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It's refreshing to see a serious response.

I think I'll have another point to add. HP and Dell are experimenting in more premium lines. The problems obviously are Apple but more importantly the quagmire of other models they sell.

A few products stand out from them. From Dell the Vostro V13, the Adamo line, and the Alienware M11x.

HP has the dm3 (effectively a budget version of the Envy 13), Elite 5101/5102 aluminium netbooks, and the Envy 15.

Concentrating on these lines while slowly easing off the others would be worlds of improvement. They are some surprisingly premium products at various price points. It's just the many people don't see them in the confusion of everything else.

Well said. PC companies just seem to overwhelm the consumer with different models. Some of them are very attractive to me, but it's hard to find those models amidst the mess of choices. For example, I'm very interested in the Asus UL30JT right now (i7, 310M, 13-inch). However, I had to sort through 4 or five nearly identical Asus models, with a small variation here or there (different processor, HD size, etc.) to find the exact one I wanted. And even now I'm not certain that there isn't a model with an i7 AND 330M GPU. Too many choices actually made it a lot harder.

Or if I want to buy a Dell monitor, I don't want to sort through 152 monitors, each with small variations, to find the one I want.
 
Another thing that needs to be gone are the media buttons or the media strip, etc. Again, these can be moved to somewhere else on the keyboard with the Fn key. I've never used those buttons in any of the PC laptops I had in the past, and again, removing them would reduce the costs. How hard is it to pause, rewind a movie that's playing on the screen with the progress bar anyways? Why do you need entirely separate buttons??

Also Apple doesn't have the monopoly on multitouch, or having a large trackpad. There is nothing preventing the PC manufacturers from implementing them.
 
Also Apple doesn't have the monopoly on multitouch, or having a large trackpad. There is nothing preventing the PC manufacturers from implementing them.

The only thing holding them back is the lack of an OS designed to fully implement Multi-touch.
 
And mac sales are primarily driven by iPhone development. So far I haven't met a single person who is planning to switch from windows to mac.

So? I know at least 20 people in the last month who switched from Windows to Mac.

I haven't met a single person who is planning to switch from Mac to Windows!:D
 
you need a Mac for iphone development. Apple's market share is either up .1% or it dropped depending on which survey you believe. there is no mass migration to Mac's. I tell people that a low end iMac costs the same as a similar Dell. they don't care since they don't care about the better quality LCD. the regular LCD's are good enough for them

So according to you, the only people buying Macs are iPhone developers?!? That's pretty funny.:rolleyes:
 
wow - insightful research. :rolleyes:

I'm waitiing on the follow up which will tell us how many Windows PCs are sold in Apple Stores last quarter. :p
 
Oooh, impressive! Actually, I worked in facilities management (you know, the guys who design and build your cube farms, research and purchase your chairs, teach ergonomics workshops, etc.) for years, and ergonomics was something I worked with (and studied) every single day. But I'm sure your college class was awesome too.

Haviing spent 24 years doing much the same as you, I can see that lilo777 is one of those folks that have had just enough education in ergonomics that he is dangerous to himself and others.

If you give workers the right amout of ambient and task lighting, taking in account glare, reflections, light color and work surface contrast...they will complain that it's too dark and demand you over light the place.
 
So according to you, the only people buying Macs are iPhone developers?!? That's pretty funny.:rolleyes:

...and the people buying Macs for the 25+ years previous to the announcement of the iPhone were stockpiling Macs in the hopeful anticipation of the possibility Apple might someday go into the phone market.
 
The only thing holding them back is the lack of an OS designed to fully implement Multi-touch.

...and 140,000 applications ready to use that form of input.

Steve Ballmer believes in keyboards with a blind passion. When Apple announced the iPhone one of his first comments about it was its lack of a keyboard.

When I saw him holding the HP tablet at CES it was like the devil holding a Bible and not sure how he got tricked in that fix.
 
Why do I need a blinking light that tells me the hard drive is being read

I agree in the most part that PC desktops and laptops have way too much sh*t going on but the HD light is an exception in my book.

Sometimes it's a helpful diagnostic tool to see if the machine has gone into a trance or is actually doing something if it becomes unresponsive. If the flickering is a steady blink - probably a trance, if the flickering is erratic (ie lots of blinks in short succession then a pause, then more activity) chances are it's doing something.
 
14 pages of comments, really?

How does a story about Apple owning 90% of the >$1,000 garner 14 pages of comments, ridiculous. Are people threatened by Apple? The reality is that Apple is doing something right, while a large amount of PC enthusiasts can't justify paying for a Mac, many people can. I'm just glad I'm not anyone's kid who insult those who will pay a premium for a good looking, well designed computer that works. It'd be like "dad can we go to (fill in the blank for a good steak house), no son Golden Coral has all you can eat steak for 10 dollars, No way am I paying more than $20 for a piece of meat when I can get one for $10.
 
I agree in the most part that PC desktops and laptops have way too much sh*t going on but the HD light is an exception in my book.

Sometimes it's a helpful diagnostic tool to see if the machine has gone into a trance or is actually doing something if it becomes unresponsive. If the flickering is a steady blink - probably a trance, if the flickering is erratic (ie lots of blinks in short succession then a pause, then more activity) chances are it's doing something.

In the case of a Mac that is what the spinning beachball is (generally) for.
 
I don't get why people consider a computer that costs more than $1000 "too expensive." I paid $999 for a PowerMac 7200 in 1996 (sans display). That's more like $1500 in today's dollars. If a 15 year old like me could scrounge and save for a quality product back then, surely today's tech saturated middle-class can buy a $1199 iMac. People are just cheap I guess.

Pricing is all relative. I want the depreciation of my laptop to be less than the depreciation of my car.
 
...and 140,000 applications ready to use that form of input.

Steve Ballmer believes in keyboards with a blind passion. When Apple announced the iPhone one of his first comments about it was its lack of a keyboard.

When I saw him holding the HP tablet at CES it was like the devil holding a Bible and not sure how he got tricked in that fix.

I meant just a multitouch trackpad, not a whole touch screen. I'm sure windows can support that. iphone OS is a whole different animal.
 
...and the people buying Macs for the 25+ years previous to the announcement of the iPhone were stockpiling Macs in the hopeful anticipation of the possibility Apple might someday go into the phone market.


until a few years ago the Mac marketshare was so small no one cared about it. it's still pretty small.
 
In the case of a Mac that is what the spinning beachball is (generally) for.

Indeed, and Windows has the hourglass, but both of these mean the computer is engaged in something. The hard drive light tells you whether that something is an infinite loop / crash or if it's genuinely trying to work through a process.
 
Focus on the user experience, not the specs...
Let's start with:

1. Even if you're making a cheap machine, there is NO reason to have 5 different colors of LEDs on one laptop. Choose a single color and stick to it, also eliminate LED's and switches (such as wifi switch, etc) from the laptop, anything you need a switch for can be done with the Fn key. This should actually save them money.

2. Spend your money and effort on improving out of the box experience. This means NO crapware, no mcafee reminding you to register, none of that crap. Include software that will make users productive. No third party driver software for wifi, OSD, etc. The computer should be able to open office documents and PDF's out of the box. The $20 you get from preloading with crapware isn't worth the loss of sales and reputation you'll get later on.

3. Customize and Tune Windows, partner with Microsoft if necessary. Hide the complex parts, and turn off everything by default unless the user wants them on. Don't use ANY 3rd party wifi utility, or webcam software. Stick with the drivers/utilitiyes that come as a part of Windows. Just aim to simplify the user experience and don't overwhelm them.

These are starting points, I'm sure they could be improved upon...

last week we had someone bring their new personal laptop to our help desk to get VPN and a few other things set up. The help desk guys asked me to help them out. it was a Toshiba someone bought at Best Buy. And it had some crap called the Best Buy Software updater or something like that. couldn't believe.

either they make laptops especially for best buy. or they open every single laptop to install this crap on them
 
That logic should have applied even more so to IBM. Now we have Lenovo.

and IBM makes all their money on services like running data centers. and they still sell servers. we looked at some of their enterprise products last year. if we weren't watching every dollar this time last year we would have bought a few servers and some storage.

HP and Dell make all their money on servers, storage, networking, and corporate services
 
you need a Mac for iphone development. Apple's market share is either up .1% or it dropped depending on which survey you believe. there is no mass migration to Mac's. I tell people that a low end iMac costs the same as a similar Dell. they don't care since they don't care about the better quality LCD. the regular LCD's are good enough for them

Yeah I'm sure Apple wasn't selling more Macs before the iphone SDK came out in 2008. :rolleyes:
 
You either keep spreading lies intentionally or you are terribly uninformed. Check quarterly results for HP and Apple. You'l find out that HP makes twice as much profit as Apple does. Oh... forgot to mention HP computers are better than Macs too ;)

Since Apple made 5 billion plus profits last quarters, going by your numbers HP should have made 10 billion profits right?
 
I agree in the most part that PC desktops and laptops have way too much sh*t going on but the HD light is an exception in my book.

Sometimes it's a helpful diagnostic tool to see if the machine has gone into a trance or is actually doing something if it becomes unresponsive. If the flickering is a steady blink - probably a trance, if the flickering is erratic (ie lots of blinks in short succession then a pause, then more activity) chances are it's doing something.

hardware that blinks at me 100% of the time that might be useful to me 0.5% of the time is what we call a bad tradeoff.
 
and IBM makes all their money on services like running data centers. and they still sell servers. we looked at some of their enterprise products last year. if we weren't watching every dollar this time last year we would have bought a few servers and some storage.

HP and Dell make all their money on servers, storage, networking, and corporate services

Which is the point. HP doesn't make its money on it's $500 laptops with swing-out light bulbs and cupholders.
 
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