david wrote:
Sorry David, we're not talking about the same thing, and I don't mean to appear on a mission here. I reflexively dismissed Macintosh on the grounds of high cost due to marketing profile and practices of the single-source supplier. I also didn't like OS 9. When the Intel/OS X sun rose I saw things in a somewhat different light. Parallels Desktop took me to the Apple store.Frank wrote:david wrote:carmen wrote:On Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 07:43:00PM -1000, david wrote:ljc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:hello list, i intend to buy a new laptop, and i'm undecided <snip>if Apple is selling a notebook for $1099 and HP is selling the same thing for $599, i'd get the HP - call me crazyHP is NOT selling the same quality as Apple. You get what you pay for.If you're in the habit of occasionally challenging your preconceptions do this little experiment: Visit Dell, just for convenience - or pick another if you wish, and configure a laptop with the same features and specs as a MacBook Pro - ignore the elegance of the OS and its heart of BSD...even ignore the simplicity and speed with which it runs multiple GNU/Linux distros in nothing more difficult or risky than a simple file constituting a Parallels Desktop VM, and get back to us with either a verification of your comparison factor or a new-found appreciation for the value of opinions based upon verifiable facts.My opinion of HP/Compaq is based on my verifiable experience with them. Not a preconception.My experience with Dell - having spent 11 years on a corporate Help Desk during the time the corporation switched from IBM Thinkpads to Dell laptops - is also based on facts. The number of hardware problems reported to the help desk for Dell laptops was five times higher than we had reported for the IBM laptops. Even OLD Thinkpads had fewer problem reports than NEW Dell laptops.That may have changed since IBM is no longer the quality determiner for their old brand.
Having read an analysis - it should be easy enough to find on the Internet, by admittedly a Mac fanboy challenging the "common wisdom" of premium price, actually item-by-item illustrated price parity. No hysteria, no opinion, no evangelistic blindness. Dollars, cents and sense.
I hopped onto Dells Web site and configured one of their XPS laptops as close to my MacBook Pro, Core 2 Duo @ 2.16 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 120 GB drive, 15.4 cinema ratio screen, all-everything optical drive, extreme airport wireless, Bluetooth, digital audio input, USB 2, IEEE1394 400 and 800, etc. The Dell was more expensive. A freaking Dell. Both were with my educator's discount - with the white MacBook, slower processor and smaller drive, but all the other goodies coming in at $1049, and the absolutely, positively, ass-kicking MacBook Pro that I chose running $1799. Yeah, that's a pile of bucks but it's a remarkably sophisticated and dignified computer. (I backed up to add the previous paragraph, so momentarily going back to what I've already alluded to...and you haven't read yet - my Dell 470 workstation with 2 3.0GHz Xeons, gig of RAM, 2 10,000 RPM Segate SCSI drives in RAID array, nVidia workstation graphics, premium audio, 19" digital panel, etc. was around 3 grand! Not boasting here. Did I mention education? I didn't mention my 1996 Jeep. Some people spend their disposable income one way, some spend it other ways. I spend my meager portion on creative tools that give me great pleasure and make me as productive as I'm able to be.)
Again, that's without the 1" aluminum case completely devoid of bullshit keys, buttons, flashing lights, fins, air scoops, whatever. Also, that's with, what's it called...Windows, and again ignoring the Mac's highly refined OS X and its BSD underpinnings. For someone coming from nearly exclusive use of GNU/Linux including extensive application development projects for school - since 1998 - I felt unexpectedly at home, right out of the box. Then I installed Parallels Desktop!
I immediately dropped several distros into VMs - which as I mentioned are nothing more than a file of a couple gigs size. Didn't like Ubuntu? Delete the file. Wanna try something on the spur of a moment? Don't want to further sub-divide your hard drive? Partitions a pain? Three or four clicks and you've got another VM up with the installer of another OS right in front of you.
My long-awaited copy of the Solaris 10 kit arrived in the mail last week. Three or four clicks (though an inordinate period of filesystem activity) and I was looking at the Java desktop. I even dropped my XP Pro SP2 and Office 2003 that came with this Dell 470 SMP workstation I'm writing from, and both phoned home and were activated uneventfully.
Coherence mode in Parallels supports running a single Windows app directly from an icon having it appear right on the Mac desktop looking like a native program. Wanna blow a few more minds than you accomplished with that last trick? Run the whole damned black-kingdom OS in coherence! Look - up at the top...what's that? The OS X task bar. Look - down at the bottom...what's that? The Windows task bar. Launch applications from one, the other, both.
Sorry to ramble here, and did I say I didn't want to sound on a mission? I could simply have said: "Actually, with all the high-end attributes of the current Mac laptop line, feature-for-feature they're about the same price as a typical PC." I could have added they're a great choice for a user dwelling under a Unix class star (Linus!).
Frank
