Mac vs PC: A real comparison

      by Wyatt Walter

Microsoft is revving up its FUD engine once again. This time in the form of a whitepaper that supposedly outlines some of the TCO differences between Macs and PCs. The comparison was done by a Microsoft consultant and is laughably flawed in its comparison. There’s several flaws, including the absence of antivirus software on the Windows PC, the inclusion of MobileMe every year (an optional service), and the inclusion of the cost of Office for Mac as well as Quicken in the Apple computers’ costs, but not for the PC. The machines were also not sized appropriately to compare.

I tried to even up the score as much as possible, though there are lots of variables that one has to take into consideration. I’ll avoid the apples to oranges jokes, but it really is tough to compare the two. I modified the spreadsheet that Mr. Kay created to accommodate for the following: using appropriate software to compare the platforms (i.e. iWork on the Mac and Office on the PC), evened up the warranties, and took out some extraneous hardware upgrades (in my opinion). Keep in mind through this comparison that I’m comparing a single pair of specific models of computers to each other. This may change drastically if one changes vendors, I simply chose the same vendors as the original study.

The laptops compared in the original study were a baseline MacBook with a Dell Inspiron 15. The Inspiron 13 was much closer to the specs of the MacBook as well as the same screen size. I had to modify RAM on both (the Windows PC offered 3GB of RAM while the MacBook didn’t), upgraded from Vista Basic to Home Premium, added a webcam to the Dell and upgraded the hard drive on the MacBook to match up. After they were brought to similar specs, the Dell was still significantly cheaper, but rose a lot more than the MacBook in price. The Inspiron left a lot to be desired in the graphics card, but Dell didn’t offer an upgrade for that model.

For the desktop, the Mac Pro really didn’t stack up to the same price as the HP. I chose to use the bottom-end iMac. It has a 20-inch screen with a 2.66 Core 2 Duo, the same processor as the HP. I upgraded the desktop to match the specs of the iMac and had to go to 4GB of RAM to compare as well as 640GB hard drives as that was the lowest common value for each model. I also had to add a 20-inch widescreen monitor to the HP to account for the fact that the iMac comes with a monitor built-in.

Since they are trying to do a true “Mac vs. PC” comparison, I decided to use Microsoft Office Standard for the PC and Apple iWork on the Mac for a productivity suite. I also assumed that Office and iWork both update once in the 5 years, the same as the study suggests (only we must have pirated Office for the PC in the original study).

On the PC side, I added NOD32 antivirus. I spent $60 every two years for subscriptions and $40 for the last year. Antivirus doesn’t change much in price unless you go with a free antivirus, but that was the vendor I chose. I also assumed an OS X upgrade family pack as well as two copies of Windows Vista Home Premium upgrades as well.

Here’s what I came up with:

mac-vs-pc-chart1

I also included the graph for comparison (orange is Mac, blue is PC):

mac-vs-pc-graph1

One thing that I did take out of consideration was an upgrade to the video card after a few years. A huge limitation of the iMac is that the video card is built-in and there’s no upgrading. If you are a hardcore gamer, then the iMac is probably not for you. In fact, a five-year-old PC probably isn’t salvageable, either.

Conclusion

I was actually quite surprised by how close the two prices actually were. According to the two brands that I compared, the TCO wasn’t much different between the two after 4 years, but with the assumptions that were made, the TCO starts looking much better for the Mac after 5 years. Of course.. thanks to Dilbert, we all know how accurate estimates like these are..

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (3) : Apr 15th, 2009

3 Responses to “Mac vs PC: A real comparison”

  1. Mac | Mac vs PC: A real comparison | Download Free Software Says:
    April 15th, 2009 at 2:03 am

    [...] is the original: Mac vs PC: A real comparison Nessun tag per questo [...]

  2. Articles about Windows 7 as of April 15, 2009 | The Lessnau Lounge Says:
    April 15th, 2009 at 12:58 pm

    [...] [...]

  3. Mac vs. PC: How Well Does It Age? | What a n00b! Says:
    April 16th, 2009 at 12:17 am

    [...] I took a look at a ridiculous study sponsored by Microsoft which supposedly showed how PCs had a much lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than Macs. The study [...]

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