PC versus MAC Part 1

I have always been unimpressed with Apples or MACs (if you will).   The success of the iPod, iPhone, and then iPad has catapulted Apple to the largest company in America.    But does that make the MAC book pro better than a similar priced Windows laptop?   With Apples recent successes and marketing, it has seemed to convince most of the general public that an Apple laptop is superior to a Windows laptop.    But as I have briefly worked on MAC book pro for people, I just sit there and wonder “where is the magic?”    I am probably biased in that I am an IT person who has made a career in deploying and supporting Windows.    Recently, we went ahead and bought a MAC book pro for my wife while I bought a pretty nice Dell Windows laptop.    I see this as an opportunity to try and be objective and do a fairly comprehensive comparison.   

First the money, I bought the Windows Dell Latitude 6500 from Dell for about $1650 dollars with .99% financing.  I bought the Apple Mac book pro from Best Buy for about $1710 with my Best Buy credit card which offers no interest for a year in a half.   The Apple Mac book pro was actually on sale from its usual $1800, I don’t think this a very common occurrence especially if you go to the Apple store.   Both financing options were pretty good.   However, I am going to have to pay off the Apple in a year in a half or pay a hefty price.   By the way, we did try and get financing right at the Apple store, but the wife and I were turned down for a Barclay card which as far as I can tell wasn’t anything special.  In fact, I think the interest rate was 20+.   So as far as Dell financing versus Apple directly, I think Dell wins.

I can try and give a quick assessment of the hardware that I have noticed so far. Hard drives can be a significant bottle neck with your computer, especially when it comes to boot up, starting up programs, and shutting down.   Traditionally hard drives were mechanical, like a record player, going back and forth, looking for information or a place to write it.   The Dell PC I bought had a 128GB solid state hard drive. The Solid State technology significantly takes this bottle neck away making it much faster.  Now, solid state drives are not cheap, so buying the Dell with this drive increased the price a bit.    Yet it still comes under the price of the Apple.    As far as the Apple is concerned, I was almost expecting something special for a hard drive.  Turns out you are getting a 500 GB SATA hard drive. As far as I can tell, you get this type of hard drive with any significantly less priced Windows laptop. So nothing really special there.

I foresee my evaluation taking a while as I use and configure both over time and get very familiar with differences. So stay tuned…