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• The Apple Mac Cost Misconception

  Note: This isn’t a guide to evangelize and convert people from Windows to Mac OS X. It’s a guide to give people options. If you’re happy with what you’ve got, great! But if you’re interested in alternatives read on. After my first article on Macs and OS X, there were several readers who just down right bashed Macs for pricing and OS X without solid reasoning or legitimate hand’s on experience of Macs. So this is a follow-up. Let’s get straight to the point. Tom’s Hardware isn’t about being a "PC fanboy." It’s about finding the best hardware, revealing up and coming tech and debunking predetermined notions. That begs the question, especially here: what’s so special about a Mac anyway? Here’s the short answer: nothing really, just some very elegant aluminum chassis designs. The key, is the operating system. Even still, let’s settle this issue about price. In a recent comment, someone came up with an analogy that a Mac isn’t really a BMW, but rather a Hyundai dressed up in a nice exterior. One problem: Hyundai’s don’t have nice European car exteriors. And to generalize it this way shows the lack of willing to understand the core of the Mac: it’s operating system. Because that’s really what it’s about. But for the sake of these first few pages, let’s leave Mac OS X out of the picture for now. Let’s just see where Apple comes in on hardware. In terms of hardware, there’s nothing really special about a Mac aside from elegant designs, be it a Mac Pro or MacBook Pro, that makes it incredibly more worthwhile than the PC equivalent. And there’s no doubt that you can get an equally equipped PC, or build one yourself, for less money. In fact, I mentioned this in my previous article, although some people seemed to have completely missed the page where I complained about Apple’s outrageous prices altogether. However, building a PC to do the same isn’t the point, because you can always buy a cheaper car to get you from A to B. Instead, let’s see what you can get for $2000, from Apple and from others. For $2000, do you really get much less? Let’s take a quick look at some of Apple’s competition and their pricing structure compared to Apple’s: We went to Dell’s website and picked out what Dell indicated was a serious gaming laptop. We also took the XPS model that was priced the same as the baseline MacBook Pro. Let’s take a look at the results. Apple vs. Dell Price Comparison $1999 MacBook Pro$1999 Dell XPS M1730 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo 2 GB of RAM2 GB of Shared RAM NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 256 MBNVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT with Shared MB 200 GB HDD200 GB HDD 15.4-inch LED LCD17-inch LCD 1440x9001920x1200 Dual-Layer DVD BurnerDual-Layer DVD Burner 802.11n Wi-Fi802.11g Wi-Fi Bluetooth Built in WebcamBuilt in Webcam Backlit KB with Ambient Sensor        Optical Audio Output/InputSPDIF through Dongle Dual-Link DVI OutputDual-Link DVI Output Remote MagSafe PowerStandard female/male Jack 5.4 lbs10.6 lbs 1 inch thick2 inch thick For the most part, the two systems are comparable, indicating that at least for a laptop, Apple’s pricing fits in line with comparable hardware. Certain things like shared memory for graphics leave some performance desires for the XPS, but the XPS has a strong leg up on the MacBook Pro with the larger screen size. Apple’s MacBook Pro has several small advantages over the XPS, mainly with the MagSafe connector and it’s nearly take-for-granted use. I have seen several incidences where people have tripped over or through someone else’s MacBook Pro power cord and the MagSafe design literally saved the laptops from flying. The biggest differences are the screen size, weight, thickness, and shared memory. For absolute performance, the screen size won’t matter here, but the slow shared graphics memory on the XPS will. For a laptop that Dell indicates is a gaming machine, shared memory is a disappointment, as graphics is an important area for 3D gaming. For another comparison, let’s look at the MacBook Air to VoodooPC’s Envy 133: Apple vs. VoodooPC Price Comparison $1799 MacBook Air$2099 Envy 133 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo 2 GB of Shared RAM2 GB of Shared RAM Intel GMA X3100 Shared RAMIntel GMA X3100 Shared RAM 80 GB ATA HDD80 GB HDD 13.3-inch LED LCD13.3-inch LCD 1280x8001280x800 External eSATA Super Multi Drive 802.11n Wi-Fi802.11n Wi-Fi BluetoothBluetooth Built in WebcamBuilt in Webcam Backlit KB with Ambient SensorBacklit KB with Ambient Sensor DVI OutputHDMI MagSafe PowerStandard female/male Jack 3.0 lbs3.37 lbs (with SSD) 0.16 to 0.75 inch thick0.70 inch thick iLife ’08 SuiteNo software package At this point, the Envy is $300 more expensive than the MacBook Air. Although the Envy 133 does include an external optical drive, tacking on Apple’s quite expensive $99 MacBook Air SuperDrive to the purchase of the MacBook Air still leaves a $200 gap. Bottom line: Macs aren’t "way more" expensive than PCs. So where do things get really hairy with Apple? Upgrades. Apple really stabs you in the face when you’re upgrading your Mac. All goes well when you want to buy a base system, but as soon as you want to add options, be prepared to be murdered. I’ll talk about this later. Let’s take a look at desktops.

• Pentium 4 Systems: To Buy or Not To Buy / To Cry Or Not to Cry

  We at Tom's Hardware are known for doing in-depth reviews of PC-technologies and PC-components. However, we still haven't tested any complete system yet. There are a lot of reasons that have kept me from doing so, which I don't want to get into right now, because it would go far beyond the boundaries of this article. While I may not have reviewed any OEM-systems yet, I still need to keep track of what is going on in the PC-business, which means reading computer publications and checking the latest offers of the big OEMs as Dell, Gateway, Compaq, IBM, HP and Micron. Recently, when reading my favorite computer magazine, the German PC-gaming publication 'Gamestar', I was startled by an ad from Dell, offering a complete Pentium 4 system for the surprisingly low price of only $1500. I hardly believed my eyes, because I had considered Pentium 4 systems to be much more expensive. With that price, I thought, Pentium 4 is even able to compete against Athlon systems. Thus I had a closer look at this system, which goes by the name 'Dimension 8100'. After reading the equipment list of this system, I almost got angry. This particular wannabe-high end Dimension 8100 system, targeted to the rather critical German PC-buyer, had indeed teamed up a Pentium 4 1.3 GHz with NVIDIA's slowest TNT2 M64 3D-decelerator! Pentium 4 Plus TNT2 M64? Insanity Par Excellence! I was shocked. How could any sane person castrate the almost only strength of Intel's expensive Pentium 4 processor in 3D gaming with this pathetic graphics card? This seemed like a typical case of taking customers for fools, which really upset me. Instantly I went to my console and checked Dell's website to find out more details. I also looked at HP's, IBM's and Gateway's Pentium 4 system offers and found the very same situation. All those great OEMs are trying to ride Intel's Pentium 4 marketing pony by selling 'reasonably priced' Pentium 4 systems in highly mediocre configurations. The inexperienced customer might indeed get fooled by Intel's juicy promises of this supposed high-end processor, and completely overlook that the other components in those systems ensure mediocre performance. Time To Wake Up For me, this situation didn't only smell like the material for an article, it actually stunk. I decided that I had turned the blind eye towards those big, powerful and rich OEMs long enough. It was finally time to wake up. At first I decided to make an editorial (blurb) out of it, but then I remembered that my readers expect as well as deserve more detail. Thus I came up with a different idea. A decent article obviously requires some hard test facts, but I certainly didn't think that acquiring any of the above-mentioned mishap-systems was in any way justifiable. However, who says that I had to test those actual systems? Haven't we got enough components in our lab to actually build-up systems with equivalent components? Those could be tested, and using our own lab high-performance configurations would definitely ensure the best results that can be scored with those boxes. Buying An OEM System Before I go into more detail of the actual testing, I'd like to have a look at the actual purchase of an OEM-system in comparison to building up one's own box from scratch. I am currently not quite aware of the statistics, but I guess that a large number of the Tom's Hardware Guide readers are actually people who prefer to build up their own system. Still I am sure that there's a large number of readers who have either already purchased OEM-boxes before, or who are currently considering to do so. The obvious disadvantage of buying an OEM-system is the fact that you can't quite tailor it the way you would like it. Although most of the large OEMs are nowadays offering pretty fancy options to customize their systems within a rather wide range, it still remains a fact that some important components of a system cannot be chosen by the potential buyer. I suppose that most overclockers will disregard OEM-boxes, simply because there is no way to choose a particular motherboard and in many cases the motherboard found in OEM-systems is a stripped-down version of some (often rather cheap) retail-motherboard without any tweaking options whatsoever. HP may be the big exception, being known to use Asus-motherboards in a large number of their systems. Other components, like special sound cards, mice, keyboards or especially monitors can also only be chosen within a rather limited range. Basically, an OEM-system takes away quite a bit of your freedom, which understandably is very important to so many of us, including myself. On the other hand OEM-boxes do have a lot of advantages. In most cases, the price is considerably lower than that of a comparable self-built system. OEM-systems come with a warranty, a help-line and other forms of support, making the life of less experienced users much less difficult and giving you some feeling of safety. You also hardly pay for the operating system and the other software supplied with an OEM-box, which costs the owner of a self-built system a whole lot of money. All in all it's always worth having a look at the latest OEM-system offers, because you might save money, nerves, you don't have to fight with incompatible hardware and in many cases you can later upgrade your OEM-box with the components you prefer. Two Pentium 4 OEM-Boxes Vs. Two Athlon OEM-Boxes The chapter above stated that it might well make sense to prefer an OEM-system to a self-made PC, but you still need to make sure you don't get a bad apple. Unfortunately there is no relying on any particular brand name, because in the end all those OEMs are merely interested in your hard earned money. Each OEM would gladly sell you a complete nonsense-system. If you don't believe me, I suggest you take a look at the websites of Dell, Gateway, IBM and HP. Some of the offered systems may only make you smile, others may even upset you too. I am actually not trying to start a crusade against OEMs here. It is certainly true that most of them sell a bunch of systems that aren't worth its money, but rely purely on e.g. Intel's marketing. However, at each OEM you will also find very reasonably priced and well-equipped systems that seem very attractive to any of us. It simply requires experience and knowledge to make the right decision. Unfortunately, inexperienced and uneducated buyers will often fall into the marketing-trap and go for the wrong box. This article is supposed to give you a couple of examples. For my comparison I chose two systems from Dell, a system from Gateway and a system from Micron. The two Pentium 4 boxes I chose had to be from Dell for two reasons. First of all it was a Dell ad that had inspired me to write this article in the first place, secondly Dell is the one OEM who is still in bed with Intel while ignoring AMD's Athlon and Duron processors as if they wouldn't exist. This article will show if Michael Dell and his company are indeed following the philanthropic ideas that are always displayed so sweet and nicely in their television commercials. I decided that the low-end box of the 'opposing' systems should come from Gateway. Gateway has started to work with AMD a while ago and it is at least offering a decent midrange-solution equipped with Athlon or Duron processors. However, Gateway isn't any better than Dell in terms of the high-end systems it offers. You will find the same or even worse Pentium 4 system configurations at Gateway as you would find them at Dell, with the only difference that Gateway doesn't seem to sell you any of that crappy PC600 RDRAM along with it. IBM and HP are both also offering their Pentium 4 solutions and you will find the same kind of situation as with Dell and Gateway. What particularly annoyed me with HP was the fact that each Pentium 4 system came with the slow PC600 RDRAM and I couldn't find a way to choose the faster and much more sensible PC800 RDRAM. The system that competes with Dell's high-end Pentium 4 system comes from Micron and it could only be Micron. While Athlon systems with AMD760 chipset and DDR-memory are virtually unavailable from any other large OEM, Micron is shipping its Millennia MAX XP series for quite some time now. The other interesting fact about Micron is that it seems to completely disregard Pentium 4 right now, which I consider as rather remarkable. Compaq would also have been a good candidate for an Athlon system, but I decided against a Presario simply because they have several proprietary solutions that make upgrading difficult to impossible. Let's now have a look at the systems I chose:

• AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual Core Processor... (3 offers) Online shop Price Amazon.com $190.32 Unbeatable Sale $224.10 Buy.com $224.10 See more products System Hardware AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60 HP nx6325 ATI Mobility Radeon X1150 1x 1 GB DDR2-667 (CL 5-5-5-15) AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60 MSI S271 ATI Mobility Radeon X1100 2x 512 MB DDR2-500 (CL 4-4-4-12) Intel Pentium M 780 LG LW60 - JDPG Intel Pentium M 760 ATI Mobility Radeon X600 - 128 MB 2x 512 MB DDR2-533 (CL 4.0-4-4-15) Intel Core Duo T2500 Asus A6000 - A6JA ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 - 512 MB 2x 512 MB DDR2-533 (CL 4.0-4-4-15) Intel Core Duo T2400 Asus W5F Intel 945 GM (GMA950) 2x 512 MB DDR2-533 (CL 4.0-4-4-12) Intel Core Duo T2400 Dell Inspiron 9400 Intel 945 GM (GMA950) 2x 512 MB DDR2-667 (CL 5.0-5-5-15) AMD Turion 64 ML-40/MT-37 HP nx6125 ATI Mobility Radeon X300 - 128 MB 2x 512 MB DDR333 (CL 2.5-3-3-7) AMD Turion 64 MT-37 MSI S270 Ati Mobility Radeon X200m 2x 512 MB DDR200 (CL 3-3-3-8) System Software & Drivers OS Windows XP Professional 5.10.2600, Service Pack 2 DirectX Version 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904) Graphics Driver notebook manufacturer Chipset Driver notebook manufacturer This chart shows an overview of the benchmarks we used and the specific settings. Video Pinnacle Studio 10 Plus Version: 10.1.2.2150 from: 352x288 MPEG-2 41 MB to: 720x576 MPEG-2 95 MB Encoding and Transition Rendering to MPEG-2/DVD no Audio TMPGEnc 3.0 Xpress Version: 3.0.4.24 (no Audio) 182 MB VOB MPEG2-source (704x576) 16:9 DivX 6.1 Version: 6.1 (4 Logical CPUs) Profile: High Definition Profile Multipass, 3000 kbit/s Encoding mode: Insane Quality Windows Media Encoder Version: 9.00.00.2980 Windows Media Video 9 Advanced Profile 720x480 AVI to WMV (426 MB) 320x240 (29.97 fps) 282 kBps streaming Applications AVG Anti-Virus 7.1 Version: 7.1.0.352 (File) Version: 7.1.362 (Program) (3.85 GB, 14.007 Files, 1.177 Folders) ABBYY FineReader Version: 8.0.0.714 Pro Part#4591 convert PDF to DOC 950 pages Book "War and Peace" PDF-Version Adobe Photoshop CS 2 Version: 9.0 VT-Runtime Script Rendering from 5 Pictures (66 MB, 7 Filters) Autodesk 3D Studio Max Version: 8.0 Modell "Stadium" 6 Frames HTDV 1920 x 1080 Applications (Multitasking) Multitasking I Winrar (181 MB, 23 Files, 1 Folder) Lame (10:41 Minutes) Multitasking II Winrar (181 MB, 23 Files, 1 Folder) Lame 3.97 Beta 2 Ogg (10:41 Minutes) WMV (720x480, 32 Sec) Multitasking III Finereader (50 Pages PDF-Book) AVG Anti-Virus (3.85 GB, 14.007 Files, 1.177 Folders) Mobile Mark 2005 DVD playback 2005 InterVideo WinDVD 6.0 Wireless browsing 2005 Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 Mobile Mark 2005 Office productivity 2002SE Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1 Netscape Communicator 6.0.1 Macromedia Flash 5.0 Microsoft Word 2002 Microsoft Excel 2002 Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 Microsoft Outlook 2002 McAfee VirusScan 5.13 WinZip 8.0 Mobile Mark 2005 Reader 2002SE Netscape Communicator 6.01 Sysmark 2004 SE Internet Content Creation Adobe After Effects 5.5 Adobe Photoshop 7.01 Adobe Premiere 6.5 Discreet 3ds max 5.1 Macromedia Dreamweaver MX Macromedia Flash MX Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9 Series McAfee VirusScan 7.0 WinZip 8.1 Sysmark 2004 SE Office Productivity Adobe Acrobat 5.0.5 Microsoft Access 2002 SP-2 Microsoft Excel 2002 SP-2 Microsoft Outlook 2002 SP-2 Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 SP-2 Microsoft Word 2002 SP-2 Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1 ScanSoft Dragon NaturallySpeaking 6 Preferred McAfee VirusScan 7.0 WinZip 8.1 Synthetic SiSoftware Sandra 2005 Version 2005.7.10.60 SR2 CPU Test = MultiMedia / CPU Arithmetic Memory Test = Bandwidth Benchmark Finally, we provide information on the special benchmarks used to compare single and dual-core processors in laptops.