Mac versus...
 

non Mac as in IBM compatible/clone. I have had IBM compatible and Dell laptop (the latter for the past 3 years) and am very happy with them. My memories of the Mac desktop computer I had about 15 years ago I recall putting in a new battery every year costing $100. I am in the 3rd year of my Dell laptop and on the original battery. My laptop is too heavy for travel so in the next couple of years I anticipate buying a smaller Dell, HP etc. I would not consider a Mac as they are too expensive to begin with. As you stare at your computer tell me your thoughts as to 1) Why u buy what u buy2) Is initial cost a factor?3)What about reliability and battery life?Even if you are a Mac owner put your thoughts down anyway:)
I tell myself that I must be open minded!SmileWavy

I began using a Mac because I needed the graphics capability. I had an Everex 386 for business and a Mac for work. When it came time to choose between the two, I thought about how much time I spent using a computer and asked myself, "If I'm going to drive 100,000 miles a year, do I want to do it in a Pinto or a Mercedes? If I was going to spend 40 hours a week in front of the TV, would I want a camp stool or a Barcalounger?" The difference between the elegance of a Mac and the clunkyness of a PC is fractions of a penny per hour, and the extra cost is worth it to me.

I'm on my second Mac and won't ever go back. It's easier, more reliable, excellent service and all the Apple products are designed to work together from my perspective. My wife has switched and she said she would never do it because she doesn't like change, within ten minutes she was saying, "why did I wait so long"?

Sure Macs are great but you can only buy one from Apple. $$$$

One day they may have clone MACs and if that happened I'd make the switch. Until then I'll keep using my Lenovo.

I've used and supported them all... Dell, HP, IBM (before Lenovo) Acer. etc...
I would recommend Lenovo. Most reliable and good support IMHO. The batteries are issue with all of them but Dell seems to be the worse. (or it was)

Simple Apple vs Dell example that has nothing to do with product function, just customer service. My son bought a Dell streak about a year ago. He must have dropped it or knocked it on something very hard because the glass shattered on the screen. Placed a call to Dell and for the full replacement cost $600 they will be very happy to send him another one. Couple of months ago my wife got a new iPhone 4. One week later while getting out of her car she drops it and the screen/glass shatters. Next morning we walk into the Apple store with a broken phone and out with a new phone. Cost $0. They looked at the impact and determined it should not have failed and gave her a new one. Had it been her fault they still would have swapped it out for $99 for a new one. Either way superior customer service to Dell. I have many stories like this to share, but I am sure others will chime in.

Bottom line, if you want a low price and support on your own, keep buying Dell. If you want a product backed by a company, buy Apple.

I've been a Mac user (at home) since 1995 (just before it looked as though they were going belly up). From my view, it is tough to beat the user experience presented by Apple products. I bought a Kindle fire for my wife for Christmas. I am really anxious to see how it stacks up against the iPad, not so much in terms of total capability but more so in terms of ease of use.

Had my iMac for 3.5 years and loved it till it broke.
Apple store diagnosed video card failure and kept it for repair. 3-5 days they said.

After 5 days they asked if I would mind having a replacement machine instead because they werent happy with the repair work that had been done.

They said would you mind a 27 inch version because we dont do the 24 inch any more!

I collected the replacement - it was brand new with quad processor and 4 gig ram and a 1tb hard drive - all better than my origional, they said you had better have a wireless keyboard and mouse because your wired ones wont work with the new machine.

All free of charge.

Apple rocks. :)

In April my dell that I had for about 5 years, decided to not boot properly. I decided to get an iPad2. I was instantly converted then. It was so easy to use. There was so much you can do with it. My iPhone is very similar and they sync contacts, music, etc. I don't even need to plug it into my dell (the same one as before. I fixed it shortly after buying the iPad, but no going back now). I can even call my friends and see them instead of just hearing them. That may only be a perk since I talk to college age chicks.

I seem to notice ....
 

a trend here towards Mac products. No wonder the alternatives are getting cheaper:)

A decent lenovo is up to almost half the cost of the Mac... Might as well just buy a mac...

I love mine, like everyone else says, its simpler, its quicker, its reliable...

I'd buy another.

They used to have Mac clones. It was a disaster.

Was one of the first things that Jobs did away with when he returned to Apple.

I've been deeply disappointed with the HP laptops at my company. Many have failed due to HDD crashes. People are on their 2nd and 3rd. Switched to Dells which are as big as dinner trays, impossible for road warrioring. I've never had a bad experience with Thinkpads. Note second tier PC makers are now getting HDDs that are lower spec due to the HDD shortage, I wouldn't trust those drives at all. If you're buying a notebook now, consider a SSD instead. If a desktop, back it up religiously. You might be getting a drive made by a Thailand factory only just drained of floodwaters, on machines that were underwater until recently.

John Sculley tried that and proved there is more to a Mac than the OS.
There is a fundamental difference between an Apple product and a generic PC. The PCs are a commodity - like a bushel of corn. They're all about the same, with the basic difference being price and service. The Mac is built to a standard of quality, not price. When Scully tried to commoditize the Mac he ended up with a bunch of assemblers fighting to build the cheapest computer that would run the Mac OS. Apple had always worked to build the best computer to run the Mac OS. What happened was predictable. Disaster for Apple and a stain on its reputation.

Look at buying a refurbished Mac from the Apple website they are hundreds of dollars cheaper, have been thoroughly gone over and have a full one year warranty. I bought my MacBook Pro for $900 when they were over $1200 new and got free shipping as well. The refurb looked like a new one not a scratch on it and operated flawlessly.

One thing to look at is how many people, after buying a Mac, go back... It is pretty rare. Probably like buying a very well built car - unless money constraints require it - once you have bought a BMW or Benz, you probably won't be going back to a Chevy Cruze.

Only way I will use another windows box is if it is what is supplied/required for a job....

As a user of both, professionally, there is nothing that a Mac offers over a cheap PC anymore other than cosmetics. They both run the same x86 hardware, however the Windows OS is still more widely excepted currently. You can get better graphics, audio, and speed out of a PC simply due to a wider variety of components, and at a cheaper price.

Apples OS is just a linux port based on BSD, so if you want that on a PC, you can have it. Only again, on slightly cheaper hardware. In fact of you want you can install any of Apples OS's on a PC as well if you like. So if the form and factor of the Apple is what you want then buy it, if the form and factor of another brand is what you want, then buy that.

I've been using Macs for over twenty years (seven of them have gone through the house) and have had virtually no problems to speak of over that time. Only recently I had to install "boot camp" on a Macbook pro (this is to run windows 7 OS) to use an investment site. Wow, what a revelation, I thought windows was a polished OS by now but no, it's still that clunky, in your face OS, that seems to get the user involved in working out it's problems all the time. Many computer nuts would say that an OS should tell you what is going on and ask you when it's unsure on how to proceed. I'm not a computer geek, I want to sit down at a computer and use it as a tool, not fool around trying to find out what bugging it today. So, in a nutshell, buy the Mac, as was said earlier additional cost per hour is negligible. Cheers

I've always used Dell's, my kids have mac book pro's. There's always an issue or one brewing with the 4 dells on my network. They never have problems with their mac's. I'm switching over very soon.

I didn't know that.

I use both as well drisump - and I have to disagree -

Everything from taking it out of the box to interacting with customer service ticks the boxes in the Mac column. And, one of the very best things - no finger pointing with Mac. If the OS is giving you problems when you call AppleCare and ask them questions, they won't be pointing fingers at the hardware manufacturer. I just ran into this with a brand new Alienware I purchased (Mac comparable in pricing I might add - it was a very expensive machine, bought for gaming). Dell quickly pointed the finger at Windows when I called up with a problem, call Microsoft - why, no, that is a known hardware problem... the circle of frustration began.

I guess the old adage is true - you get what you pay for. With Apple you get a superior machine with incomparable customer service.

They point as many fingers as anyone else, look up the Nvidia class suit from this year. Plenty of finger pointing when you called in about that issue.

So, you have called Apple Care and gotten fingerpointing when you asked for help Scott? I have had to only call a few times (I have been on apples/macs since the 80s), but not once did the people at Apples' customer centers 'blame' something/someone else. When you called about the Nvidia recall did Applecare not take care of it, or did they make you call Nvidia?

From what I can see from Dell - they would have made you call Nvidia, and washed their hands of the problem.

I gotta admit, at the Apple store they treat you like a king.

Windows customer gets treated like a wet dog.

rjp

Mac at home, PC at work. The funny thing is, all the upper echelon of people at work now operate with iPads and "Go To My PC.com". Maybe they wil switch to all Apple soon. l prefer the Apple OS hands down, Reading the Jobs bio the groundwork for an exceptional product was laid early on. As far as Apple clones go, it's like trying to pass off your Chrysler 300 as being "just like a Bentley, only cheaper".

With VMWare Fusion you don't need bootcamp. Just run your WinXP/7 OS as a virtual machine. Drag and drop from the VM to Mac desktop, sharing devices, etc...easy. You can create snapshots (or copies) of your virtual machine so if something goes wrong, you get a Win virus, or something get's corrupted, you can go back to the a starting point.

Oh yes I have. And yes they deferred to Nvidia and Western before for RMA's. Just like anyone else, all tech companies are essentially the same in the end. Whether it's a shiny Apple on the case or glowing alien eyes.

Scott - Apple just had me drop my machine off at the store for the Nvidia problem, 2 days later - all better. No hassle at all. And they set in a new keyboard - they said that the old one was sort of sticky (it was, my fault ;) ) - no charge, big smiles.

The Alienware is an interesting machine - screaming fast - but, it just isn't 'nice'.

When I was at CA they issued me some Dell POS. I did the bulk of my work on my personal 17" Mac but there were certain things locked to the corporate infrastructure that I just could not get around. Hated having to carry two machines.

The day the Intel boxes release I ordered one and as soon as it showed up slapped Parralells on it.

Migrated my Dell to it, stuck the Dell in a drawer and never looked back.

IT never picked up on it.

I can run Debian Linux on 'em all, so I go for the commodity hardware :)

My travel computer (windows tablet) weighs 1.5 lbs, has an SSD and is on it's original battery from 2006. It has been dropped, thoroughly used - used pretty much daily, since 2006. ...but it was not a cheap buy.

The thing that I see is that so many compare the high build quality, of one of the better mac's, to that of an inexpensive PC. Yeah, then it's like comparing a Mercedes to a Fiesta.

There are a lot of high build quality PC's out there with high design, magnesium, etc...

But why look at those when you know that mac's are almost always high design? . . .tho, come to think of it, I don't see a lot of really old mac's in use. ... seems they are kind of like designer purses, I suppose. If you don't have the latest mac, you aint sheet. ;)

Have you completed your investigtion of all the Mac-owners' "designer purses" already Glenn? Where does mine stand in your "study?"

Well, I'm no expert on designer purses, but I'm guessing that yours is not high on the -in- list. ....unless purses made from recycled snow tires are up and coming.

I will note that your purse does however sound studly. ...B'Dummm CHiiinnnggg ;)

I prefer not spending the big bucks on many things including a personal computer. My Mac is a then top-of-the-line 2005 model I purchased used about 5 years ago. New: $3500. Used from ebay: $1200. With some hard drive, RAM and OS upgrades over the years, I'm still on it.

Sherwood

Apple Sets a High Bar
One year after climbing 4% to a record-high score of 78 on ACSI’s 0 to 100-point scale, customer satisfaction with personal computers flattens out. The industry itself is in a state of rapid change, with technology advances accelerating amid shifts in consumer preference. As the demand for traditional desktop PCs weakens, the tablet computer market is skyrocketing—led by Apple’s iPad. Apple’s record of customer satisfaction preeminence in the personal computer industry continues unabated in 2011, as the company adds another point to its already exceptional score. At 87 (+1%), Apple outdistances its nearest competitor by 9 points.

“In the eight years that Apple has led the PC industry in customer satisfaction, its stock price has increased by 2,300%,” remarks Claes Fornell, founder of the ACSI and author of The Satisfied Customer: Winners and Losers in the Battle for Buyer Preference. “Apple’s winning combination of innovation and product diversification—including spinning off technologies into entirely new directions—has kept the company consistently at the leading edge.”

Not to keep banging the Mac drum, but my mom is using a 7 year old iBook and my dad a 5 year old Macbook pro. This summer my moms iBook wouldn't start up, so my dad (not a computer person) scheduled an appointment at the Genius Bar. Comes in with his 7 year old computer, they do some vudooo to it and it start up again. All for the cost of $0. That is customer service.

Honestly I don't know any other company that stands behind their products like Apple does. Maybe high end autos like Mercedes/Lexus/Volvo, but no other consumer product for sure.

+ 1

they all have the same chips for CPU memory video and most of the other stuff

you can pick a windoz machine with mac like chips
for the sound and network [the picky ones]
and load the 29.95 mac O/S as a dual boot with a free installer program
and save about 1/2 the macbook price 500 vs 1000 on the low end
and save thousands on a desk top by doing a hackintosh


OSx86 Installation - InsanelyMac Forum