UPDATE: I should say that while the content of this post hardly breaks new territory, this is my on the record response to some friends of mine who routinely mock my Apple fanboy status and ask why I overpay for hardware.
Over the last few months, Microsoft has been airing ads touting the value of PCs as compared to ‘expensive’ Macs. I applaud the effort from a marketing perspective, as they could not allow Apple to dominate the airwaves with their clever series of Mac versus PC ads. The main thrust of the ‘Laptop Hunter’ ads is not to sell the PC experience, but rather to promote the value you are getting by choosing a PC. Most consumers you talk to will tell you off the cuff that a Mac is more expensive than a PC, but what does ‘more expensive’ really mean? Is Apple just inflating the cost of their hardware because they feel their designer label is worth it?
The answer of course is no - while Apple hardware starts at a much higher price point than many Windows-based laptop computers, a PC with similar characteristics to a Mac will cost almost the same. For demonstration purposes, I set out to build a PC that matched the characteristics of the 13-inch MacBook Pro. To compare, I spec-ed out a Dell Studio 15 laptop and an HP dv6t series laptop using their websites’ respective configurators. I got as close to the same rig as I could, trying to get the little details right like the backlit keyboard, the right processor and options, etc. Here’s what I came up with, reporting the major ‘retail’ specifications:
13-inch MacBook Pro ($1,199)
- Processor: Core 2 Duo (2.26 GHz, 1066 MHz frontside bus)
- Hard Disk: 160GB 5400rpm
- RAM: 2GB (1066MHz DDR3)
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M (256MB shared memory)
- Wireless Support: 802.11n
- Battery: 60w Lithium Polymer battery (~7 hours of life)
- 13” display
Dell Studio 15 ($1,019 after $243 ‘savings’)
- Processor: Core 2 Duo (2.4 GHz, 1066 MHz frontside bus)
- Hard Disk: 500GB 5400rpm
- RAM: 4GB (800MHz DDR2)
- Graphics: 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570
- Wireless Support: 802.11n
- Battery: 85 WHr Lithium Ion Battery (9 cell) (~5 hours of life)
- 15” display
HP dv6t series ($1,017.99 after $150 ‘savings’)
- Processor: Core 2 Duo (2.26 GHz, 1066 MHz frontside bus)
- Hard Disk: 320GB 5400rpm
- RAM: 3GB (DDR2)
- Graphics: Built-In Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
- Wireless Support: 802.11n
- Battery: Lithium Ion Battery (12 cell) (~7 hours of life)
- 16” display
The PC build outs might at first seem like clear winners for a couple of reasons:
- They feature larger numbers in the RAM and hard disk category
- They feature larger displays
- They are ~150 dollars cheaper
In terms of price point, they certainly have the Mac beat, albeit by a relatively small amount. And the hard disk size difference is certainly striking, but with disk space as cheap as it is today, color me unimpressed by that difference. But despite the larger displays, hard disks, and RAM totals, both PCs feature lower quality, slower performing RAM, batteries that either don’t last as long as the Mac or adversely affect the laptop’s form factor, and inferior graphics card technology. By comparison, the Mac features high quality components across the board. Even on paper, the value difference in terms of dollars spent is almost a wash.
Of course none of this takes into account the more intangible elements of hardware selection. I recently went PC shopping with my Dad (pushing 60 now), and while we ended up buying him a $300 Toshiba laptop that served his modest computing needs nicely, he very badly wanted to go with a Mac. He appreciated the quality of its physical construction and was enamored by the design of OS X. His exact words were “I knew it was a better computer before I turned it on”. Well said, old man.
While it is certainly possible to buy a cheaper PC than a Mac, you can’t find a PC of comparable quality for much less, even when just considering on-paper descriptions of the hardware. When you start to factor in the quality of the overall user experience, the difference comes into focus quickly.
