![]() ![]() The Dell, HP, and Lenovo you picked look like mobile workstations, aimed at businesspeople who need a lot of power. That would be the 17-inch MacBook Pro.įor the record, I didn’t check the prices of the system until after I’d compared their specs–I didn’t want anyone to be able to accuse me of rigging my research, consciously or unconsciously, to make Apple look good. I also selected a 17-inch Apple laptop–which turned out to be pretty easy, since there’s only one. Starting with Dell’s Precision M6400 Mobile Workstation…Īnd Sony’s VAIO FW (Daniel Craig not included, as far as I know)… Working at the configure-to-order sites of the PC companies in question, I chose machines that were similar to the base MacBook Pro, then tweaked the configurations until they were as close as I could get them. So I picked notebooks from Lenovo and Sony, since those companies’ machines tend to be most similar to Apple’s in terms of features and industrial design, and added models from Dell and HP, the two largest PC companies in the U.S. But these comparisons get unwieldy when they involve too many systems. In a perfect world, I’d select at least one computer from every major manufacturer. How did you choose the Windows laptops?Ī. Or, as Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer recently put it, “Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment-same piece of hardware-paying $500 more to get a logo on it?” And since the 17-inch MacBook Pro is the Mac that Lauren nixes in favor of a far cheaper HP Pavilion, it’s the one I’ll look at in this story.įirst, as is my wont, a mini-FAQ on this project: In the end, those comparisons are all about collecting fresh data on the “Mac Tax”–the notion that you pay a premium for Apple computers compared to similar Windows PCs. ![]() (Note that in the commercial, Lauren sets off a powder keg of controversy the moment she says she’s not “cool enough” to own a Mac–me, I want to judge computers, not people.) And the unemotional aspect of my research tries to strip out any bias based on anything but the computers at hand. The specific part is important because asking whether Macs are more expensive than Windows PCs is like asking whether Audis are more expensive than General Motors cars: It’s a meaningless question without context, since the answer is entirely contingent on the models you choose. I continue to think it’s worth trying to answer the question in a very specific and unemotional way. I haven’t returned to this issue since last October, but the moment Microsoft put it at the heart of a major national TV commercial last week, the blogosphere started debating it all over again. Mac question–which I started doing within a few weeks of Technologizer’s launch last summer. I’ve also encountered it every time I’ve tried to do the math on the Windows vs. You can see this passion crop up in some of the comments on Ed Oswald’s two recent posts ( here and here) on Microsoft’s new “Lauren” ad comparing 17-inch Windows laptops to the MacBook Pro. There’s something about comparing the prices of Windows PCs and Macs that makes otherwise cool and collected people–Windows and Mac users alike–become profoundly emotional and partisan, until steam shoots out of thefir ears and their eyeballs turn bright red.
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