'Dude'! The Mac Duo is almost $1000 more!
[Updated 2:00PM] Ok I know it's been a while since the Dell dude was booked for Mary Jane, but I just couldn't resist the title when I did a little comparison shopping for a PC Duo. I found a nice little coupon code (6C$03$J1734MS?) worth $650 (when final price is more than $2,000) off a new Core Duo 1.83 GHz notebook from Dell but couldn't find any coupons for the Mac 1.83 GHz Core Duo. Since this is a typical coupon you'll find every few weeks for Dell and it's rare to find any kind of coupon for the Mac let alone one this large, I felt this was a fair comparison because it's what consumers would generally pay in the real world. If someone does find a Mac coupon, let me know and I'd be happy to update the pricing on the Mac. One of our readers did point out that it is possible to get 5% coupons for Macs, so I've updated the Mac pricing. This changes the discounted price difference to $942. Others mentioned the 10% student discounts for Apple, but I didn't use that since not everyone is qualified to use it whereas the Dell coupon is open to anyone.
Here are the specifications laid out below:
| Dell Core Duo | Mac Core Duo |
| 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo | 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo |
| 17" XGA+ TFT* | 15.4" 1440x900 TFT |
| 1 GB 533 MHz DDR2 SDRAM | 1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM* |
| 8x DVD±RW/CD-RW* | 4x DVD±RW/CD-RW |
| NVidia GeForce Go 7800 256 MB* | ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 256MB |
| 100GB 5400rpm Serial ATA hard | 100GB 5400rpm Serial ATA hard |
| Bluetooth | Bluetooth |
| Intel 802.11 a/b/g | Intel 802.11 a/b/g |
| $1,432* (with $650 off) | $2,374 (with 5% off) |
*Advantage
Apple lovers will always feel that the extra money is well spent and they will always believe they have the superior product. PC shoppers with more realistic budgets will always prefer the cheaper product (with mostly superior specifications) that can run all of their existing software. The difference is that the latter will always outnumber the former by more than 10 to 1. Apple has always managed to charge a premium for their hardware because of superior branding and a diehard fan base, but they will always be priced out of the main stream.
A lot has changed in the last year with Apple Macintoshes running on an Intel Pentium M platform (which I predicted), but the more things change the more they stay the same.