On Wednesday 06 April 2005 11:44 pm, Adam Bower wrote: (lots of snips)
Just look how much Apple charge you to have more Ram, faster/bigger harddisks, or upgraded gfx cards when you compare like for like Apple seems to be charging at least a 50% premium over what you can buy for an x86 pc. They usually want 35 quid! just to add bluetooth support.
I'll agree that some of the upgrade prices are on the expensive side of acceptable. But to be honest they are no worse than many other brand name manufacturers. For example the Wireless card in my Thinkpad is (at retail values) more expensive than the Airport and Bluetooth combined when fitted as an option on the Mac Mini (I can't do a fair comparasion on Laptops because Airport extreme is standard on all Apple laptops now). I will agree that memory and hard drive prices are a bit on the high side, but again other brand name x86 platform manufactures charge similar amounts. Also keep in mind that this is an installed price (not that is important to the likes of us but to some it is)
IBM thinkpads are good, and I given that around 50% of Mac laptop owners I know have had to send the thing off for repair within the first year (and quite a few of them more than once) I think Mac laptops suck, although they do appear to be getting better again so ask me again in another year.
I do agree that Thinkpads are pretty excellent, I love mine and would probably only ever replace it with another Thinkpad. But in the eyes of a general consumer the iBook/powerbook is a far more pleasant design (I'll use the simple example of the screen catch here but there are other factors) Don't get me wrong I love the design of the Thinkpad, I love it for it's slightly retro but rugged feel and that rather square 80's look and I love the fact that there are 5 year old bits that still fit my 6 month old unit, but put it next to the Apple kit and you 'd have to admit it looks a little dated.
As to build quality I'd say that it's pretty much an even match, there are weaknesses on some Thinkpads and there are elements of Apple kit I wonder about (although less so on the current lineup). It is true that Apple (more so on the laptop front) have had some reliability issues, but in my view they have been more than honest about these problems and have satisfied me that they are trying to do the right thing by those who purchased faulty kit. Did you know they were even refunding people that have paid for out of warranty repairs on kit which they later identified as faulty by design.
There have been many other small form factor PCs in the past, tbh I'm not too worried about how big my computer is as it sits under my desk. Also you have to factor in the one of the design flaws of the Mac mini with its dodgy dvi/vga adaptor which isn't compatible for the vesa spec which to me suggests a big Apple design flaw (so it isn't *always* sensible design).
Didn't know about the vga adapter thing, but I welcome small form factor and still maintain that there are very few true SFF PC's that can match the Mini.
I also thought of one more point that wasn't raised and that is the relative upgradability of a PC compared to a Mac.
True, upgradeability is an issue with Apple kit, but to be honest their target demographic doesn't care much. Larger businesses and many home users don't do component upgrades and to be honest last year when I upgraded my home machine I quickly noticed that given the parts of the machine to be replaced it was more economic to just replace the whole thing and sell a complete machine rather than a pile of bits.
G5 Mac would cost me about 1361 quid. God knows what the price would have been if I had stayed with Mac kit from the beginning.
True enough in your case, but as I say a lot of people don't do incremental upgrades like that. Also don't forget that the depreciation on Apple kit seems (pre Mac Mini anyway) to be a lot lower than most X86 hardware. Just before the Mini was released I was having no trouble passing early G4 Powermac's onto the 2nd hand market for circa £250, there aren't many 2000-2001 era X86 machines that would fetch that.