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Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

#31

Post by weaksauce »

greggman wrote: post #11
linkmotif wrote: post #2

Don't know about the stats, but this has definitely been the case for me. My late 2010 MBA worked for 5 years then broke one day. Apple fixed it in under 24 hours for $304.80 (that's with 8.75% NY tax) and I'm typing on it as we speak. PS the thing is basically indestructible... I have no excuse not to buy another some time in the future. Can't wait to try the 12" MB.

Everyone has their own anecdotes. I've owned 1 Toshiba (5 years), 2 Vaios (both still work, one from 2000, the other from 2006), 3 Macbook Pros (2008, 2012, 2014). Of those only 1 broke. The 2nd Macbook pro about 2 years in the GPU died. I didn't buy the service contract and Apple told me my only option was to buy a new one full price.

my gpu was failing and they did a full replacement of the motherboard and replaced the battery because it was out of spec for 300$ flat-fee out of warranty repair. Not sure what the conditions of that were, maybe it required to have a bootable mac. The few times I have needed to repair my macs it has been quite painless.

Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

#32

Post by mhurron »

werdna123 wrote: post #24
linkmotif wrote: post #2

Don't know about the stats, but this has definitely been the case for me. My late 2010 MBA worked for 5 years then broke one day. Apple fixed it in under 24 hours for $304.80 (that's with 8.75% NY tax) and I'm typing on it as we speak. PS the thing is basically indestructible... I have no excuse not to buy another some time in the future. Can't wait to try the 12" MB.

Why would you pay $300 to fix a 5yo MBA? Just dump it on eBay or CL and buy a new one...

> buy a new one

Which would cost way more than $300 and presumably right before it failed it was working fine for them.

Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

#33

Post by protomyth »

spullara wrote: post #18
protomyth wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yep, but add some relatives and it all goes bad How are Chromebooks for people who have to deal with "family / friends" support issues?

How do I run Minecraft on this thing? Goes badly.

Ah yes, the one true app doesn't work syndrome. I know it well.

Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

#34

Post by greedo »

FollowSteph3 wrote: post #25

It's because most PCs people use are bottom of the barrel cheap. If you compare similarly priced PCs to Macs with similar business class builds (keyboards for laptops, etc) I highly suspect everything will balance out, at the very least be minimal.

If you look at the full reports, it's readily apparent that IBM isn't comparing an expensive Mac to an el-cheapo PC.

Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

#35

Post by rvanmil »

It's only anecdotal, ofcourse, but I used to own Windows machines and as a result so did all my relatives with me being the "tech guy" in the family. Not a week would pass without me fixing a relative's PC. Now, about 7 years later, everyone in my family including myself has switched to Macs and I can't even remember the last time I was called to fix a machine.

Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

#37

Post by greedo »

jmknoll wrote: post #19

"Previn says that while a Mac initially costs anywhere from $117 to $454 more than a similarly configured Windows PC, over four years IBM saves between $273 to $543 per Mac compared to a similarly configured Windows PC." Its late over here, and I could be misinterpreting this, but this feels like meaningless clickbait. 3 times cheaper to own is based on 117 * 3 ~= 543? Taking the extreme low end of one value and the…

No.

The minimum savings was $273/4 years = 68.25/year The maximum savings was $543/4 years = 135.75/year

Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

#39

Post by rayiner »

rvanmil wrote: post #35

It's only anecdotal, ofcourse, but I used to own Windows machines and as a result so did all my relatives with me being the "tech guy" in the family. Not a week would pass without me fixing a relative's PC. Now, about 7 years later, everyone in my family including myself has switched to Macs and I can't even remember the last time I was called to fix a machine.

This. The only person I still do tech support for is my dad, who is on Surface/Windows 10. My mom got an iMac about 10 years ago and now uses an iPad and iPhone. She set up Facebook, gmail, etc. by herself and never calls me for help.

Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

#40

Post by to3m »

linkmotif wrote: post #2

Don't know about the stats, but this has definitely been the case for me. My late 2010 MBA worked for 5 years then broke one day. Apple fixed it in under 24 hours for $304.80 (that's with 8.75% NY tax) and I'm typing on it as we speak. PS the thing is basically indestructible... I have no excuse not to buy another some time in the future. Can't wait to try the 12" MB.

My old Macbook Pro was very good. I had it for 5 years, and it was hard-wearing and reliable. I'd probably still be using it, only it turns out that, while durable, it wasn't splashproof.

Most of the "savings" for me over that period came in terms of reduced hassle and bother. OS X proved reliable and low-maintenance, minimizing the amount of time I had to spend playing IT man. And, unlike Windows, it didn't fuck up over time, even proving resilient to upgrades (I did every step from Leopard to Mavericks), so the regular reinstalls that I was used to doing weren't necessary. (And, unlike Windows, it had a decent backup tool supplied, so when I bought an SSD, which was the closest I got to needing to do a reinstall, I had to do little more than leaving it running overnight, unattended, once.)

Of course, things progress, and Windows vs OS X is moving closer to parity... thanks to efforts from both companies. But I replaced my soaked Macbook Pro with a new one anyway, on the basis of my experience - it certainly wasn't the sticker price, that's for sure - and it's working out OK for now.

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