Microsoft to attack Mac pricing in new series of TV ads - Page 9

No it's not just you. It's baffling.

I'm sure you'd find most Mac users are more affluent than PC users on a whole. I know I don't have the disposable income to throw a couple grand into a computer I can't upgrade to a big extent. I wish I had a trust fund but I dont. I'm a PC guy admittedly. But I think you are right, I think we try to get something for a bargain and most times we can.

Someone told me once "the only thing better than cheap stuff is free stuff."

We get a lot of stuff for free too.

As a PC guy, Everyone forgets that Dell and HP are not the only PC manufacturers. There are much better pc companys out there. Shuttle or Alienware. I personaly have never owned a branded computer as it's always cheaper to build but just cause a couple companys put out subpar stuff doesn't mean you can't find pcs that actualy have better hardware. Even better than most Macs.

Your post reminds me of an article I read a couple of months ago talking about how Microsoft is planning on opening stores worldwide modeled after the ubiquitous Apple Stores. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123448293075579777.html

I agree, helma. Also note that, out of their 30 second commercials, MS devotes a whopping 1 1/2 - 3 seconds (5 - 10%) to mentioning the Mac. The commercials are more about finding a PC that meets the user's needs and less about responding to the Mac.

Its funny that MS's commercials are being called "attack ads" and equated to Apple's Mac vs PC adds. If you notice, those adds spend about 90-95% of their time poking fun at PCs and about 5-10% talking about how Macs meet their users' needs. Its an interesting reversal.

I also find those proportions interesting as they seem to agree with each company's relative market share. It appears to me that Microsoft's new adds restore balance to the advertising situation.

Let's look at it another way.

Which product has a better value in the long run?
Consumers today aren't just going to look at price. That's not smart.
Consumers will look at which product has the better value in the long run.
and, as far as I know, Macs have a better value because they're built better and last longer.

Then someone will say, there are people with PC's out there who have had their PC as long as another person has had their Mac! Yeah, but most of those people are Tech geeks that know how to keep their PC up to date or they're people who rarely use their machine as much.

Give or take the usual exception the Macs are still a better value.
ROI? Return on investment? Is that what they call it?

and why do people debate this anyway? Is there someone out there making money over this pointless debate? Probably.

Buy what works for you. Simple.

I was recently in an Apple Store and bought my new great MacBook! While I was there the store was shoulder to shoulder with buyers! I could hardly walk an inch it was so crowded. Apple is not being hurt by this bad economy and by PC's stupid ads.

Is that the great new MacBook that also plays Blu-Ray discs???
(Did you know that Apple's Dictionary app lists "dunderhead" as a synonym for the term we used in the other thread?... I didn't even know that was a real word!)

I just bought my "great new" 17" MacBook Pro. I compared all computers with the same specs and they are all in the same ball park. At these prices, what is a $100 or $200 difference?

Blu-Ray? Nope, mine does not have it and I have no desire to use it. If I ever do, then I suppose I could just easily buy an external drive using Firewire 800...does the PC come with FW800?

Blu-ray movies max at 54mbps bandwidth (2X) and even at 4X Blu-ray speed (100mbps) or 6X (300mbps), USB 2.0 is more than enough to supply the bandwidth for Blu-ray movies. No need for Firewire 800
PC Laptops come with e-SATA, which at 3gbps are more than 3times faster than Firewire 800

Last time someone bothered to publish numbers in these forums, it looked as if Macs will - on average - die or develop hardware problems in pretty much same numbers as leading PC brands.

Most of our clients are holding onto each generation of desktops for 3-5 years (more and more are shifting to 5 years life cycle nowadays). We haven't noticed that number of hardware faults will increase over the time.

Additionally, most business grade desktops (from Lenovo, HP...) our clients are opting for are within NZ$1000 - 1500 range. Cheapest iMac is NZ$3300. If company has to replace 10 or more of them at a time, difference is huge.

Maintenance... well. We highly recommend all of our clients to get managed SonicWALL firewall and Barracuda antispam protection. Even if you are on Mac network, you still need to protect access to your servers and data from the outside, have secure VPN connection and prevent your employees from spending productive time on porn sites, TradeMe (NZ version of eBay), faceBook etc... thus firewall protection like SonicWALL is pretty much a must in both scenarios. And you don't want to deal with loads of spam emails, thus Barracuda service is also a must regardless your platform.

At the end of the day, you might decide to skip on virus protection on Macs and will have to spend some money on anti-virus software for PC. We don't recommend freebies like AVG or Comodo to corporate users (no central management/definitions distribution etc) but 3 years of NOD32 license + updates is around NZ$100 RRP per desktop... so even with extra paid virus protection, you are still way better with PC.

And all that without mentioning if business-critical software is available for Mac at all.

With all the goodies Mac platform has to offer, there is still a reason why business world is pretty much Windows world. In corporate environment, software like iLife is worthless, demand for creative applications (Aperture, FCP) is pretty much non existent (unless, of course, organization is in that field of business)... but requirement for a 100% standard Office suite is a must.