Quote Originally Posted by piiooo


There is only one vendor for Macs (Apple) and hundreds if not thousands of competing vendors in the PC world. Mac will sell you an evenly configured hardware and pretty good and stableoperating system. A PC vendor will try to sell youa more-affordable-than-copetition machine, and if you don't know whatyou need you'll buy it and if youperform any processor/graphic/memory/hard drive intense task your brand new PC willstart choking. If not now wait a year or two for newer and more hungry software to come... Sad but true.
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I think this is right on. The inherent 'superiority' of a Mac isn't, in my opinion, that it necessarily performs better, but rather that it is a complete, well-configured package. Apple controls the hardware and much of the software, and sets the price for the product it wants to offer, and doesn't have to compete on a price basis. You can typically get MORE with a PC package for the same money, but it may be poorly integrated, and compromises may be significant to get the lowest $$ tag for the core specs. I bought an HP for cheap that is a lot for the money, and it'll do for a lot of stuff, and was a good deal as a refurbished unit. However, if I actually configured the laptop I wanted it would have cost several times as much. I still would have gotten better value than an apple, though even so most companies load it with a crapload of software that you want to uninstall. If you're capable, you'd probably just want to format the thing and install the operating system and drivers and key software, and nothing else.


A lot of the entry-level PC setups, particularly those with low amounts of RAM, shouldn't be sold at all. They're only good for startup and maybe e-mail. Run much of anything else and you're swapping hard drive.