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Re: kim's post, yadda yadda yadda
Title: Re: kim's post, yadda yadda
yadda
At 4:31 AM -0700 8/3/04, loop.pool wrote:
Fry's had a deal last week on a
P4 1.8 mghz PC with 512 megs of RAM, a 40 gig harddrive and a
CD/RW
burner/DVD player
for $399.
Tell me that Macs are cheaper than PCs.
This is a poorly framed statement because it assumes functional
equivalence between all Macs and all PCs. As as been pointed out here,
much depends on the specific make, model, and configuration of a
PC.
For years the received wisdom was that PCs were cheaper than
Macs, and this was generally true of the purchase price. Then a few
people did an analysis of the true cost of the two platforms based on
the about of technical support required; in many cases the Macs came
out ahead of the PCs because they were easy to use and required little
maintenance. The rebuttal statement "Macs are cheaper than PCs"
became popular, just as "the computer for the rest of us"
had been at the start of Mac marketing.
Price can only be
what do extra hardrives and CD burners
and printers and scanners cost for
Macs?
All the peripherals I have bought recently for my Mac are equally
functional with a PC. This includes a scanner, a printer, a FireWire
hard drive, a trackball, and a graphics tablet. The only peripheral
that was more expensive was the LCD monitor I bought with my G5.
So again, you have to be specific about which make, model, and
configuration the peripherals are. You can certainly buy some cheaper
peripherals for a PC, but are the equivalent to the good-quality
Mac/PC models.
I really don't want to be coming off as
being down on the
Macs.................I just get a little sick and tired of the
superiority
that a lot of Mac users exhibit towards Windows users.
Sorry, it's genetic.
I have tried, over and over, in this
discussion to give respect and to
praise the benefits of the wonderful Mac OS X.
It would be nice for someone from that camp (and I NEVER hear it from
them)
that there might be some reasons why people chose the PC.
I don't use a PC because I hate Windows as a working environment.
I think it's ugly and cumbersome compared to the Mac OS. Therefore at
the root of my scorn for PC users is the knee-jerk reaction "how
can these people stand to work in such a horrible environment."
This is a completely subjective (read "irrational") reaction
on my part, but since my creative use of computers is largely an
aesthetic experience it is always close to the surface. To be fair, I
now have a similar reaction to Mac OS 9: "How could anyone choose
to work in such an ugly, unstable OS?" Of course there are very
practical reasons to do so, just as there are for Windows. A
particular suite of applications may be more solid and functional and
even more efficient in Windows than it is on the Mac (particularly
true of apps ported from PC to Mac). A particular application may be
available on PC only. This is especially true in the world of
shareware and freeware.
I should also comment that my personal reactions are not
particularly based on the MacOS being the most wonderful OS event
invented. In past years I was perfectly happy working on Silicon
Graphics systems and in BeOS. In fact, for a while there I liked BeOS
better than Mac OS, except for a few areas that hadn't been brought up
to speed yet. So for me it's less a matter of Mac OS being so good as
it is a matter of Windows being so bad.
Here's an odd, but pertinent example of my attitude, as
manifested in another area of creative work: I have a friend who
is a composer and instrument builder. He is very successful and his
music is attractive and enjoyable. But his music notation is dreadful
and his self-made instruments have an unfinished look. In both cases
the tools are serviceable and the resulting music is just fine. It's
just that neither notation nor instruments are pleasant to look at.
Why should I care? No practical reason, but I do.
Les Pauls are horribly overpriced but
they do incredible things (things
Stratocasters can't do). Should I put someone down for using one
if they
can afford it?
Yes, but only because they are giving money to Henry
Juszkiewicz.
--
______________________________________________________________
Richard Zvonar, PhD
(818) 788-2202
http://www.zvonar.com
http://RZCybernetics.com
