hmmm making cheap computers work like macs. does this mean macs are overpriced, or is it a sign of fading consumer confidence?

Bigrich – I agree – Macs are twice the price. Horses for courses, I helped my parents pick out a nice £400 laptop. On the other hand, I’m personally on my third mac which cost me more than twice that. My last one, a G4 laptop, I flogged 3+ years old for £350, so my upgrade “only” cost me £500, which is comparable
Coffeeking – I would also like to see evidence of these people that buy a Mac and then go back – I don’t know of anyone who has done that, out of maybe 10-12 I know that have gone over to Mac over the last couple of years

For heaven’s sake though, we have this argument every few months. What is the point? Buy whichever one you like. I’ll just keep typing on this expensive piece of white plastic that never breaks down or crashes. OK, I’m tempting fate there, but …..whatever……

Coffeeking – I would also like to see evidence of these people that buy a Mac and then go back – I don’t know of anyone who has done that, out of maybe 10-12 I know that have gone over to Mac over the last couple of years

Agreed, I too know several that have converted to Macs in the last couple of years, and none would go back out of choice (including myself). Can still use a PC (with XP, Vista sucks arse!) happily as required though, but OSX is by far the better OS by a country mile.

Yes Mac’s are overpriced, something that they were addressing comparatively well with the last range of MacBooks it seemed, but then the new range they hiked the price by about 25% again for some reason, as if to fuel fire to the PC enthusiast’s arguments. My MacBookPro is just over 2 years old though, OK it cost me £1300, but I could still sell it for £800 now, which of course you couldn’t do with a PC laptop.

Regarding the NC10 running OSX, I can’t remember the guy’s user name on here, but I spoke to someone a couple of months ago in detail over email about it as he had done it first hand. He gave me a very detailed account of how to do it too and was very helpful. Just waiting for a new job before I go out and buy one really.

does this mean macs are overpriced

I paid about £2200 for a custom specced Mac Pro 2 years ago. Got an Ed. discount, so it was more like £2700 full price. The nearest specced Dell was over £3500. And wasn’t available, as Dell couldn’t get the processors in.

I had 2 PC ‘fanbois’ looking inside the Mac Pro; they couldn’t believe how well put together it is. The design is near-perfect. Swapping HDs, installing RAM, etc, is easy-squeezy-cheesy-peasy. Got all me in and outputs; USB, Firewire 400 and 800, dijical optical, 2xEthernet. Built in Wi-Fi + BlueTooth. Etc etc.

Switch on- go.

In over 2 years, not one crash, no hardware failure, never a peep. And it’s on for 16 hours a day. So about 13,000 hours of use so far, without any issue.

My previous iMac G3 served me well, for 6 years prior to buying that, and is still going strong.

Overpriced?

No way. No **** way. Worth every penny.

For heaven’s sake though, we have this argument every few months.

More like, every few days!

Overpriced?

No way. No **** way. Worth every penny.

At the lower end of the market they are a bit, when you compare the specs of a base model MacBook with the equivalent Dell Laptop for instance.

But totally agree with you at the top end, they’re worth every penny. The thing is though, there’s probably only 0.01% of computer users out there that need the computing power that you obviously do RudeBoy, your “average” computer user is doing not much more than surfing the net and checking emails, with a bit of basic Word or Excel thrown in too. Hence the perception is that they’re all overpriced.

I had 2 PC ‘fanbois’ looking inside the Mac Pro; they couldn’t believe how well put together it is. The design is near-perfect. Swapping HDs, installing RAM, etc, is easy-squeezy-cheesy-peasy. Got all me in and outputs; USB, Firewire 400 and 800, dijical optical, 2xEthernet. Built in Wi-Fi + BlueTooth. Etc etc.

Errr if they thought swapping HDDs and ram was hard on any PC I’d question their PC fanboi status! As for all the outputs – thats just a case of going to a company that offers custom builds rather than off-the-shelf-modified-to-suit unlike Dell.

Totally unconvinced. Marketing hype and mac “fanboi” schpiel. Both sides are capable of producing a good system, using good components and well designed, its just that theres a lot more tat out there to dilute the PC market.

there’s probably only 0.01% of computer users out there that need the computing power that you obviously do RudeBoy

Heh! I don’t need that amount of ‘power’! Way overkill, really! But I know it will still be doing the biz in 5 or 6 years from now. My Imac is still ok, tbh; just a bit ‘slow’ for our modern impatient World. Using loads of layers in Photoshop gets a bit sloooow..

Coughyking; I think they were impressed with the simplicity and thoughtful layout of the Mac.

The quote for the Dell was with a bog-standard case. A ‘nice’ case would have been another couple of hundred or so more. ‘Custom’ builders’ quotes were over £4k for the same spec. And the processors weren’t available at that moment. And then there would be the OS, and installation, etc…

so, in conclusion, if you spend a lot they are cheap?

Don’t get me wrong I want an imac, based on the good design, but i wouldn’t say that it could do anything my battered old 320 quid laptop can do. It’ll just be prettier whilst it does it.

Probbly last a bit longer. And be more efficient, easier to use, etc…

No, don’t buy one. Waste of money.

New wifi card installed (thanks fleabay) and now the wireless is working. I (perhaps rather stupidly in hindsight) took it on business with me this week instead of the macbook and it worked flawlessly. In fact the ability to dual boot with Leopard (no need for VM Ware Fusion) means that in some ways it has better functionality than the Mac Book as you don’t get BootCamp with Leopard (do you?).

….and you can do the 3d fly thing in Memory Map, which wouldn’t work with VM Ware.

Oh and to top it off, I unexpectedly had to connect it up to a monitor to run my powerpoint (don’t get me started on Welsh Assembly Government IT monkeys 😉 ) and it ran in extended desktop mode perfectly.

I think I’m going to sleep with it tonight 😆

Er, Bootcamp is available as a free download from Apple, no?

And a Mac Book can have Windoze installed on a partition. I have a HD with a Windoze partiton on it. I just hold down ‘alt’ at startup, to give me the option of what HD/OS I wish to boot from. VMWare allows me to get into Windoze while still in OSX.

Dunno if MM will work in VMWare.

Er, Bootcamp is available as a free download from Apple, no?

Sounds about right – I just remember something about it not being included with Leopard on the disk.

When I worked in the IT industry what I liked about PCs was that I was guaranteed load$ of $upport work fixing little thing$, and what I disliked about the Macs was that there was no support required (but I used one at home).

Macs simply just work and keep on doing it. No spotty overweight PC game slayer geek required.

Im on mac number 3, my G4 sawtooth is still going strong after 10 years and my macbook has proved to be flawless in 3 year heavy use.

loading OSX onto a netbook seems like a good idea until apple pull there fingers out and build one and ive read the DELL mini 9 is a good candidate for this.