He is a 100% Mac person – computer, lap top and TV is set up through Mac.

My uses are very basic…email, excel, word, web brouse…I see Dell has the
1525 PC ( with XP ) – please advise commets if you feel is better to buy a new Dell 1525 ( 2.0 ghz, 3GB DDRA, dual core, 160G hard Drive, wireless N, ) for
around $600 or better to buy a reconditioned entry level Macbook for $600 to
$700 as was on Craigs list?

Again my used are pretty basic – I am thinking to get this so my wife and daughter can continue using our PC in the evening and I can use this one
for a small business mainly emails / excel / word…

I’m personally tired of having to act as a QC provider for Microsoft’s bloatware. Hey, Apple isn’t without flaws, but if you love your mother…

I found that when it was crunch time, I went to the mac. The little usability differences made big time differences.

That said, I recommended a PC to my mom.

If your computer is attached to you day in day out, get a mac. If not, the world is still PC – don’t fight it if you don’t want to put in the time.

To this date, I don’t think that her usage has gone beyond Firefox & the DVD player.

Save the money.

Out of the box, my iMac was far more computer than I ever expected. More software – iLife, iMovie – more features – built in wifi, bluetooth, available DVI, HDMI connections for dual-monitor use, optical audio connection, firewire.

I still feel like I got a huge bargain. And the $500 Dell laptop my wife just bought (plus 150 for extra memory, and other misc. non-upgrade costs) ended up being around $900 somehow. And I just don’t enjoy using it.

My new attitude – don’t waste money on PCs.

a friend, who isn’t a computer geek was asking me about the macbook and if she could run Microsoft Office on it. i gave her a whole song and dance, praised the mac and told her why I love my mac. In the end, she settled for “it looks beautiful, why I like it”.

For us guys, we look at the bottom line. Is the macbook priced correctly? i’d say yes.

for this reason: reducing the downtime for incidents like viruses, trojans and worms should be enough incentive i think for most people. i’m not saying windows sucks but the fact that it is far more difficult to secure for ordinary users makes Windows machines for me less productive.

in the past 2 years, i’ve had to reinstall my mac once— and it was because i trashed the system using kernel-panic-inducing-alpha software. counter that with some of my family members running windows on their PCs just browsing. and yes, i’ve installed anti viruses on their PCs, regularly updated. They all use firefox and safari with cookie wiping on close enabled by default. i’ve even setup a limited account for their daily use. (which, irritatingly enough, they don’t use). fact is, every three months or so they come to me with their machines so worm ridden the laptops become unusable, the easiest way is to just wipe the damn thing clean.

it’s not as if you couldn’t run windows software if you needed to. boot camp and virtualization software are around for that. thus you can do more with your mac.

Non-geeks should use Macs just to get real productivity out of their computing life. imagine if your machine just couldn’t work right when you’ve got a deadline.

I’m not saying the Mac is perfect, but between a US$500 laptop and a US$1.3K one, if you can spend the extra money, it will be money well spent just to reduce downtime, headaches from worms. Time is money.

imho, I think the biggest reason i’d suggest non-geeks to use macs is a non-altruistic, but practical one from my point of view. At the end of the day, they’ll come to you and say “my PC is broken. again”. Mac seems to me to reduce my headaches. Linux btw works too but not quite as naturally headache reducing as Macs.

I routinely switch back & forth between CDE, Gnome, XP, Vista, and OS X, Maemo, Hildon, etc. They’ve all got quirks. I’ve pretty much boiled it down to being equivalent to switching back and forth between cars. If you do it often enough, you do it without thinking.

Does a regular user need a Mac? Nope. a Zonbu, maybe, or a cheap PC. The bottom line is that people buy cheap XP/Vista PC’s and they work.

As far as value perceived verses price paid, the premium that you pay to play with an Apple and the obvious difference in market share makes it clear that most people don’t see enough value to pay the premium. That could be either because the value doesn’t exist, or because the value exists but is not perceived by ordinary consumers, or because they value other things greater than the additional functionality of a Mac (food, for example).

(Or because Mac’s make poor gaming machines…)

Most people don’t buy BMW’s either.