Floid: I was thinking of the college discount; fewer companies offer that, it's more obfuscated from the PC vendors that do, and by that point, students are usually making their own purchasing decisions.
Well, I assume Apple relies more on K12 than other companies. My college required me to buy Machintoshes for our newspaper office because they had a "discount" deal with Apple. I really wanted to convert the office to the PC, instead. I must point out that this was back in '96, before OSX existed and Macs crashed every 15 minutes when running Photoshop and Quark Express. God, I hated those Macs. Today I wouldn't object so much.
Dan: I don´t see much difference in terms of memory usage?
Me neither. I have 512MB in my system, and my Win2000 system idles at 200MB usage. I'm running Apache, MySQL, and Norton Antivirus (Apache uses about 7MB, the other two use 25MB each). Firefox uses between 10MB to 100MB of memory, and I've seen it use 310MB, once.
Holley: The same kind of costly and jam happy mechanism thats been working fault free in my car stereo for the last 5 years?
More room in the car dash. I assume the disc loaders in the iMac and Mac Mini use smaller laptop-quality components.
At any rate, I think it's dumb. I flipped out when I saw the ultra-flimsy laptop CD drive in the iMac, so I don't have high expectations for whatever is in the Mini.
HopperJF: Excuse me sir, but what makes you think a button will make much difference?
Well, eject buttons don't work like they used to. Today they're all software controlled, and the drive / OS can "lock" the button if they feel like it. It's really fun when you reboot the computer, try to take the CD out, and the drive closes automatically, crushing the disc.
Things like this are why I refuse to drive an automatic transmission or use the "auto" setting on my car's climate control system. I don't like gizmoes. I like buttons that do what I tell them to do. :-)
HopperJF: ...being a tray load there was no way to pull it out.
I've never seen a tray-load that didn't have an emergency eject that can be pushes with a straightened paperclip. Auto-loading CDs, however, don't have that. I would never willingly purchase such a drive.
Stormlord: the QUALITY tool cost twice than a cheap tool but is CHEAPER because it works most of the times for more than twice holes than the cheap one.
Indeed. But, try explaining that to a marketeer or a manager.
Two things to consider when designing a product: the people who buy a product are often not the people who use the product, and you can't logically explain quality control to a manager. :-)
Stormlord: ...can you find something for a P3 now without changing the ENTIRE computer (including the power supply!!!)
Of course you can. But, it's so cheap to buy stuff you can afford to replace everything. Years ago, the best thing you could do to improve an old PC's speed was to put in a fast hard drive and leave the CPU alone. If I want a new ATA100 hard drive controller for an old PC, I can spend $25. If I want one for an old Mac, it will run just shy of $200.
It helps if you CAN replace only what you want. A PC allows you to replace the motherboard, power supply, and case. A Mac allows you to replace the whole damn machine complete with built-in monitor, including parts that don't need to be replaced often, like the CD drive. Even pre-built PCs with proprietary cases often use standard ATX motherboards and graphics on a card.
Ilwrath: Tray loads are easy to fix. Stick a paperclip in the hole and rip the tray out. If that fails, it's a cheap commodity part to replace. A big negatory on both counts there for the Mac, though.
Yeah, but I must still applaude Apple's decision to use SerialATA for the DVD. I wish PC vendors would wake up and banish all these damned ATA cables! Internal USB floppies that don't cost $55 would be nice, too.
Then again, being able to boot of a flash card would be excellent. Most PC BIOSes don't support that, though.
Adolescent: Apple has never been known for it's quality
I back this up 100%. At least if you get screwed over by one bad PC vendor, you have dozens of others to choose.
Adolescent: The only reasons that Macs cost more than equivilent PC are: 1) people are willing to pay, 2) Apple has a hardware monopoly, and 3) Apple uses illegal price fixing strategies to eliminate dealer competition.
1. - Yup. People have more control than they realize, but they never boycott -- they always suck it up and pay. I believe the same rules apply to Microsoft's product activation and copy protection on games and DVDs.
2. - Yup. But then, so did Atari and Commodore, so we should talk. BTW, those two went out of business. :-)
3. - That "illegal" price fixing is not so unusual. Many electronics companies do that. For example, if you try to sell a Canon camera or Sony Camcorder below their fixed price, you will lose your license to sell their products. I used to work in a small camera store, and trust me, they tell you EXACTLY how to run your store. It's pitiful.
