Apple cheaper than Dell?

@jon

"That higher resolution screen on a dell laptop isn't all it's cracked up to be. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice screen, but a 17" screen with 1920 pixels across makes everything so small you can't read anything."

Yikes. When will blind people stop commenting on WUXGA laptop displays? I've been using a 15.4" WUXGA display for 3 years now and I can honestly say it's everything it's cracked up to be and more.

It's somewhat of a joke that my 30" cinema display only does marginally more resolution than my puny little Inspiron's 15.4" display.

It's all about screen real estate, my friend.

Apple would be wise to offer a WUXGA option on the 15 and 17 inch MBPs.

But it still runs Windows.

Whoop, that should be Inspiron E1705. My bad. The price, for a config equivalent to the MacBook Pro listed above, is $2487. And that includes an Nvidia 7900GS, which will smoke the Macbook's GPU, and a high-res screen.

Granted, that config has the 2.16ghz Core 2, but only because you can't get the 2.33 on the Dell.

Okay, Dell XPS /= MacBook Pro. Dell Inspiron M1710 = MacBook Pro. The XPS is a premium machine designed to milk the most out of gamers; the Inspiron line is more aimed at everyone who knows how insane it is to spend $3500 for blinky lights in a laptop case.

Price an Inspiron to Macbook specs. You'll be surprised. Of course, the Inspiron has the same GPU as the XPS... but still.

Also, re hi-res screens: I have a 1920x1200 laptop (but not a Dell, thank you God.) Nothing, and I mean nothing, is too small to read. And this way, when I need the full resolution for Photoshop, for having 2 pages of a Word document open at once, for having Firefox, Word, and Acrobat all on one screen, hell, even for gaming, I have it. It's utterly worth it, too.

Another debate that will never end....

Of course my next laptop will be a Mac, but items like Graphics cards 'Are' relevant as the OS offloads more stuff to these, it's the GPU that will affect the speed (although marginally in most cases).

Apple loves doing this, that's why I haven't bought my 20"iMac yet as the Graphics card is relatively sub-standard, you can't upgrade, and I don't want to spend the money on a 24" or the desktop model.

Bottom line, more and more people are buying the Mac Laptops, not just because they're Apple, but because they're a good product and have unique stuff like Mag Safe, etc. The funny thing is that the last 3 people I know who bought them, are all running Windows XP on them the majority of the time!

I have both PCs and Macs in my home. The PCs are slowly being replaced by Macs as the budget warrants. The reason is, I just don't have the time anymore to spend babysitting the antivirus and antispyware issues. I'm just SICK of it.

On my Mac, I open the lid, do my work, and close the lid. It *just works*. I don't care how much less a Mac costs, I just don't want to waste my lifetime maintaining a computer anymore. I just want to use it.

Maybe I'm just getting old.

Apple may very well win price comparisons for its very *narrow range* of hardware and its highly limited configurations of that hardware.

I am sure firewire 800 is eminently useful on a server (though I am pressed to figure out why), but I would rather have SATA RAID, front video, lights out management, etc. Or maybe just a rack mounted server for WELL under $2600.

Apple has no new sub $1000 laptops, or even sub $700 laptops and dell does. Apple has no complete desktops with monitors for under $1000, Dell does. Apple has THREE form factors of desktop systems. Dell has a eleventy gazillion, including several that offer an excellent compromise between size and expandability, BOTH internal and external.

If you start with the Apple config and compare to Dell, apple will probably win. If you start with consumer-priced Dell configs Apple loses badly because it doesn't have anything in that range. Or in cases like the Xserve, you can only compare them to about 10% of the Dell Poweredge configurations.

"The Dell includes a much, much better GPU that would smoke the MPB in any sort of rendering task."

Yeah, I'll give you that... but consider 2 things:

1) If that's what you are after, is a laptop the right solution for you? Or at least most of the market?

2) You're video card is faster, but let's pull our plugs and see who actually gets more work done before their battery dies, eh? Who's the moron now?

That higher resolution screen on a dell laptop isn't all it's cracked up to be. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice screen, but a 17" screen with 1920 pixels across makes everything so small you can't read anything.

Several people I work with have the new XPS laptops and they all reduce the screen res to actually work on it. It was funny for a while though, no one wanted to change it so they'd be using the "best quality", but everyone was leaning over their keyboards, squinting and complaining. No, these screens are not ergonomic and you'll just be paying for resolution that you'll rarely if ever use.

@ jumbobob

You mean all of that software that I have purchased for the Mac? Okay. I've said it before, and I'll say it again; for nearly every program there is for Windows, there is an equivalent for the Mac, and oftentimes, it is a better alternative. It may not be "that one program," but it will do the same job without the hassles of being on a Windows machine.

If you need "that (mythical) one program," then install it via Parallels or Boot Camp. How is that being "boxed in?" It seems to open up far more possibilies IMO.