On 8 Aug 2006 at 16:35, Darcy James Argue wrote: > Hi David, > > On 08 Aug 2006, at 4:20 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: > > > The interesting thing to see is when Apple's standard desktops come > > out, rather than their high-end workstations. > > Apple's "standard desktop" is the iMac, and Intel iMacs are already > out. There will be no model between the 20" iMac ($1,699.00, 2 GHz > Intel Core Duo) and the low-end Mac Pro ($2124.00, 2x2 GHz Dual core > Xeon).
Then I understand even less about Apple's product line than I thought! > > They get more, too, but the > > fact that they don't expect to get a full-featured Mac for $800 > > means they aren't upset by paying more, as PC users would be. > > Actually, the $800 Mac mini is pretty full-featured as far as budget > machines go: > > 1.66GHz Intel Core Duo processor > 2MB L2 Cache > 667MHz Frontside Bus > 512MB memory (667MHz DDR2 SDRAM) > 80GB Serial ATA hard drive > Double-layer SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) > Built-in AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth 2.0 > Apple Remote I don't see that as very good at all. Assuming, of course, that it does *not* include a monitor, I can easily get more from Dell for $800 than that. A couple of months ago I did a quote on a Dell box for a client that came out to $818. It included a 17" LCD monitor (though not a top of the line one) and 1GB of RAM, and the CPU was a 2.8GHz with an 800MHz frontside bus (bumping the CPU up to 3.2GHz would have added $90). It also included an external floppy and a 13- in-1 media card reader. It did not include any form of wireless, but that can be added for very little. So, it looks to me like the Mac mini is pretty underpowered for the price. > This machine would be more than adequate for Finale work, though > you'd want to increase the memory to at least 1 GB. Sure, it's a decent machine, but it's not a very good value for the price if you compare it to what Dell is offering in that price range. And I doubt Apple can ever compete with Dell at the low end because Dell will always have far greater volume. At the high end, it's a completely different story of course. And don't get me wrong -- I'm absolutely *not* arguing that you don't get what you pay for. Apple is good value even when it costs more. But it is not the case that across the whole product line Apple's products are competitive on price with comparable PC hardware. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
