Why don't Wintel users have the same anxiety over upgrades that Mac users have?
I got to wondering this after I was looking over the recent comments about the Powermac upgrades along with with the observation about the historic trend to ugrades every 6 months.
Whenever I read other computer related forums, I never come across comments along the lines of "I have just bought a Dell Dimension 8200 and am pretty pissed off at the fact if I had waited until now then I could have got a Dimension 8250 for the same price" or "Just when I was ready to buy, it's a waiting game all over again" after a new notebook release from Sony.
In case you might think that I am exaggerating, I am not completely making these quotes up. They are actual statements from the MacRumors forums with references to Wintel products taking the place of equivalent Apple products.
At work I am using a 2 1/2 year old Dell notebook with Windows and Linux, but I have never agonized over the fact that since I got this machine, the RAM has doubled, processor speeds have tripled, and hard drive storage has quadrupled for the same price that I paid for this machine 2 1/2 years ago. Instead, I usually refer to it as "that piece of crap" and look forward to the day that I can replace it with a nice shiny new Powerbook.
Some thoughts:
1. Even if you are a confirmed Wintel user, it's hard to get excited about upgrades when there are dozens of companies releasing new models of computers all the time. Apple is the only company releasing new computers for OS X, so they are under a brighter spotlight (actually, the only spotlight) when it comes to new product releases.
2. The hardware/software performance ratio may be higher for Wintel machines. Most of the bleeding edge performance issues associated with Wintel machines are in the realm of games, not in everyday activities like email, surfing, and word processing. On the other hand, it seems to me that OS X is more processor intensive than the various flavors of Windows. I can notice differences in OS X performance when comparing Macs from the low end to the high end. This means that an everyday Mac user who surfs the web, writes email, and does word processing will notice improvements in hardware, whereas a Wintel user who does the same things will not notice that much of a difference after a speedbump in Pentium clock speeds.
Comments?
I got to wondering this after I was looking over the recent comments about the Powermac upgrades along with with the observation about the historic trend to ugrades every 6 months.
Whenever I read other computer related forums, I never come across comments along the lines of "I have just bought a Dell Dimension 8200 and am pretty pissed off at the fact if I had waited until now then I could have got a Dimension 8250 for the same price" or "Just when I was ready to buy, it's a waiting game all over again" after a new notebook release from Sony.
In case you might think that I am exaggerating, I am not completely making these quotes up. They are actual statements from the MacRumors forums with references to Wintel products taking the place of equivalent Apple products.
At work I am using a 2 1/2 year old Dell notebook with Windows and Linux, but I have never agonized over the fact that since I got this machine, the RAM has doubled, processor speeds have tripled, and hard drive storage has quadrupled for the same price that I paid for this machine 2 1/2 years ago. Instead, I usually refer to it as "that piece of crap" and look forward to the day that I can replace it with a nice shiny new Powerbook.
Some thoughts:
1. Even if you are a confirmed Wintel user, it's hard to get excited about upgrades when there are dozens of companies releasing new models of computers all the time. Apple is the only company releasing new computers for OS X, so they are under a brighter spotlight (actually, the only spotlight) when it comes to new product releases.
2. The hardware/software performance ratio may be higher for Wintel machines. Most of the bleeding edge performance issues associated with Wintel machines are in the realm of games, not in everyday activities like email, surfing, and word processing. On the other hand, it seems to me that OS X is more processor intensive than the various flavors of Windows. I can notice differences in OS X performance when comparing Macs from the low end to the high end. This means that an everyday Mac user who surfs the web, writes email, and does word processing will notice improvements in hardware, whereas a Wintel user who does the same things will not notice that much of a difference after a speedbump in Pentium clock speeds.
Comments?
