[I-Hate-Hulse]

You know at first I was willing to concede the non sale price, but the more I think about it, that's one of the key differences between the Apple world and the PC world. Steve won't ever give you a discount on what he sells you, while PC stuff does go on sale (in a big way sometimes), hence resulting in one of the reasons why Mac equipment ends up being overpriced. One of the wonders of not being in a monopoly. So, no - sale prices are indeed fair game in a PC world.

Courtesy our friends at RFD, the 3007-HC has gone on sale ever 3 months at $899. Wait a few weeks, I bet goes on sale again! So it's not like it's some once in a lifetime event. It's like buying something from the Bay - why pay full price when you know a Bay Day is going to happen at some point.


Heheheheh - I knew you wouldn't wrap your head around the difference in value from a 30" to 27" monitor, despite your prior comments to someone regarding the difference from a 24" to 27".

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Edit: Although, now that I think about it, you won't even be able to see it all anyway. Since the resolution on those 27" screens is much much much larger than yours, you'll only be able to see a small portion of the screenshots on your monitor (regardless of the size). It's ok though, I think PCs support horizontal scrolling so you should almost be able to get the same effect.

How lucky you'll be that your multitouch mouse will have some fancy gestures to scroll downwards when you try and view a screen cap from a 30" monitor vs a 27"

We clearly need to get to something with the same monitor size. I like the idea of turning this into a 30" build off challenge - oh wait, that's right - not possible for Mac. Fine, lets do this at the Mac's next available price point - 21.5"

Dell Inspiron 545 - $941
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q8200 (4MB L2, 2.33GHz, 1333FSB)
4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz- 4 DIMMs
1TB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
nVidia GeForce GT 220, 1024MB
16X DVD+/-RW Drive
Dell 1525 Wireless-N PCIe Card
Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
Dell 19 in 1 Media Card Reader
Piano Black

$250 - Dell 2209WA IPS Monitor (I wont even use the $220 sale price!)
40 Dell wireless desktop
20 speaker bar
50 webcam
20 bt

$1321

Mac 22.1"
# 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
# 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
# 1TB Serial ATA Drive
# ATI Radeon HD 4670 256MB
# 8x double-layer SuperDrive
# Apple Magic Mouse
# Apple Wireless Keyboard (English) and User's Guide

$1599

$278 - 21% difference - Winner = PC


Heck, lets take it at the Mac's next price point, the lesser 21.5" model. Basically drop the HD to 500GB and detune the vid card to something in the 2800 3dmark range.

Same Dell 545 deal as above, with a 500GB drive, and but now a Radeon 4350. = $732
$250 - Dell 2209WA IPS Monitor
40 Dell wireless desktop
20 speaker bar
50 webcam
20 bt

$1,112

Mac - as above, but with 500GB HD, NVIDIA 9400M.
$1,300

$188 (17%) difference - Winner = PC


Now's lets address the likely rebuttals from the Mac "crowd" here..

1) But it's a quad core 2.33 Ghz Q8300 vs a dual core 3.06 CPU!

- I put it to you that the Q8200 is a close enough equal to the 3.06 Duo. Might even be better in some situations, but of course, less so in other. EQUAL!
- Dell inexplicably has moved on to the quadcores at this particular moment, so no Core2Duo comparison is available.
- Apple loves to use SPEC CPU 2006 #'s and reports 31.7/41.8 on it's webpage. SPEC themselves checks a Q8200 in at 39.2 / 38.2.

2) But it lacks LED backlighting!

- This reminds me a lot of when people shop for LCD TV's and come upon the 120/240 hz obscure specs. Specs are one thing, but 90% of people can't tell the difference.
- Fanin80 - you worked at a FS, so answer this question honestly. If you took 50 average customers at random, put a 22" LCD with LED and and another one with out it in front of them - what percentage do you think would a) be able to pick it out? b) be willing to pay 15-20% more for it.
- I humbly submit to you that no more than 25% (and I'm being generous here) of people could tell the difference, and even fewer would pay the extra 15-20%.

3) Yeah but it lacks that smooth sleek styling.

- Granted. But we're not talking styling, just performance for dollar.

4) Meh it's only $XXX difference, the Mac is TOTALLY worth that much more.

-To a gadget obsessed person, sure! But this debate is over dollars. It's all about percentages and the fact that on average, Mac's will cost you more.



If you're up for the challenge Fin80, if you really want to prove that Mac's as a whole are not "overpriced", you need to do it a various price points, not just at the very top. That means: $750, $1,000, $1,500. 15-20% is the minimum I expect a PC to be cheaper. Wanna play?