PPV movie?
Now its true that for each person that 'buys' it, there is a royalty that gets paid to the rights holder. But after a few years of monitoring sales the cable company observes that it pays an average of x$/month in royalties, and made y$ in profit for itself.
So now, its proposing just upping the cost of its cable box by z$ by an amount big enough to make the same y$ ppv profit and pay the same $x ppv royalty, but without tracking ppv sales, and just letting everyone watch any ppv movie.
Its true that people will watch a lot more PPV movies if this were to happen, but the cost won't go up because the cable company has negotiated not to pay the per viewer royalty, but rather to pay the rights holder a fixed x$. Where x$ was the average royalty they were getting before the change over.
I think one of the reasons 'cancel or allow' is such a beast is that MS was stuck between a rock and a hard place in a way that OSX and Linux weren't. Neither OSX or Linux have a MASSIVE legacy of software that assumes its running as administrator.
If I were to write a program that ran under linux and tried to do something it shouldn't need to do it would just fail. That would be perfectly acceptable on OSX or Linux, because software shouldn't be doing that. Obviously microsoft couldn't have that though, because it would break so much legacy software.
On the otherhand, MS couldn't just allow it, because that's what's gotten us into the security morass we're in. So they erected this annoying cancel or allow barrier. Presumably as Vista matures and the legacy applications gradually get replaced we'll see a lot less prompts.
That said, vista could use some improvement too. And I expect we'll see some of its more egregious cancel or allow scenarios get cleaned up over time. I shouldn't have to re-elevate each time if I'm deleting cruft out of the program folders. Trouble is, if they made it simple, people would just setup explorer to run with elevation, elevate once after login, and then malware would ride on all these computers running with an elevated explorer by default. Its a tough balance to make, and Vista errs on the side of caution; which is probably good given the amount of malware it needs to resist.
An apple fanboy favourite... The problem is that you rarely if ever need a computer with the exact specs of a given Mac and a post pretty far up in this thread laments that, for a given requirement the matching Mac is often mis-specced
So I'm a fanboy? Because I expected someone to prove macs are over priced by producting a computer with the same specs for less? Give me a break. You'll note that I am ALSO the one who lamented that I couldn't get a tower at a reasonable price, due to be forced into a Xeon Core 2 Quad when I need is a core 2 duo in a tower form factor with a pci slot.
Hint: I am defending Apple's pricing for the products they have. I am simultaneously highly critical of their product selection. I am not an apple fanboy.
for a given requirement the matching Mac is often mis-specced, having a powerful and expensive CPU in a system meant for web browsing or requiring a workstation to get a good graphics card.
Agreed. That is the true frustration with Apple. Its not the their products are overpriced. Its that often their products are mis-specced to your application. And there are some very glaring gaps in their product line up.
I think its primarily aggravating to the 'tech savvy crowd' though. As joe-sixpack doesn't seem to be generally affected by it. The reality is that a mac mini or imac suites their purposes quite nicely and is an attractive package at a fair price for what you get. The problem only crops up if you don't fit nicely into apples tiny product line -- then you either have to make compromises, buying a plethora of features you don't want to get the one feature you do want.
You want an gaming computer with an nvidia 8800GT and a Core 2 Duo E6600 and a fast hard drive? You can spec a dell with that for under a $1000. To get that from a Mac, you end up looking at Quad Core Xeons just to get that level of flexibility with the video card, and the price is through the roof.
Bottom line: I don't buy the arguments that macs are over priced. I do however strongly agree that Apple's product lineup is at times perverse, seemingly designed just to piss me off.
If you have a driver which doesn't toe the line on MS's DRM...
Yes, that must be why they blocked a fingerprinter reader; not toeing the line on DRM.
With Windows, unsupported means that it didn't receive Microsoft Seal of Approval (regardless of whether the driver itself is in alpha, beta, or production stage, and regardless of whether it correctly uses published API).
... because it is impossible to support the driver (i.e. it's a binary blob with no source code available).
With Linux, the kernel, something would be unsupported
No. In both cases, unsupported means the VENDOR doesn't support it.
You seem to be conflating this with Microsofts driver signing inititives and testing labs but that's got nothing to do with it. You can load unsigned drivers in Vista. (although in x64 you have to jump through a hoop to make it happen, but that's beside the point.) Most of the problem drivers in question are, in fact, signed.
We're talking a list of definite blacklist outright known to be 'incompatible', not merely 'unsigned'. Microsoft has TESTED the drivers and found they didn't work with SP1, and so it 'blacklisted' them, so users computers wouldn't fail. It requires users update to newer versions before it will install SP1.
Most of the blacklisted drivers ARE Windows Logo Certified and passed previous WHQL testing. But they broke in SP1. Whether that's because Vista changed something or because the drivers were buggy all along and it just was unmasked now I can't really say. But its beside the point and doesn't really matter.
This could happen just as easily with linux. A new kernel version could uncover a flaw with an older driver even if that driver was opensource. And that older driver package would be flagged as incompatible with the new kernel, and the updaters would prevent you from mixxing them. Its not exactly as if this has never happened before.
And what happens then? Assuming the community has the time and inclination a new fixed driver will be released. In the case of windows, you have to wait for the vendor to have the time and inclination. But in either case, someone has to come up with a NEW version of the driver because the old one doesn't work.
In this particular case it sounds like new drivers ARE mostly available, so Vista is only preventing you from updating until you install those newer versions.
As far as the users go, I don't see any double standard here. Just normal reactions. If it doesn't seem that way to you, well, prove me wrong and show me a GPL'd Linux kernel module (... that isn't marked "EXPERIMENTAL" or is in alpha stage) that a kernel developer says is unsupported and will do nothing to fix any problems with it.
Whether or not they are willing to fix it is irrelevant. No amount of willingness to fix it is going to magically make the existing version compatible. The -best- they can do is release a new version that is compatible whether its a new version of the kernel or a new version of the driver -- some where a bug or design flaw has to be fixed.
But combination of that driver and that kernel are ALWAYS going to be incompatible, and the package managers by default block you from mixxing packages with known incompatibility problems.
The problem isn't that it might be "your" double standard. The problem is that this double standard is extremely widespread.
When linux won't upgrade because of a package dependancy problem, there is endless help on removing the problem packages etc. When Vista won't upgrade because of an equivalent problem, we get a news article telling us dozens of people are sour on SP1.
That's some pretty serious bias.
Or, God forbid, we just ask the user's permission to load a potentially unsafe driver!
I sense a double standard.
If someone loaded a driver that was known not to work with a given linux kernel and then it didn't work and caused kernel panics, what would we hear? Something like -- you're an idiot, you brought this on yourself, linux even warned you it was incompatible when you installed it, how much of a dipshit are you? What exactly did you expect?
The same thing happens on Windows and we'll hear chants of "Vista sucks because it crashes all the time" followed by a slashdot "Amen!" The fact that its crashing because the user loaded a driver Vista warned him not too? Well its still Vista's fault for some reason.
people tend to eat more at a smorgasbord than if they have to pay for each entree, and this effect would be even greater when they have room for thousands of entrees in their digital stomachs. :)
Right, but think of it this way:
Its like PPV TV, right now you pay per show you watch. Suppose the average person with PPV service buys 6 movies. And the network broadcasts the movie in a timeslot regardless of how many people 'buy it'.
So the costs of providing ppv is fixed. It costs the same to broadcast the movie if 0 people watch it, or 100, or 100,000.
Similiarly the ppv revenues are fixed too. The average person watches 6 movies. If there are 1 million people, they will 'sell' 6 million PPV movies.
So Apple is saying, how about you just keep doing what your doing, broadcasting your movies; so your costs don't change, and we'll provide you revenues of an average of 6 movies per customer, so your revenues stay the same too. The only difference is, lets let the users watch any ppv broadcast instead of just 6.
It costs you the same. You make the same amount of money. And the customers will love it.
At least that's the theory... and its a good one. But it has problems:
The problem is that the assumption that revenues are fixed is BOGUS. If customers are locked into paying for the average number they watched in aggregate at the time the program was instituted (e.g. 6) what happens if the broadcaster thinks the quality of movies has gone up and thinks the average user would be paying for 8 now if they still had to pay for each? What happens if the customers think the movie industry has lowered the qualify of movies now that its sales are gauranteed... so if they were still paying, they'd only pay for 3 now.
Obviously monitoring how many movies the customer actually watches is pointless, because its assumed the customers are watching more than they'd pay for 'a la carte'.
So how does the market self regulate pricing?
I cynically anticipate the worst... the quality of the movies goes down while simultaneously the broadcaster endlessly whines that if customers were paying for each they'd be buying more now, and justifying it by asserting how many movies customers are watching in the all-you-can-eat system -- so the rate must go up.
On one hand you're telling me that you're paying a premium for style. On the other hand you're telling me that you're not paying a premium for a Mac.
You pay a premium for style. Not a premium for a Mac. If you wanted a Dell with out cable clutter you'd pay the same 'premium'. If you wanted a Sony instead of Dell because they look nicer, you'd pay the same 'premium'. Its not a premium for a worthless apple logo; you actually get something from it.
For digital out, I used a reasonable pair of USB speakers. I don't have a component audio system to plug into, but it drives a pair of Sennheizer headphones very well for me.
One of the things popular to do with a mac mini is to hook it to an hdtv. The wireless keyboard, small form factor, wifi support, optical outputs all combine to make it an excellent unit for that niche.
Sorry I didn't spot the 1.6 GHz machine, I was on the Canadian site.
Its not merely 1.6GHz; its a Celeron.
On the canadian site:
http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/inspndt_530_gbb?c=ca&cs=cadhs1&l=en&s=dhs
You get to it:
Home Page:
http://www.dell.ca/
Select 'Home and Home Office' under desktops; that takes you here:
http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/desktops?c=ca&cs=cadhs1&l=en&s=dhs
Its the FIRST computer on the page: "Inspiron Starting from $379" -- That's the computer. I'd hardly call that digging. It doesn't say its got a celeron in it, you have to click a few more times to find out that for 379 your getting a celeron, but the computer itself is prominently shown.
I don't know how it makes your point that you can dig through the site for the cheapest bargain so as to say the mac mini is not obsolete.
I didn't have to 'dig'. The Inspiron I linked is the FIRST computer on the page on the 'home and home office' page. The Vostro is the FIRST computer on the page in the 'Small and Medium Business' page. 2 clicks from the home page for each.
It doesn't prove a point that the mini isn't obsolete. It counters your argument that Apple's entry level machines so obsolete that other vendors don't even sell units so poorly speced. Clearly; in reality Apple is a significant cut above the lowest PC's prominently advertised on the dell.com site.
Ironically, I wanted the thing for amateur video editing.
The mac mini is obviously not a video editing workstation.
After shopping around on the Mac site, I determined that I needed to buy a tower machine just to get an entry level system which would meet my needs.
An imac is a suitable amateur video editing workstation. If an imac doesn't meet your needs then you need more than just an amateur video editing workstation.
FWIW I'm in the same boat. I need a tower form factor for a few reasons, but a Xeon Core 2 Quad is ridiculous overkill in the processer. I want an imac spec'ed unit at an imac price in a tower form factor. The imac is good value for what it is, but I need a tower. Apple doesn't make one at that price point. So I bought a PC instead.
I think a lot of us on slashdot are in this boat.
The difference is, Windows Vista Home Premium, if I run over to Staples right now, goes for $239.00 (Full version), whereas I can download Ubuntu Studio for a lot less.
Time is money. For me the time to download an iso torrent; if I have to actually wait for it is about break even. And Vista Home Premium OEM is $120. I don't need the fancy retail box, nor to call Microsoft for support, so the OEM version is fine.
Let's see, the going price for Ubuntu Studio, including all the help I could possibly get from the Ubuntu Forum (probably the best support community I've ever encountered) is, let me get out the calculator:
Google a problem in either OS and odds are you'll find a forum where people are discussing it and resolving the problem.
And, if I remember correctly, if my hard drive crashes, or I change my processor or motherboard, Ubuntu's not going to have to phone home to Mr Torvald before I can use it after I reinstall.
How is that a Vista issue? XP does the same thing. I don't like activation any more than the next person but activation is pretty much irrelevant to the quality, stability, or reliability of the OS.
No, vux984, Microsoft Windows Vista deserves every bit of the abuse people heap on it. And then some. If the difference between the 2004 Toyota Camry and the 2008 Toyota Camry was comparable to the difference between XP Pro and Vista, we'd be seeing Toyota plants closing and japanese executives would be committing hari kari.
Get off it. XP had issues at launch too. It was massively bloated compared to the Win98/ME home machines people were upgrading from. Its was a dog on hardware that ran windows 98 perfectly well. Win 98 drivers didn't work and all kinds of weird consumer peripherals had massive issues or were unsupported. ('enterprise peripheral' support at least was in better shape because XP used the same drivers as 2000) but millions of cheap consumer tv tuners, printers, scanners, modems, cheap motherboards, and laptop chipsets, were unsupported on the new OS.
Oh, and then XPSP2 came out and broke gazillions of PCs ability to connect to the internet... The "Limited or No Connectivity" issues after installing SP2 has easily been the worst windows problem I've ever seen. Beating anything Vista got wrong hands down. Most of the big issues in Vista are related to immature drivers.
This configuration for the Dell comes out $40 more expensive, but has a faster CPU, double the RAM, a much better GPU, more than 3 times the hard drive space in a faster drive and DVD+/- writing capability....
You posted AC so I'm not sure if there is a point to responding, but this is pretty much the same PC the other person responded with. It doesn't meet the challenge because it lacks several features.
It doesn't represent better value. It represents a shift in the how the same value is distributed. You give up firewire/BT/gigabit/wifi and a stylish tiny size in exchange for a much uglier bulkier unit with faster CPU, more hd space, and better video performance. That's hardly a net increase in "value". That's just a shift in priorities.
Bottom line: if Dell sold a PC equipped like a mac mini in a tiny shiny enclosure it would probably be within $50 of the price of a Mac Mini.
I could do this w/o breaking a sweat with a whitebox,
Well duh. They have no advertising to speak of, no marketing to mention, and don't spend a dollar on design or engineering. They use off the shelf parts at bulk/wholesale and build machines at a fraction above cost.
There's no question you can get one cheaper. But what does that prove exactly? They also have a fraction of the market, catering primarily to out-of-warranty repairs, the tech savvy, and the gaming/enthusiast.
why would i buy a crap dell or an overpriced mini?
Ask the majority of people around you. After all that's what they bought.
I always feel bad for apple al-qaida zealots who just don't know any better.
Is al-qaida the new hitler? Did you just post-911 godwin this thread?
apple is to computers what aol was to internet: training wheels. Whenever you get enough confidence to take the training wheels off let us know.
Right, because real men use what? Windows XP? Give me a break. Or is windows XP training wheels too, and real men only use linux, that they compiled themselves on hardware they lovingly hand picked? Hate to break it to you, but that's not 'real' men, that's borderline obsessive... or at least someone with a serious hobby.
Regular people just want to use the computer to get work done, not work on the computer itself.
Until then please reserve all of your apple sermons for macworld. Nobody else cares. Not even the scum of the earth, virus writers. ps: the next idiot i hear use the words apple, mac, or i-anything along with the word intuitive in the same sentence will be shot, no questions asked, for mindlessly regurgitating apple marketing hype/jargon as if it were scripture.
Until then please reserve all of your apple sermons for macworld. Nobody else cares. Not even the scum of the earth, virus writers.
Right because virus writers wouldn't be interested in targeting 'newbies on training wheels' as you call them. Oh wait... that's exactly who falls for phisphing scams, orders viagra, and punches the goddamned monkey. The only reason virus writers aren't interested in the mac are the combination that its too small a target. And OSX thanks to its BSD heritage is a relatively hardened OS. So its not worth it - at least for now.
ps: the next idiot i hear use the words apple, mac, or i-anything along with the word intuitive in the same sentence will be shot, no questions asked, for mindlessly regurgitating apple marketing hype/jargon as if it were scripture.
Ah. I think that's the real reason you posted... to get a little trolling off your chest. I was on the mark with the godwin speculation after all.
how fucking big do you think a dell pc is? the screen and keyboard of the mini are going to be the exact same size as the dell's, the only space saving is the box itself and you aren't trying to tell me there's NO WHERE in your study to put that?
What makes you think its in a study? A mini is small enough to put a lot of other more interesting places. On top of the TV, on the island in the kitchen, on a writing desk. There are a lot of places where a tower doesn't really 'go'.
on the sound side of things, they use the same hd tech and cpu fan, the only difference is going to be the psu fan (and maybe the gpu since it lacks any real grunty graphic card). I have dell's at work and they are whisper quiet.
Not really, they don't. The last batch of cheapo pc's I saw hadn't even switched to the fluid drive bearing HDs yet. And in general they use smaller and lower quality fans that may start out whisper quiet but don't stay that way long.
As for your dell's at work - who knows.
Maybe your reference point is 'under your desk in a relatively busy office' not '3am on the desk at home' what you can't even hear in one environment sounds like a wind tunnel in the other.
Or maybe you mean 'whisper quiet' as in 'as loud as someone whispering' which, by the way, is considerably louder than a mac mini.
Try one of those dells side by side a mac mini in a truly quiet environment.. I predict you'll notice a significant difference.
You certainly can't compare the combo-drive mac mini. Is it really a CDRW DVD machine? Isn't that completely obsolete?
...
For my purposes: yes. For people like my parents: No.
They were just about to get on the CD writing bandwagon to make mp3 CDs... but now they have flash mp3 players, and flash drives, so they don't need them. I think they've burned like 2 CD's. Hell, other than making bootable OS CDs **I** don't burn many CDs or DVDs; I prefer flash drives and external hard drives.
That said, yeah I think Apple should refresh the mini specs. The price diff to a dvdrw is what? maybe 3$.
The cheapest Dell doesn't even sell a 1.83GHz Dual core processor.
Au contraire...
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=DDCWFA1&s=dhs
or
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=brcw2cz&s=bsd
Quite correct. The cheapest Dells I can find feature a 1.6Ghz CELERON, with options to UPGRADE to a 1.8 or 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo.
You need to compare something other than the cheapest mac mini. It's antiquated. You can't find a PC that incapable and slow, regardless of Bluetooth and wifi.
Look again. The Vostro above features:
1.6GHz Celeron
512MB RAM
DVD-ROM - that's right NOT EVEN a combo drive!!
80GB Hard drive
You were saying?
Granted its 299 not 599. But then its 10x the size, half the ram, not even a combo drive, no wifi, no gigabit, no firewire, no bluetooth,
Also ditch the Bluetooth and Wifi in a desktop. It's just not needed and can be tossed in with a USB key. It just makes for a stupid comparison. Of course no PC manufacturer offers it in an OEM package. It's pointless.
Really? I won't buy a desktop without wifi anymore. USB dongles are a pain in the ass, and sometimes my PC isn't in a place where a cable is convenient; enable wifi, and boom I'm up and running.
The people buying macs care about style, they care about cable clutter - the fewer the better. wifi also means they can put it anywhere... I know people with a mac mini on their kitchen counter. All they had to do was set up a screen and 2 power cords. Keyboard and mouse (and the mini for that matter) are in a drawer. When they want to use it they pull the kb/mouse out of the drawer. Try doing that with a cheapie Dell with anywhere near the same level of elegance.
Some people care about THAT stuff more than they care about a couple extra GHz or writing DVDs. Hell; I'd buy a mac mini for that purpose or as a 2ndary PC for the house. I don't even need a dvdrw in it; I have other machines that can burn dvds that odd time it comes up.
I agree. You could change the wording to make apples 'premium' and compare them to 'premium' oranges, while calling cheaper units standard and the argument holds up equally well. But you lost me here:
Remember, just because a pc is cheaper than a Mac doesn't mean that it is considered "rotten."
Apparently you've never used a $350 dell special.
Rotten is much too kind. I stand by calling them rotten. There is some real junk on the market at the low end. Fans with bearings that last minutes, pci cards missing half the required resistors, cheap capacitors, optical drives that don't latch properly, or spin up and can't read the disk half the time, poor rf shielding so that you can -hear- your cdrom drive or hard drive spin up through your *speakers*... video chipsets missing heatsinks on the assumption that 'its designed a home pc that will only be on for a couple hours at a time and not be used heavily' -- (Actual explanation given to me regarding a DELL tower that had a failed video card, which had not even a passive heatsink - it was an nvidia card of some sort - geforce2mx440 or something like that.)
joe sixpack never upgrades his PC but he may upgrade his monitor or want to use his old one.
That would be compatible with using a Mac Mini.
Also he may want to have the choice of having more space, more ram,better video or other stuff BTO.
It does accomodate more ram. You can add a bigger HD with some effort, or with no effort attach a 750GB external firewire drive and still take up far less space than a dell mini-tower. Better video is the one thing it won't do. Don't buy a mac mini if that's a priority for you. Its not for everyone after all.
If you need pci expansion slots, then its not a good fit for you. Hell, that's why I use a tower myself. But that doesn't make it a poor value, if you don't need expansion slots (and most of us don't), then its a non-issue.
NO MOUSE or KEYBOARD is a joke next to other systems.
I think the keyboard and mouse included with dell is a value of about 15$ dollars total.
If this is THE important value differentiator to you, which I assume it must be since you capitalized it, then you need to give your head a shake. People buying a mini can use the usb kb/mouse they already have, or wander over to bestbuy and pick whichever one they like.
let's compare shall we
Your link took me to a page featuring the inspiron line, from a A749 to a A1199 pc. Which are you talking about? I assume you've decided to compare to the A1199 because you mention it being only 50 more than the A1148 mini-superdrive.
So, right off the top, you've gone way outside the paremters for the challenge. The mac-superdrive is like the black macbook; it -is- overpriced for what you get relative even to the other macs. But ok, I'll run with it...
lets compare shall we:
bigger HD - check
better cpu - check
ram - check (although Vista needs more than Leopard, so that's a bit of a wash)
3d card - check
lcd incl. - check
dvi out - check (although its not clear the incl. lcd actually supports dvi)
os home premium - check
bluetooth - fail
wifi - fail
firewire - fail
gigabit - fail
optical audio connectors - fail
Hmmm... overall, I'd call that a fail. That's not to say its a bad unit, but it doesn't exactly come close to meeting the dell challenge I issued.
lets look at the base line mini "combodrive". for $50 less dell gives twice the hd space and a 19" monitor
That dell also ships with Vista home basic; there goes your $50 less. And its still 8x times the size. Getting that down is worth 175 (the value of an LCD) to a lot of people.
And the HD space; the value of that is pretty small even if you need it. And not everyone needs it. Its worthless if you don't fill it. I recently upgraded my parents PC, and after 6 years they still had less than 20GB of data (and that was after ripping their CD collection; so they won't keep growing at that pace unless they buy a video camera and start making movies). So for them whether the new unit has 80, 160, or 320 is pretty much a non-issue. They'll benefit from a faster CPU, they'll benefit from wifi... but not a bigger hard drive. And guess what, the mini is targeted at people like my parents. Its not a power-users PC.
so all you are paying for is the wank factor, thank you very much.
You must mean to say "instead of a faster CPU, more ram, bigger hard drive and bundling a cheap as dirt monitor" your dollars are instead being directed towards "faster networking, firewire, wireless network, bluetooth, and a much quieter and smaller form factor", at about the same price.
please stop spouting nonsense about mac's competing with pc's on price.
I would if you'd show me a PC with the -same- specs as a mac mini that's significantly cheaper. Showing me a PC which trades a bunch of the specs away in exchange for a faster CPU and bigger hard drive at the same price point just proves my point.
After you cram all those missing features back into a dell its going to cost quite a bit more. So you can either drop the LCD to bring the price back down, and then you've still got to credit the mac mini some $$$ for the value of beign 1/8th size... so there goes the value of your cpu/hard drive/ram upgrades.
At the end of the day the mac mini is very price competitive. But its true the specs it focusses its value proposition on aren't where dell emphasizes its value.
"An awful lot of PCs are those $300 dell specials. [fanboy stuff removed] ... so Dell picks up a lot of unit sales eroding Apples 'market share by unit'."
.50, they really are selling 'rotten oranges' or at least 'bruised oranges'. Nice ripe oranges are still 1$.
I'm not sure how its fanboy stuff. I'm not suggesting that only Apple makes good hardware. Far from it. Sony and Lenovo both for example make laptops that are in the same league as Apple hardware, in terms of style or quality -and- price. Hell, even dell makes some really good quality stuff, but most of what they move is at the low end.
And its the competition at the low end of the market 'the crappy stuff' that moves a lot of units without generating a lot of dollars, that skews the market.
I have to sell oranges during a year when there's a bumper crop, and lots of other guys are selling pretty much the same oranges. So I sell oranges at 50 cents.
That doesn't work for me, because despite the competition in the PC market, they aren't selling oranges for
Take the Sony VAIO AR790U/B -- its $3300, and is spec'd comparably to a top of line 17" Macbook Pro with -upgrades-. Toshiba has its Qosmio G40 at $2600 in the same space.
Well, 1144 after I added bluetooth and a webcam. And I couldn't add gigabit at all, nor DVI output.
Oh, and it weighs 50% more too.
But I mean its a laptop you carry around; who would care about size/weight?
And care to place a bet on which one has a longer lasting battery? The macbook offers comes with 55Whr and is rated at 4.5hours. The Inspiron? Comes with a 56Wh battery. And with all that extra mass of specs, I bet it sucks through it much faster too.
That dell is still a great value... but its hardly 'omg its so much better value than a mac'. The value is just shifted to specs away from size/weight. Amusingly, you can easily upgrade a macbooks RAM and hard drive. Care to try and shrink the Dell's size? The dell does feature a better video chipset... and the macbook can't match that... but the pro can, albeit at a higher price point -- but the pro comes with a host of other stuff too.
at lest that $300 dell uses desktop parts unlike the $600 mini.
You'd be assuming that someone who buys a mini would be pleased with a loud bulky cheaply built tower why?
And for $600 you can get a dell that is a lot better and it has slots to add video and other cards to it.
A lot better? Give me a break. I challenge you to put together a Dell for $650 (or $750 including monitor, since with a lot of their budget PCs you can't unbundle it) that matches the mini's specs. I challenge you.
It must have bluetooth, 802.11g wifi, firewire, at least 4 usb ports, gigabit, optical audio in and out, DVI video out, Core2Duo w/ 2MB cache, 1 GB of RAM.
The mac mini only has integrated video so GMA950 is what you need to meet or beat there, and the small slow laptop hard drive should be a nobrainer to beat too.
Since its a PC not a Mac, I'll forgive you leopard, but you'll need at least Home Premium, no Home Basic. And make sure it comes with a restore disk.
And even if you managed to do it, then ask yourself... can you also make it virtually silent and fit into a space about the same as a stack of 5 CD jewel cases?
I'm not saying you can't get a good value for $600 from a dell. And theres no question that $600 spent the right way can result in a PC that's better than a mac mini for, say, games, for example. But spec for spec, Apple is very good value, provided your needs line up with the features they offer.
I agree there are some big gaps in the apple line up... where is the fast core 2 duo tower that I can put expansion pci cards into for around $1200 for example. The imac is good value and the right specs, but the wrong form factor since I can't expand it... that's why I still use a PC tower. My laptop otoh, which I don't require to be expandable, is a mac.
With mac's expandability isn't their market; except at the extreme high end. That tends not to go over well with the 'tech crowd' like the one here, but in practice, joe sixpack never upgrades his PC anyway nor plays FPS shooters, so for them this gap is not much of an issue.
Man, you make Vista sound really great. I'm gonna run out and buy a copy!
...been running Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" for about a week. I got this message on startup yesterday.
...I can't load my computer, I'm currently running off a LiveCD...
He probably just has a lousy printer driver. I've never had spoolsv crash. (Oh and spoolsv crashing probably doesn't affect his system, it probably just restarts itself but posts a message saying it happened.) (I have seen a couple other services fail and restart themselves.)
Meanwhile, just the other day I saw this post:
Ubuntu 7.10 won't start up 'kernel panic'
[ 17.894410] RAM DISK: ran out of compressed data
[ 17.894466] invalid compressed format (err=1)
[ 17.895094] Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown block(0,0)
I guess I should quip: "Man Linux sounds really great. I'm gonna run out and install it."
Vista doesn't deserve the abuse people heap on it. Or, if it does, an equal helping should be heaped onto Linux's and OSX because in my experience, all 3 oses are pretty good, but none are very close to perfect.
Say it isn't so. Everyone knows macs are just as cheap as PCs!
;)
I know your just being funny, but I figured I'd explain it anyway...
An awful lot of PCs are those $300 dell specials. Apple doesn't make products that crappy, but Dell moves boatloads of them... so Dell picks up a lot of unit sales eroding Apples 'market share by unit', but because the price is so low and Apple hangs onto more of the higher value sales, the erosion effect of these low end units on their 'market share by price' is considerably less.
Lets compare apples and oranges
I sell oranges at $1
I sell apples at $1
As you can see "Apples are no more expensive than oranges."
I also sell rotten oranges at 50 cents.
I don't sell rotten apples.
So if I sell 100 apples, 200 oranges, and 200 rotten oranges:
Apple has 20% of the market but 25% of dollar value.
market = 100/[100+200+200] = 1/5 = 20%,
dollars = 100/[100+200+200*0.50] = 1/4 = 25%
That's essentially whats happening here.
but it ain't the best performing application in embedded systems.
It ain't the best performing application on a full blown desktop.
I was hoping mobile devices would stay away from flash long enough to force web developers to provide non-flash required systems - so that all of us could choose to have flash on or off. Most sites shouldn't absolutely require flash just to navigate around.
The "uncle" selection thing it plain terrible, it's slow as hell. I'm much faster navigating through explorer by using only my keyboard.
Hmmm... mine is instantaneous. As are most I've seen. Don't know what to say to that.
Alt+up isn't as fast as pressing backspace.
Agreed. However, 'backspace' to go up is:
a) inconsistent with how backspace works throughout vista; they changed it to be consistent with everything else
b) backspace to go back is a logical and natural mapping for what that key should do. ie... if some one said to a new computer user 'guess what backspace does' its pretty reasonable they'd guess 'go back' over 'go up'.
c) going back is a very common task. perhaps even more common than going up. (and in many cases going back is going up), so maybe 'back' should have the easier keystroke than 'up'.
d) alt-up arrow is also a natural easy to remember mapping, and while its not as fast as backspace, it is, as i said, 'not bad' either.
No it doesn't. Every time you open an unknown directory it will apply a profile and simply ignore your "default" settings. So a new/unvisited directory with a lot of images will be opened in thumbnail view, even though you made list view the default.
Ah, you are talking about the auto template discovery, not the per folder views. Turning off folder settings for each folder doesn't make every folder revert to 'list view every time'. It makes every folder revert to 'whatever template vista would apply by default every time'.
Personally I think the 'vista way' is actually pretty good, but I can certainly not see any reason to force it on people, and agree that the UI really should have exposed the setting for this.
The creation of expletives and censorship of them is really thought crime lite. There are no 'real' curse words, but those we choose to define for ourselves. It's a shame with how shallow most peoples vocabularies are to begin with that we feel the need to prune them even further by declaring certain words off-limits in public speech.
What exactly is wrong with having words that by convention are too crude and shocking and impolite to be used in regular public speech? Personally I think it -helps-. When a politician says 'we're fucked' on TV that means something special. By having words that are assigned as taboo, we give them extra weight and force. And that ultimately makes the language more expressive not less. If 'fucked' and 'screwed' could be used interchangably, we'd lose that expressiveness.
It enrichens the language that some words are 'maximally vulgar'.