Of Zen and Computing wrote a good article about a common complaint when purchasing a Mac - the price.
The best rebuttal presented about that complaint is that there is a difference between the price of an item and the cost of an item. Macs are pricier than the discount PCs you can get from Dell or HP, but in my opinion they are a better investment. My two main reasons for considering a Mac a better investment is that they require exceptionally less servicing to keep them running at optimum and they are reliable for a long time. My G4 Powerbook, which was released in 2005, is still going strong with all original parts as my main computer and I hardly do any “fixing” on it beyond my natural desire to tinker.
I will point out that the low price of those discount PCs is also a feature - a good feature really. A $300 PC is a great option and if you can learn a few things to help keep it running well then you’ll be just fine for quite some time. If you are feeling a bit adventurous and willing to try something new, Linux (especially Ubuntu for new Linux users) is a great way to make that same cheaper PC a bit more stable and reliable.
One other item to note are the article comments because they show an interesting phenomenon known as computer fanboyism. The PC vs Mac vs Linux debate is a rough one (especially online) and it makes any Mac vs PC comparison articles hard to deal with sometimes - but it’s an interesting social aspect of online life to see.
May 5, 2008 at 9:30 am
yeah, my titanium powerbook is still going on strong. Of course, the screen doesn’t work anymore, but it makes a great desktop computer now. I don’t really use it much except for storage since it has a pretty decent size hard drive, but it still works great.
Of course PC’s are good too for sure. I’ve not installed ubuntu fully, but I’m not really sure I’m too keen on it. It could be because i’m more into command line linux than GUI linux. who knows.