My own "Get a Mac" rant...from personal experience

[Sehnsucht]

Hard to see where to start on this one..

First - sorry, Sensucht (and everyone who agrees with him above), but you're coming across as quite the elitist snob(s). Not everyone can afford a laptop computer for $1000 and up. Take the OLPC for exaple: Apple could never have pulled something like that off, not only because their costs of their proprietary soft/hardware are so high but because, on a more basic level, they lack a commitment to the well-being of society. Only free software can really make this kind of change, provide computers at reasonable prices to the masses.

Second - Choosing a computer is a personal choice. If I'm a cheese snob, I shouldn't call you an idiot because you choose to buy Kraft Velveeta instead of aged Brie (for the record, I'm not) and I shouldn't laugh at you for buying cheese A rather than cheese B although the latter is a better deal. I'm knowledgeable about computers, but I respect those who aren't and who may not make the best decisions. Clearly, Sehnsucht (and lackeys thereof), you do not respect them. You would like to make these choices for people. You have no respect for their right to live their lives as they please.

Third - Like you, Sehnsucht, I was once a dedicated Windows user. I used windows 95 all the way through XP. But I started to be disgusted. Bugs, crashes, viruses... it was all just too much. For a time, I pined for my own Apple computer, even a mac mini, as an escape from Micro$oft's tyranny. But fortunately for me I did not go that route. Instead, I took the road less traveled by, the path to freedom.

I installed Fedora Linux (later Gentoo after I got some experience) and I have never been happier when using a computer. I installed these on existing PCs, no need from expensive locked-down Apple hardware. Speed and stability improved dramatically. Hardware support was not nearly as bad as the Apple drones would have you believe. And none of it cost me a penny.

Oh, and my *emachines* has been running fine on Fedora. Since '03. Without a hitch. I use it as a web server in fact. So there you have it.

Let me make my own personal appeal here: Get Linux, not a mac. It will save you money, it will save you time, it will save you disillusionment later down the road when you realize you're locked in Apple's proprietary cage with no way out.

You make some very interesting points, and touché with the cheese lesson. Allow me to state for the record that I like Linux too...when I get the money I hope to have a somewhat impressive 50% OS X, 50% Fedora, 0% Windows setup. I know there are advantages to the open-source Linux platform, but on the other hand I still don't see how a proprietary OS is a problem as long as it works.

EDIT: The $400,000 workstation I'm drooling on runs Fedora.

 

[dlamin517]

Those cheap computers are not aimed towards people who have loads of cash. A majority of the people who shop at walmart are on the lower end of middle class and lower. they dont have the money to spend $1000 on a computer. they just want to do very basic stuff such as the internet and word.

Pc computer companies dont spend money on making them elegant because if they did they would want to raise the price. They want to make them as cheap as possible.

 

[notjustjay]

You always supersize your meals, buy the biggest popcorn and soda at the theater and pay for Premium instead of regular gas, right?

Because it's sensible for people to always spend a few bucks more and buy a more than they really need?

I don't think that's a valid comparison at all. All of your examples are present-tense scenarios. I buy a meal or popcorn because I'm hungry NOW, and it might not make sense to pay more to upsize a meal because I can't finish (or shouldn't finish, for health reasons) the larger size. Same with gas - you burn it off now, you drive the same number of miles per tank, and don't see any potential future benefit.

But the OP referred to a scenario where the customer could have had 8 times the storage for $5 more. First, $5 isn't that much money. $5 on $25 is a 20% increase. 20% increase for 800% return seems fairly good, especially on something like a USB storage stick where we KNOW from history that (a) the amount of storage one needs keeps growing bigger and bigger and (b) that stick will remain in service for years. That $5 could mean the difference between buying a new stick in a few years or continuing to use the old one.

A better example might be if you walked into McDonald's and ordered a value meal for $6, and they said that for an extra $1.25 you could get a "meal pass" that would be good for another 8 free meals, or if paying the extra few pennies for premium gas meant that your car would run 8 times longer on the same fuel.

 

[bobfitz14]

First of all, I'm a 20 year old male who works in the electronics department at Wal-Mart. I've been working for Wal-Mart for a total of 1 1/2 years. For a third of that time I was a cashier, and after facing the horror of Christmas, I transferred back to Electronics. For awhile, everything was peachy...I enjoyed being able to just walk around, and talking about video games with customers my age was much more to my liking than standing in the same place for 7 hours a day. However, there is one huge problem.

Wal-Mart does not carry the Mac. (This alone is not really a problem; lots of places don't.)

However, Wal-Mart does carry PCs.

Hideous PCs. Ugly, light-weight black-plastic contraptions with hundreds of obnoxious blinking, glowing, flashing LEDs. Brands like eMachines, Acer, and Compaq. The prices are a joke: $398, $498, $598. In my mind, sacrilege.

Take the average Wal-Mart shopper. Cheap food is one thing. If you want to buy the Great Value brand breakfast cereal and save $1.00 over Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, and don't mind your cornflakes tasting like cardboard, fine. Cardboard flakes will still keep you alive. But electronic gadgets?! Computers?! A computer is supposed to be a brilliantly designed piece of engineering. It's supposed to be made with care and devotion. There was never meant to be a laptop computer for three hundred and ninety-eight dollars. Hell, there was never meant to be one for less than $1,000.

I walk down the aisles, staring at the obscenely-low prices and silently call down curses upon Bill Gates and Microsoft. Curse them for making computers so easily obtainable and affordable.

Maybe it's just that I consider myself very honest, and I hate ever having to deceive anyone. If someone asks me, "Is this a good brand of TV?" I will always answer them honestly. "No, to be honest, I would avoid that brand...I've been working here about a year and I've seen at least 15 of those get returned." Some customers think that I try to sell them the highest-priced brand to get the biggest commission. Wal-Mart employees don't get commissions. And Wal-Mart employees don't care what you think.

So, when a customer gets their heart set on a $300-ish eMachines desktop bundle, and then they flag me down with, "Is this a good computer?" I can tell just by looking at them (and sometimes smelling them) that it's all they can afford. Now, I'm instantly torn. Should I say, "No, it really isn't...eMachines is a off-brand and they're just not very good computers. I'd recommend this one over here...", or should I just give the standard, "Oh yes! Very good...you shouldn't have any problems." I CANNOT bring myself to give the second reply for two reasons: One, my conscience will bother me because I know I'm lying, and two, the computer has Windows Vista so I know damn well they're going to have a long list of problems. Of course, if I give them the first answer, the customer will often become very annoyed or offended ("Well, all I'm a-gonna be doin' is checkin' my email...I ain't gonna be hackin' the Pentagon or nuthin'!") and then proceed to give you their life story about how they got a divorce and they've got bad credit and they're on a fixed income and everything's just so dadgum expensive these days...so really it's a no-win situation.

I'm despairing now. I'm tempted to, on the next occasion a customer asks me for my opinion on a cheap computer and expects me to sing Vista's praises, grab the phone and announce over the intercom, "ATTENTION WAL-MART CUSTOMERS!!! OUR PCs ARE GOD-AWFUL PILES OF S**T! GO TO THE APPLE STORE AND GET A MAC, OR THREE! THANK YOU FOR SHOPPING AT WAL-MART!"

It's always a tearful moment when I come home after a long day and find my iMac waiting for me. It's always happy to see me. Sometimes I even think it wonders why I haven't tried to get a job at the Apple store. I would, if it weren't 20 miles away. Someday perhaps.

i have an eMachines...bleh, i was satisfied for the first two years. it's three years old, all i've done for the computer itself was get a gig of RAM, i got rid of the speakers, monitor, keyboard/mouse because they were all crap.

i think it's time i get a Mac.

 

[Sehnsucht]

Here's an idea...Apple should do away with all Mac models except the Mac Pro. The next generation Mac Pro's casing should be made of solid platinum, with all-silver wiring inside. The Apple cinema displays should also feature solid-platinum casing with a glossy screen made of a thin sheet of diamond. All Apple logos should be thin sheets of gold leaf. Assembled in Germany.

 

[Tosser]

Here's an idea...Apple should do away with all Mac models except the Mac Pro. The next generation Mac Pro's casing should be made of solid platinum, with all-silver wiring inside. The Apple cinema displays should also feature solid-platinum casing with a glossy screen made of a thin sheet of diamond. All Apple logos should be thin sheets of gold leaf. Assembled in Germany.

Hmm, sounds like you're describing something between a ghetto pimp and a ricer. No proper german would touch something like that with a ten foot pole

 

[Sehnsucht]

Customer accepts warranty thinking it is $1.49 and not $149, gets very angry at the register.

I've learned to question the customer very carefully to make sure I know what they're really asking for. For example, if they ask if we have any "Wii games," I ask if they mean the packages with discs in them, or the actual Wii console. This is has been ever since some lady called and asked if we carried "Wii games." I said yes, and when she shows up later expecting the CONSOLE, but instead finding that we were OUT, she went completely stark-raving batsh*t insane...screaming and swearing at me until she got red in the face and pissed herself.

Other examples:

"Where are your phone cords?" (cell phone chargers)
"Where are your iPods?" (generic $30 MP3 players)
"Do you guys carry cassette tapes?" (with music on them)
"Where are the CD players that you can hook up to your TV?" (DVD players)
"Don't you guys still carry land-line phones?" (Phones with cords, as opposed to cordless.)
"I need a modem." (Meaning, an external 56K modem. )
"Do you guys carry those high-definition boxes you'll need next year if you don't have a flat-screen plasma?" (Digital converter box.)
"Can you show me where the AT&T TracFones are?" (AT&T GoPhones)
"Hey thar, ya got 'Rodney Carrington Live at the Majestic'?" (on VHS)

One of many.

 

[magicshow]

I walk down the aisles, staring at the obscenely-low prices and silently call down curses upon Bill Gates and Microsoft. Curse them for making computers so easily obtainable and affordable.

For your info, MS does not make the computer hardware. they only provide the OS; how cheap the hardware becomes is in the matters of the manufacturers themselves. So yeah, next time why dont you curse at the right people. Thx.

 

[DaveF]

I don't think that's a valid comparison at all.

The comparison is apt: the advice is for people to spend more money to get something that is cheaper per dollar, regardless of whether they need it or not. Just as there's no value in supersizing to get more fries than you are hungry for, there's no value in spending $5 more for an additional 7GB flash memory that the person doesn't (and will never) need.

In some cases, getting more is a nuisance. For the man ridiculed for not buying the 14' cable when the 7' cable is out of stock: if he's got a 3' run, 14' could be simply too much, increasing cable mess.

 

[chrono1081]

I think part of the problem with cheap PCs is people actually don't end up getting what they really need.

I used to work in electronics retail at circuit city and bestbuy and people always came in stating "I just want it for internet and email" and you try and see what other crap they plan on doing, they claim nothing and they want the piece of crap thats in the sunday ad, you sell it to them, they come back a week later because it wont play such and such a game (even though they told you they werent going to play games on it).

Not so much a problem but an annoyance for the sales guy who has to deal with the dumb customer.

 

[DMC-12]

To people who thought the original post was funny or well-written, you're crazy. The OP is completely out of touch with reality. The whole idea of their writing a post about, essentially, their moral conflict between staying true to their mixture of honestly and Mac loyalty versus what the customer would like to hear is completely absurd. It's really pitiful to think that someone is getting so worked up about Wal-Mart customers' buying low-priced, low-quality PCs. If the OP did not have any bias toward Macs, I don't think there would be any moral conflict within him/her. The post was full of socioeconomic stereotypes that were included only to somehow underline the OPs cutting insight into the situation, while only showing how condescending and misguided their point of view is. Their was not much substance behind the post either, just someone with half-decent writing skills waxing emotional over how God-awful PCs seem to them.

 

[DMC-12]

Double post.

 

[notjustjay]

The comparison is apt: the advice is for people to spend more money to get something that is cheaper per dollar, regardless of whether they need it or not. Just as there's no value in supersizing to get more fries than you are hungry for, there's no value in spending $5 more for an additional 7GB flash memory that the person doesn't (and will never) need.

But that's my point -- in all likelihood, you WILL need that extra 7 gigs. Why? Because USB sticks are generally meant to be kept around and used for a while, until they're broken or lost or too small to be of practical use. How long is "a while"? Years, typically. And the bigger the stick, the longer it will continue to be useful. We know that people's computer lifestyles lead to larger and larger files -- we are storing more and more data. That trend is undeniable.

Of course there are legitimate reasons to buy the cheaper stick. If it's a gift, if it's for a specific purpose that's either short term or the buyer KNOWS they will never exceed 1 gig storage, if the stick is for a person that is likely to lose or break it, or if money is truly a problem, then by all means buy the cheaper stick. There's also the possibility that saving the $5 now could result in net gains later -- it's very possible that in 3 years, 8 gig USB sticks will sell for $4.99, so you could buy another one later when needed. So one could take this into account when making their decision.

But generally speaking, failing to consider opening up long term options, only to save a few dollars now, often is penny wise and pound foolish.