Articles in "Computer prices"
PC Magazine on G5 Quad Pricing: Fact, Fiction, or FUD?
This can’t really be called “news”, since I clipped this PC Magazine review in late December, 2005. But a Martian never forgets! Besides, PC Magazine still brazenly displays this information on its website as if it were fact, not fiction. After reading through the info I’ve gathered in the last half hour, you be the judge of the facts in this case.
The serious error here is that PC Magazine lists the Apple Power Mac G5 Quad as costing… guess! You’ll never guess how much they say it costs. Honestly.
OK, I gotta spill the beans at some point. PC Magazine says a Quad costs $7,023 to $9,522!
That struck me as very odd, since I had just bought a new Quad for myself in December, and I didn’t pay anywhere near $7,000-$9,500 for it. The unit I bought was hardly the base model, either: I had upgraded to the $350 Nvidia GeForce 7800 graphics card when it became available and also added Bluetooth and Airport wireless cards for $99. And I got all this for only $3,448! How is this possible, you ask? Read on.
New iMac Keeps Apple Way Ahead of Dell in Price/Features
Following up on my gushing article about the new iMacs and iPods from yesterday, I sat down to do the math on price/features between Dell and Apple. I once again revisited the “High End Consumer Desktop” specs and pricing to see what impact Apple’s new line has on that shootout. You can read the details, but very briefly, the gap has widened dramatically in Apple’s favor, both in price and in features.
Nothing Short of Astonishing
Apple’s latest surprise announcements were so over-the-top that I wanted to write a few paragraphs about them. Once again, a highly anticipated product (this month, a video-capable iPod; last month, an iTunes-capable cell phone) is upstaged by a product no one anticipated. Last month, the iPod nano took everyone by surprise in its sheer audacity and beauty. This month, the new “media center” iMac is an even bigger surprise, and in some ways even more audacious.
Apple Beefs Up iMac Line, Widens Price Gap With Dell
Apple recently refreshed both the PowerMac and iMac desktop lines. The PowerMac upgrade was nice, but nothing spectacular.Today’s iMac upgrade, however, was a doozy! Very much worth taking notice of, so I did.
I’ve revisited the “High End Consumer Desktop” specs and pricing to see what impact Apple’s new line has on that shootout. You can read the details, but very briefly, the gap widened a little in Apple’s favor, though not as spectacularly as the new specs would suggest, thanks to a couple of key “free upgrades” at the Dell store.
Quick Pricing Update: Time To Pick On IBM
A number of readers took me to task yesterday for picking on Dell without considering the other PC vendors. I explained that I chose Dell because that company is by far the largest supplier of Windows-based PC’s, and that it would be beyond the scope of my limited resources to cover all of the possible vendors. That said, I picked up the newspaper today, and here’s a full-page ad in the Washington Post from IBM for a $999 ThinkPad. So I thought, OK, let’s see if this is really a better deal than an iBook. I just paid a quick visit to IBM’s online store, and here’s what I found.
Of Course Macs Are More Expensive… Aren’t They?
There is also the issue of relative costs. Even to this day, there is a certain premium to be paid for choosing an Apple over a PC. I did two careful comparisons the other day of four systems from Dell and Apple, two desktops and two portables…. The Mac is $270 (20%) more expensive. I also compared the Dell Inspiron 9200 portable with the top-of-the-line 17″ screen Powerbook G4. Again, these are virtually identical computers as far as their specs. The Powerbook is $961 (55%) more expensive than the Dell.
You know, this mythical friend of mine always does his homework carefully when selecting consumer products. And he takes great pride in that careful, intelligent approach. However, in the modern world, it’s become harder and harder to know when you’re comparing apples with apples, or apples with cashews. It started a number of years back for me when I was buying stereo systems. Understanding all the specifications and making sure you were comparing the same spec from two different products was very hard. It’s gotten worse lately. Now, consumers can’t even easily do comparison shopping for TV sets, let alone for cars, personal computers, DVD players, cell phones, etc. How can the careful consumer know when he or she is doing an appropriate comparison and making an intelligent selection?
The answer is that you can’t unless you’re either (a) an expert in the field, (b) know someone who is and ask them, or (c) have a source like Consumer Reports that you can trust to do the comparisons correctly, and follow their judgments. What you certainly can’t do is just sit down and carefully compare the published specifications from two vendors… at least, not without doing a great deal of research first.
In making his comparison, my friend made several basic errors. I don’t point these out to show how stupid he is (because he’s not!), but rather to indicate that these are errors that any intelligent consumer could make. In the case of the Macintosh pricing versus PC pricing, the errors have led to the general impression that comparable PC’s are cheaper than comparable Macs. Now, I won’t debate whether or not that’s always been the case, but I will state categorically that it ain’t true today and hasn’t been for the last 2-3 years.
