DELL compares its prices with Macs

kny3twalker · Aug 10, 2010

yg17 said:
If you need to buy a PC laptop, Lenovo Thinkpad. I've never owned one, but I've only heard good things about their build quality and support. That's where I'd go if I needed one.

This is pretty much true of most business class notebooks. And the problem is there with the comparisons to Dell Inspirons. Apples MacBook Pros are more comparable to business class and premium consumer notebooks. These notebooks are usually better engineered with better quality materials used in construction.
The Dell comparison should be the XPS, Latitude, or Precision versus the MacBook Pro. Then the prices will be much more similar especially when Apple's Back to School Promotion trumps Dell's.

chris2k5 · Aug 10, 2010

Sequin said:
Top selling brand, but 75% of people still buy a PC over a Mac. They're cheaper and that makes parents happier.

Did you not read his post? Top selling brand AMONGST STUDENTS. We don't care about the other people in this thread.

And parents aren't happier from my experience. Dell and HP which are quite popular among students at my school have major issues. I had a Dell and it was a pain to deal with. Within 3 months of school, it started slowing down dramatically.

Then by the second semester, plastic pieces were already falling off. It just isn't high quality stuff. This is the Latitude line too so it is their more high end line.

Bernard SG · Aug 10, 2010

This iMac v. Inspiron comparison is blatantly misinforming:

- The iMac' Graphic card on the $1499 model is a ATI Radeon HD 5670 with 512MB not ATI Radeon HD 4670 with 256MB;
- iMac has a 802.11n WiFi card;
- iMac supports multi touch via magic mouse & magic trackpad;
- iMac is shipped with wireless keyboard and magic mouse, which the comparison conveniently calls "standard";
- iMac is shipped with iLife.

DVD9 · Aug 10, 2010

ashy7 said:
The Mac does have a premium, it is a premium product.

Have you actually tried to build a Dell with exactly the same specs as the Mac, including the parts mentioned above?

Dell does not sell an LCD screen with a resolution as low as the Apple MBP 13".

I don't know of any PC manufacturer that does.

Hard drive choices all exceed Apples.

Apple's touchpad is still king by a lot though. Truly amazing that every PC manufacturer has overlooked this critical piece of laptop equipment.
--

revelated · Aug 10, 2010

chris2k5 said:
Did you not read his post? Top selling brand AMONGST STUDENTS. We don't care about the other people in this thread.

And parents aren't happier from my experience. Dell and HP which are quite popular among students at my school have major issues. I had a Dell and it was a pain to deal with. Within 3 months of school, it started slowing down dramatically.

Then by the second semester, plastic pieces were already falling off. It just isn't high quality stuff. This is the Latitude line too so it is their more high end line.

Felt the same way about my work laptop when I got it (sharing the experience). XP and Dell machines just do not play nice. It's like they're guaranteed to slow down eventually to the point of being unusable.

Windows 7 on the other hand is solid. My Dell E6400 is the only office laptop with 7 on it and it runs circles around every other laptop, even the CFO's brand new HP. Build quality solid too. I use it as a development/VM machine. MacBook as a web development/demo machine.

The Beatles · Aug 10, 2010

aethelbert said:
802.11n is pretty much the standard these days, so there's no difference there. A bluetooth chip and LEDs under the keyboard really aren't worth much in part value, not even the $50 combined cost for the two which seems to be the norm for most manufacturers offering both.

Things like that certainly make the gap less huge, but there's no way that it brings them to equal prices.

the value of something isnt based on the cost of parts. or how long it took to make something. for instance, a world class designer could make a breath taking design in say, sixteen hours. but the design would be worth a lot more than an hourly rate of those sixteen hours.

a led behind a keyboard might be minimal in cost, but effectiveness, usefulness and other reasons could escalate the cost past the sum of parts. If i can make you a time machine out of old gum, dog crap and a penny, im not going to charge you a penny. im going to charge you a billion dollars and thats just for a one way ticket.

kny3twalker · Aug 10, 2010

DVD9 said:
Dell does not sell an LCD screen with a resolution as low as the Apple MBP 13".

I don't know of any PC manufacturer that does.

Hard drive choices all exceed Apples.

Apple's touchpad is still king by a lot though. Truly amazing that every PC manufacturer has overlooked this critical piece of laptop equipment.
--

Many PCs laptops I have seen with larger displays have smaller resolutions such as 15.6" LCDs with 1366x768 resolution or 14.1" LCDs with the same 1280x800 resolution.
The 13" MBP has a higher PPI than the base 15" MBP.

cluthz · Aug 10, 2010

Funny how they compare the Studio series to a MacBook Pro.
Dell Studio is the low range series, made of cheap plastics.
Latitude however are really nice computers, but they costs as much as MacBook Pros.

Rithem · Aug 11, 2010

iLog.Genius said:
Fair comparison and it will come down to two things:

Battery Life (I think Apple/OS X takes this category)
Design (Again, totally preference but many will take the MacBook Pro design over the Studio design)
Operating System (personal preference)

Nothing new here, almost every company will advertise that their computer is cheaper option and in most cases it's true but will ultimately come down to those 3 factors I mentioned above.

I agree with most of the points except the OS. I think Windows 7 is actually really nice... but time machine and OSX is just too much to ignore.

niuniu · Aug 11, 2010

mark28 said:
Macbook & Macbook Pro's are now the best selling laptops in the USA among students. So no suprise Windows and now Dell decided to do a Pc vs Mac thing

Source? And please don't use some silly 1200 student survey in your reply.

Bernard SG · Aug 11, 2010

niuniu said:
Source? And please don't use some silly 1200 student survey in your reply.

The survey was performed by Student Monitor, which Fortune cites as "the best source we could find, a Ridgewood, N.J.-based research firm called Student Monitor that has been tracking higher education computer purchases for 22 years."

And as I already mentioned twice in the other thread, a sample-size of 1,200 students is totally adequate and would produce a 1.3% margin of error for the 27% share of Apple, granted that the sample is random and properly structured - which is what I would expect from a reputed 22 years old research firm that is regularly hired by Fortune 500 companies.

andrew086 · Aug 11, 2010

Gee, I like how here they don't even show the clock speed of the processors, but they show it for the one where it's higher (even though it's the turbo boost speed, it is quad core so I'll give them that.) But an AMD dual core 1.6 GHz processor (Inspiron Zino) does not compare to a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo (Mac Mini). They also said that all of their desktops come with McAfee when Macs don't even need antivirus AND they left out the fact that Macs have iLife (how is that not software?).

I also like how they made it our how their in-home service is better than Apples. Good luck getting them to do anything, you're just going to be talking to someone over the phone from India, they won't understand the issue, then you'll get transfered 20 times, then you'll get frustrated in hang up.

skiltrip · Aug 11, 2010

Obese Lobsters said:
For me the difference maker between the two laptops is the addition of magsafe on the macbooks. I can't tell you how many times I've tripped over the power cord.

I second this. When I first got my mac, I was thinking, seriously, how many times do I trip over my cord? Well, I've done it at least 3 times since I got this MBP in April. I guess I trip over my computer cord more than I thought. A couple of those trips would have ripped the Mac off the table if not for that genius power connector of Apple's.

DVD9 · Aug 11, 2010

kny3twalker said:
Many PCs laptops I have seen with larger displays have smaller resolutions such as 15.6" LCDs with 1366x768 resolution or 14.1" LCDs with the same 1280x800 resolution.

I don't even know where to look in order to find a PC laptop with a 1280 x 800 resolution. Perhaps Wal-Mart?

Dell's Latitude 13 has a 13.3" LCD with a resolution of 1366x768. This on a laptop that can be purchased for $459-

And Dell has excellent LCD panels on their laptops. Bright and sharp.
--

MacBoobsPro · Aug 11, 2010

Dont most PC manufacturers get paid to cover their products in stickers from Intel, Microsoft, ATi et al?

Thats why all the cheap computers are covered in the them. It helps keep the costs down.

panzer06 · Aug 11, 2010

Bernard SG said:
This iMac v. Inspiron comparison is blatantly misinforming:

- The iMac' Graphic card on the $1499 model is a ATI Radeon HD 5670 with 512MB not ATI Radeon HD 4670 with 256MB;
- iMac has a 802.11n WiFi card;
- iMac supports multi touch via magic mouse & magic trackpad;
- iMac is shipped with wireless keyboard and magic mouse, which the comparison conveniently calls "standard";
- iMac is shipped with iLife.

I'm sure they were comparing the prior midrange iMac. And no companies are not that careful when listing competitive specs. Our daughter's HS just standardized on the white MB. It's a great little system that costs under $1000 and comes with OS X. For kids macs are so much easier to keep clean of the spyware junk that slows down windows. I'm constantly reloading my grandkids' window 7 systems. Even if I could get a cheap windows laptop I wouldn't. The only windows system I own is a powerful gaming system that costs $1500.

Cheers,

Cheers,

UCF-ENG · Aug 11, 2010

Haven't read through this entire thread but I just wanted to add my thoughts on this...

Love OSX (and the ability to run Windows & OSX on the same machine), but it would be much easier to stomach a purchase if Apple knocked $300-500 off their entire MBP line. They would see much greater adoption of the platform as well.

I know the Dell has shoddy build quality and customer service, I know the i7 in the Dell is the cheaper quad core, I know the screen is better on the MBP, I know the batter life is better (when running OSX), I know the video card is better, etc.

But $1250 better, TWICE the cost? I'm not sure I can justify $1250 for marginally better hardware no matter how much better OSX is.

I know Apple is a for-profit corporation, but I think they are being a bit short sighted. They are ridding a wave right now, they are "in", they are popular, if they were smart they would cut their margins a little (and would STILL have higher margins than their PC competitors) and would seize some of this momentum to grab some market share.

Lets look at where MBs are selling well. College Students! Why? Because most college students buy their computers in the Fall. What happens in the Fall? Apple offers a free iPod touch ($200) on top of the standard student discount ($100-$200), which adds up to a value of $300 to $400. When we see Apple adding that kind value/discount to their product offering they move a lot more product.

Between this and Apple's apparent lack of vision by tying themselves (for too long) to AT&T and ceding market share to Android, I'm not sure what to think.

And before you say something like "Apple doesn't care about market share", save your breath, that is a completely ridiculous statement. Market share MATTERS, it matters to developers, which make programs, which make the product more valuable, which MATTERS to consumers...

/rant

Plutonius · Aug 11, 2010

UCF-ENG said:
And before you say something like "Apple doesn't care about market share", save your breath, that is a completely ridiculous statement. Market share MATTERS, it matters to developers, which make programs, which make the product more valuable, which MATTERS to consumers...

/rant

Apple only cares about earnings. Dell computers are cheaper, they have a larger market share, they sell more and.... Dell earnings / stock prices are terrible compared to Apple. Apple is a company who's main goal is to earn money for it's shareholders.

Marat · Aug 11, 2010

niuniu said:
Source? And please don't use some silly 1200 student survey in your reply.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/989629/

UCF-ENG · Aug 11, 2010

Plutonius said:
Apple only cares about earnings. Dell computers are cheaper, they have a larger market share, they sell more and.... Dell earnings / stock prices are terrible compared to Apple. Apple is a company who's main goal is to earn money for it's shareholders.

I agree that they only care about earnings, I just disagree (apparently) about how they can increase those earnings. I think that Apple needs to cut margins a little in order to increase sales, and INCREASE earnings.

If Apple wants to stay in a high end niche, that's their progative, but they will never realize their mass market potential by only serving a niche.

They could solve a lot of this by expanding the MacBook line, using a plastic body (maybe black instead of white) and offer better processors, dedicated video, etc. from within a lower-end MacBook line. Then continuing to have the MacBook Pro line, but instead make it a truly "high-end", workstation type of machine.

bobr1952 · Aug 11, 2010

StephenHuang said:
Please do not compare apple to banana....

I really do agree with that--personally I think it is pointless to compare the two. I've mentioned before that it all comes down to personal preference--do you want a Mac? Or do you want a PC? To me, it really isn't all that complicated.

Mrs HBF · Aug 11, 2010

Obese Lobsters said:
For me the difference maker between the two laptops is the addition of magsafe on the macbooks. I can't tell you how many times I've tripped over the power cord.

What is magsafe?

kny3twalker · Aug 11, 2010

DVD9 said:
I don't even know where to look in order to find a PC laptop with a 1280 x 800 resolution. Perhaps Wal-Mart?

Dell's Latitude 13 has a 13.3" LCD with a resolution of 1366x768. This on a laptop that can be purchased for $459-

And Dell has excellent LCD panels on their laptops. Bright and sharp.
--

KirkL · Aug 11, 2010

I used to have a Dell Laptop. Now I have a MBP. Even though the MBP is wayy more expensive, I would die before parting with my MBP

TopHatPlus · Aug 11, 2010

You people and your numbers you need to wake UP!!!

yes a mac is 1000-1500 more then a dell, dell builds a terrible computer, lets see dell build there own operating system that will change a generation of computer users, and build a 1 piece unibody labtop out of aluminum, and lets see how much this computer costs?

YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!!!!

my parents recently purchased a 2010 cadilac cts4 worth over $50 000

a fully loaded hyundai is how much? like $20 000

so would you rather have 2 brand new fully loaded hyundais or 1 cadilac?

i have driven the cadilac and i would pick it 10x over

all you people see is numbers, for people that actually use there computers for large quantitys of processing and want it to last a while, there computer regardless the brand will cost them a few grand.

What mp3 player do you use?

I remember my first cd player was a high end sony walkman, they were INSANELY expensive with there 30 second anti skip and a solid metal body.

Theres alot more to a product then a simple price tag.

i spent $1850 on my macbook in 2007 and yes that was every dollar in my bank account, i had never even used a mac before >_< but it is one of my best investments!!!

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