Looking for a new Mac? Here's a pricing matrix | Hacker News Reader

Looking for a new Mac? Here's a pricing matrix

appleinsider.com

2 pointsterpua7 comments

I went shopping for a laptop a few days ago, and checked out the MacBook Pro 15", which is $1738 at Club Mac (and that's after a $150 mail-in rebate). I instead ordered a Dell Latitude E6500 for under $1250 (plus $50 for a Mini 9 netbook, which was available in a combo deal), equipped with twice the RAM, the same CPU, the same disk, a magnesium alloy chassis (not as pretty as the Mac's aluminum, but not bad and very light), same resolution LED lit display, similar dedicated video card, backlit keyboard, a 9 cell battery (reportedly ~2.5 hour longer battery life than the Apple), web cam, roughly the same weight, roughly the same height (1" vs. 0.95" for the Apple), and more ports. Oh, and a three year pretty comprehensive warranty.

So, Mac OS X tax = ~$488, and I would have gotten less RAM, and deal with a rebate which I seem to never actually receive even when I remember to fill out the forms and stuff.

Just saying...the MacBook is a fine looking machine, though. This Dell is reportedly hackintosh ready, too, but I always end up just using Linux, anyway.

Your experience coincides with Microsoft's new series of commercials where they give a person a fixed budget for a laptop:

http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2009/03/26/...

Yeah, I saw that ad a while back, as someone linked it here at HN. That ad didn't influence my decision to check prices at Dell. Though I was deeply disappointed to note that Dell imposes a Linux tax. The version of pretty much all of their laptops with Ubuntu cost sometimes hundreds more (they just don't go on sale, so the special deals that Dell always has running don't apply). So, I'll take the Windows and install Linux on it myself.

For slightly less nice build quality the Studio 15 from Dell can be had for another couple hundred bucks cheaper (it added up to $1086 with almost the exact same specs). I decided that thinner and lighter was worth the extra money for me (and the Mini 9 for $50 with the Latitude was a pretty big draw...I love little machines, and the screen and RAM on my OLPC isn't quite big enough to actually use for even on-the-train development or catching up).

Dell is giving deeper discounts in the U.S. I did this exercise on the Apple and Dell web shops in my corner of Europe, trying to match systems as closely as possible (4GB RAM, 250 GB 7200 rpm HD, 2.4GHz CPU, 50W.hr battery, 1440x900 LED lit LCD, webcam, etc.). All by lowest common feature, except RAM: only 2GB would be 90 less on Mac, and 50 less on Dell; Mac uses 1066MHz DDR3, Dell uses 800MHz DDR2. I may have missed some video/wifi/bt/etc. detail. The red paint job on the Dell seemed free in my shop.

Final numbers, including 20% VAT:

MacBookPro 15: 1992 EUR (inc. 29 for miniDP-DVI adapter)

Dell Lat. E6500: 1878 EUR (inc. 60 for VistaBusiness+XPpro upgrade)

Not badly matched, if those are the kind of specs needed.

Yes, that's a much closer comparison, and I may very well have gone with an Apple in such a case (but since I very rarely use a laptop, I didn't want to spend more than about $1250, I guess it would have been a less capable machine). I do keep laptops for a long time, though, so I can amortize it across about 3 years.

I started out shopping for the Studio 15, but when the price for the Latitude was only a couple hundred more, and the Mini 9 was available for $50 in a bundle with the Latitude, I splurged a bit.

Interesting that Dell is so focused on the US market.

Matrix? What's wrong with the "equivalent PC x 2" algorithm? Maybe it needs to be trendied up a bit with some shiny translucent plastic? Or maybe it's the fact that the variable 2 could be updated at a later stage without throwing out the whole algorithm and starting again?

(Chill out fanboys, just kidding. Sheesh, you guys are tetchy)

This still isn't funny and the price difference between Macs and PCs has nothing to do with the article, which is about the prices of Macs at different stores.

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