The fine folks at AOL Shopping, in their infinite wisdom, have summarized a quarter-century of debate in their feature on whether you should buy a Mac or a PC.
The bottom line? "You should buy a PC, if you already own a lot of PC software that you want to continue using. [...] If you want to do artistic work on your computer (photography, video editing, graphic design), you'll find Macs much more intuitive." Of course, that glosses over the fact that Apple makes excellent Windows PCs that will happily run your legacy Win32 applications.
Still, this seems almost reasonable, until you get to this (practically throwaway) sentence: "If money is not an issue, go with a Mac."
Yeah -- 1991 called, and they want their talking point back. Study after study has shown that the total cost of ownership of a Mac is less than that of a comparable PC. This includes post-purchase factors like software, repairs, and upgrades. Agreed: the up-front price is higher (in many cases), but over time, you spend less money owning a Mac.
AOL Shopping suggests the opposite is true, simply due to Microsoft's sluggish OS release schedule. Having to update your OS once every seven years, to them, is less costly than upgrading every year or so. They neglect to consider the cost of your time in support calls and aggregate ease-of-use savings.
Even so, if their poll is any indication, two thirds of their readers still plan on buying a Mac.
Disclaimer: AOL is the parent company of Weblogs, Inc. and TUAW.
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