Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

finance.yahoo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 177 posts

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

#61

Post by slantyyz »

santaclaus wrote: post #12
paulmd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple doesn't have a monopoly on durable laptops. I'm still using a circa-2010 Thinkpad W-series (purchased refurbished in 2013). Needs a new cooling module (starting to overheat occasionally), and it's been through a couple battery packs and a keyboard replacement, but those are essentially wear items and it's otherwise still going strong. So far I've actually stepped right flat on the screen once (it fell out of be…

Is Lenovo shipping laptops with high dpi displays?

I replaced my bricked early 2011 MBP with a Lenovo laptop with a 4K screen at the end of 2014 (with pretty top end specs for ~$1200 CAD), so they've been doing it for a while.

On the downside, I got a consumer grade Lenovo, which meant free spyware and a less sturdy chassis than my MBP. Of course it was less than half the price of new similarly equipped Macbook Pro at the time.

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

#62

Post by roryisok »

my first reaction is to not accept this and share anecdotes of my experiences, but maybe he's right. I don't run an IT dept. I've not done any cost benefit analysis. I just know my second hand thinkpad was cheap, works well and I won't trade it for a mac any time soon.

Maybe if I was loaded I'd buy my folks and siblings macbooks, but I'm not, and I'm happy enough to fix the odd issue on their cheap windows laptops. one or two reinstalls a year while I watch some TV in the background beats convincing them to spend money they don't really have on top of the line hardware

but like I said, different story if you're making financial decisions for a big Corp

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

#63

Post by fnordsensei »

The company I work at is small, at 32 employees. We standardized on macs in the mid 00s for the exact same reason: maintenance costs. Being a consultancy, the ROI calculation also included hours lost due to malfunctioning hardware or software problems, and it became very easy in the end to justify the initially higher expense of giving someone a mac instead of a PC.

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

#64

Post by greedo »

jmknoll wrote: post #41
greedo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The minimum savings was $273/4 years = 68.25/year The maximum savings was $543/4 years = 135.75/year

Are those savings already including the fact that "a Mac initially costs anywhere from $117 to $454 more than a similarly configured Windows PC"? Looking at it again, its not entirely clear from the way that its worded.

Lifecycle TCO would naturally take into consideration the initial purchase price. Just preface think of it like this:

"Despite a Mac costing anywhere from $117 to $454 more, it's cheaper than Windows."

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

#65

Post by WayneBro »

jgforbes wrote: post #21
patwolf wrote: post #9

I'd like to know what percentage of help desk calls are related to hardware vs OS vs software. I can believe that the Mac hardware is more reliable. However, a lot of help desk calls I remember making were because some legacy software wasn't working which wasn't directly related to Windows, e.g. I can't read my lotus notes mail because there's a problem with my remote mailbox configuration. I'd like to know if those…

There could be other biases too. For instance, if the Mac users at IBM were in largely technical roles (e.g. working on their MacOS integration service) vs large non-technical departments working on Windows machines (e.g. HR and accounting). It wouldn't be very surprising that technical departments had less help-desk complaints than non technical departments.

There are definitely other biases. Macs simply can't do as much as Windows can in a business setting.

That's why companies like Disney and Google have to build their own systems management tools. I could not imagine running a financial services house, an insurance company or a warehouse without Windows.

Even simple software like remote desktop does not exist on the Mac. Yes the Mac has screen sharing but it is nowhere as good as remote desktop.

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

#67

Post by wmf »

Shivetya wrote: post #60

Sorry, but Apple still needs a dedicated docking station solution provided by them. It can simply connect through a single port (USB3/Etc/Etc). I use my current work laptop for home and work and have full setups at each and its a simple one step to activate it all. Now what I am curious about is being able to do pushes that are corporate team just loves to do and ease of connection to to z, i, and p, systems. IBM rec…

The Thunderbolt Display acts as a dock; it currently requires two cables but there may be a new USB-C version next week that uses one cable. Third-party docks also exist: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TCDOCK11PSG/ Just don't expect IBM to buy one for you.

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

#68

Post by scarecrowbob »

weaksauce wrote: post #31
greggman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I had the gpu die in my 2011 MBP about 12 months ago, and they even waived the $300 when they fixed it (and replaced the battery).

It had to be gone long enough that I ended up purchasing a new MBP (I'm a freelance dev and couldn't afford any down time), but it came back a-okay.

I dunno the whys and hows of getting them to do that kind of thing, but I'm still using the computer. Which is way better than the toshibas that I have owned over the years which last about 3-4 years as my daily drivers.

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

#69

Post by greedo »

I use a Mac at work, and we've started giving managers the discretion to choose a Mac for their employees. I've been using Macs since OSX, so fairly familiar with their flaws in a corporate environment.

I have to laugh at anyone who thinks Windows would be comparable or cheaper in cost to a Mac. Everyday, I hear a continual litany of woe and despair from our helpdesk about drivers, and anti-virus, and AD issues etc ad infinitum.

Fortunately for me, my only interaction with the "Windows" environment is via SMB to our fileservers. This works reasonably well. The rest of our applications are either Java based, have a web interface, or use a console. My immediate coworkers are all sysadmins with years of experience, and even they still have to cope with BSODs, crashing applications, and all the usual crap that Windows users continue to put up with.

It's sad; they actually think it's normal. I run into the same issue when they talk about Windows server issues (I admin the *nix systems). They don't believe me when I say I don't run into issue xyz...

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

#70

Post by joshmanders »

fnordsensei wrote: post #63

The company I work at is small, at 32 employees. We standardized on macs in the mid 00s for the exact same reason: maintenance costs. Being a consultancy, the ROI calculation also included hours lost due to malfunctioning hardware or software problems, and it became very easy in the end to justify the initially higher expense of giving someone a mac instead of a PC.

I came to the same conclusion after 15 years as a Windows user, 2 years as Linux and now going on 4 as Mac.
Post reply on HN