Is it crazy to buy a MacBook?

[Doug Rintoul]

On Tue, 2006-12-12 at 06:22 +1100, James Gray wrote:

> Gah - the "Macs are expensive" myth.  Go and find a non-Mac lappy  
> with Intel Core2 >= 2GHz, and a comparable mix of built in extras  
> (dedicated video card and video RAM - on the Pro models, wifi,  
> ethernet, firewire, DVD+/-RW, bluetooth, webcam, etc, etc) and then  
> compare it to a MacBook or MacBook Pro.  Macs are not particularly  
> expensive, but they are damned cool and come with one of the most  
> useable and mature desktop operating systems in the world (OSX).
> 
Gah, the myth that "Macs are the same price as an equivalently equipped
PC". I wish that were the case because I would have jumped on it a
flash. I just bought a Dell Inspiron 9400 with a 17" screen, Intel Core
2 Duo @ 2.13GHz, 2 gigs of memory, firewire, 120 gig HD, 256 MB ATI
Radeon Mobility X1400 HyperMemory, DVD-RW for $1608 CDN, including free
shipping (but before taxes). The cheapest  price for the MacBook Pro
with a smaller screen and half the memory was $2199 CDN. The only thing
the MacBook Pro had hardware-wise over the Dell was bluetooth and the
webcam, neither of which was important or useful to me. Fit and finish
might have been better on the Mac, but I have bought Dells in the past
which have just kept on going and I have also bought a Mac PowerBook
where the hinges broke after three years and would have cost $200+ for
repairs if I had not resorted to epoxy.

Doug.