Showing messages 1 through 5 of 5.

• looking at numbers...
  2004-05-19 00:31:11  fneunemann [Reply | View]
  
  
  Last October I did a price comparison myself when I was thinking about the purchase of a G5 Mac to replace my old G3 b&w. In order to avoid comparing oranges to bananas I was looking for a brand name PC with similar computing power as the G5 2x2 GHz and picked a Dell with dual Pentium Xeon 3.3 GHz and similar "accessories".
  
  In fact I was unable configure a Dell exactly as the G5 and ended up with 2 configurations that came close to the G5 and the result? The price difference was Euro 300 in configuration 1 and Euro 700 in configuration 2, the G5 Mac was cheaper in both cases! I did not include a monitor in these calculations because with both machines the same monitor can be used using a DVI connection. However I preferred the Apple 17" display.
  
  Of course I bought the 2x2GHz G5 and I am still extremely happy it. :-)
  
  The PowerBook to PC notebook comparison is a different story. Here I think Apple still has to do a lot to lower prices and more importantly, increase the quality of their PowerBooks.
  
  A month ago I had to return a G4 PowerBook 1.25 GHz (for full refund) after 3 failed repair attempts by Apple. The display as well as the keyboard were way below standard in a notebook with a Euro 3500 price tag.

• looking at numbers...
  2004-05-17 19:01:56  funkyfido [Reply | View]
  
  
  $2000? 2300 for the Dell? Least expensive, QUALITY Flat panel From Apple is $699 (See Below) Did you add a DVD Burner to the Dell? If not Subtract $200 Dollars from any of these configurations. Low End G5 with a DVD Playing/CD burning Combo drive + 17" Apple Flat Panel (Quality monitor, pure digital interface) + 1GB of RAM ($229 from RamJet shop around you can probably get a better price. 512 MB of RAM $109. TOTAL: $2527 with 1.5 Gb of RAM. $2407 with 512 MB of Ram/17" QUALITY Flat Panel. Apple doesn't sell a 19" monitor.
  
  $699.00
  17" diagonal viewable image size
  1280 x 1024 optimal resolution
  16.7 million colors
  17.3 x 17.6 x 6.9-9.8 inches
  14.6 pounds
  Two USB ports
  Apple Display Connector
  
  
  G5 - base configuration
  $1,799.00
  1.6GHz PowerPC G5
  800MHz frontside bus
  512K L2 cache
  256MB DDR333 128-bit SDRAM
  Expandable to 4GB SDRAM
  80GB Serial ATA
  SuperDrive
  Three PCI Slots
  NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
  64MB DDR video memory
  56K internal modem
  
  1. Don't buy ram from Apple buy it from a number of different vendors.
  2. You don't have to buy a monitor from Apple.
  Even though the quality of that monitor is probably better than you are getting from Dell. All of Apple's monitors are excellent as far as quality goes...even the low end. They are also price competitive with QUALITY flat panel monitors from other vendors.
  
  
  When you talk about high end go price those computers with duel Xeon processors or Duel AMD 64s. Duel 900 & 1Ghz sytem busses. That's right each processor has a 900Mhz or 1Ghz system bus. Windows XP Pro. That is what you can compare Apple Duel G5's with.
  
  Mid range G5
  $2,499.00
  Dual 1.8GHz PowerPC G5
  900MHz frontside bus/processor
  512K L2 cache/processor
  512MB DDR400 128-bit SDRAM
  Expandable to 8GB SDRAM
  160GB Serial ATA
  SuperDrive
  Three PCI-X Slots
  NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
  64MB DDR video memory
  56K internal modem
  
  
  High end G5
  $2,999.00
  Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
  1GHz frontside bus/processor
  512K L2 cache/processor
  512MB DDR400 128-bit SDRAM
  Expandable to 8GB SDRAM
  160GB Serial ATA
  SuperDrive
  Three PCI-X Slots
  ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
  64MB DDR video memory
  56K internal modem
  
  Got Gigabit ethernet? iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, Garageband?
  I don't know what web page you were looking at.
  

• looking at numbers...
  2004-05-17 19:00:53  funkyfido [Reply | View]
  
  
  $2000? 2300 for the Dell? Least expensive, QUALITY Flat panel From Apple is $699 (See Below) Did you add a DVD Burner to the Dell? If not Subtract $200 Dollars from any of these configurations. Low End G5 with a DVD Playing/CD burning Combo drive + 17" Apple Flat Panel (Quality monitor, pure digital interface) + 1GB of RAM ($229 from RamJet shop around you can probably get a better price. 512 MB of RAM $109. TOTAL: $2527 with 1.5 Gb of RAM. $2407 with 512 MB of Ram/17" QUALITY Flat Panel. Apple doesn't sell a 19" monitor.
  
  $699.00
  17" diagonal viewable image size
  1280 x 1024 optimal resolution
  16.7 million colors
  17.3 x 17.6 x 6.9-9.8 inches
  14.6 pounds
  Two USB ports
  Apple Display Connector
  
  
  G5 - base configuration
  $1,799.00
  1.6GHz PowerPC G5
  800MHz frontside bus
  512K L2 cache
  256MB DDR333 128-bit SDRAM
  Expandable to 4GB SDRAM
  80GB Serial ATA
  SuperDrive
  Three PCI Slots
  NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
  64MB DDR video memory
  56K internal modem
  
  1. Don't buy ram from Apple buy it from a number of different vendors.
  2. You don't have to buy a monitor from Apple.
  Even though the quality of that monitor is probably better than you are getting from Dell. All of Apple's monitors are excellent as far as quality goes...even the low end. They are also price competitive with QUALITY flat panel monitors from other vendors.
  
  
  When you talk about high end go price those computers with duel Xeon processors or Duel AMD 64s. Duel 900 & 1Ghz sytem busses. That's right each processor has a 900Mhz or 1Ghz system bus. Windows XP Pro. That is what you can compare Apple Duel G5's with.
  
  Mid range G5
  $2,499.00
  Dual 1.8GHz PowerPC G5
  900MHz frontside bus/processor
  512K L2 cache/processor
  512MB DDR400 128-bit SDRAM
  Expandable to 8GB SDRAM
  160GB Serial ATA
  SuperDrive
  Three PCI-X Slots
  NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
  64MB DDR video memory
  56K internal modem
  
  
  High end G5
  $2,999.00
  Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
  1GHz frontside bus/processor
  512K L2 cache/processor
  512MB DDR400 128-bit SDRAM
  Expandable to 8GB SDRAM
  160GB Serial ATA
  SuperDrive
  Three PCI-X Slots
  ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
  64MB DDR video memory
  56K internal modem
  
  Got Gigabit ethernet? iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, Garageband?
  I don't know what web page you were looking at.
  

• looking at numbers...
  2004-05-17 10:14:25  puggsly [Reply | View]
  
  
  You will have a hard time convincing anyone at the extreme high end or the ultra low end as trying to create "equivalent" systems is not possible.
  
  I can show a dozen examples of PC laptops comparing them to every mac laptop and show the benefits you get from apple. You might post up a specific Windows Laptop that you don't feel Apple can compare to and why but this will be a tough fight to win.
  
  The same is true on the entry level. How much does dedicated video memory add or subtract? How fast is the G4 vs the Pentium 4. How do the iLife applications compare to windows equivalents? Suffice it to say that you can get a very useful computer for less than a grand Mac or PC.
  
  But if you want to show Apple's price weakness. Price out a killer mid-range system $1200-$1800 (US). The air gets really thin there for mac users because we can't offer much more performance than we do at $800. This is where Apple gets it's ass handed to it. Sure you can argue the power of the G4 1.25 vs 2-2.4 but up over 3Ghz? And yes Apple ships with a good video card but by moving up to this price range the PC can step up to a great video card.
  
  This could all change very quickly with the 970fx potentially moving through the Mac line but until that happens there is quite a hole between 1.25 G4 and even a 1.6Ghz G5.
  
  

• Yeah Europe is getting ripped off
  2004-05-17 09:05:49  strikeman [Reply | View]
  
  
  Check out the American Apple Store - the basic 1.6GHz G5 is US$1800 which is €1500. You are paying a lot more in Europe for the same stuff.
  
  And I'd question how you've configured your Dell. When I try the configure a Dell to the same specs at Dell.com I get $3208 vs $3498 for the Mac. Hardly a massive difference.
  
  When I was buying a notebook a Powerbook was more than cost effective as compared to your name brand Intel books.