Mac Trounces PC in Pop Mechanics Head-to-Head

Leander Kahney ()

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A PC-versus-Mac shootout by Popular Mechanics scores the Mac way ahead in both price and performance. PopMech compared desktops and laptops, and not only did the Macs run rings around their Windows counterparts, they were cheaper to boot. The conclusion:

Our biggest surprise, however, was that PCs were not the relative bargains we expected them to be. The Asus M51sr costs the same as a MacBook, while the Gateway One actually costs $300 more than an iMac. That means for the price of the Gateway you could buy an iMac, boost its hard drive to match the Gateway’s, purchase a copy of Vista to boot—and still save $100.

My, how times have changed. A few years ago, the conventional wisdom was the opposite: PCs were cheaper and faster.

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Somehow though, I don’t think conventional wisdom will change. Macs will always be regarded as premium computers — thanks to their fab design and quality fit and finish — even if that’s not actually true.

6 comments »

About the author

Leander Kahney

is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, and author of three books about technology culture: Inside Steve’s Brain, the New York Times bestseller about Steve Jobs; Cult of Mac; and Cult of iPod. Leander has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Guardian in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

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  • YodaMac

    I guess I’m in trouble… I love Mac’s, but I also love Coke! (Pepsi??!! Ewww!)

    Now I don’t know what to do! :O

  • http://www.leeclemmer.com Lee

    Who gives a shit whether you’re surfing the internet on a mac or pc… aren’t there better things to identify with? To identify with a corporate brand??? I don’t know, I guess it’s hard to explain just how ridiculous that is.

  • Church of Apple

    I think the reason Macs will always seam like premium, expensive computers is simply because Apple doesn’t offer a cheap-ass god-awful pile of hardware that runs OS X. I bet your typical non-techy consumer’s eyes would glaze over if you told them to compare the tech specks of their $300 Dell to the cheapest mac they could buy.

    Or maybe not.

  • Church of Apple

    BTW, for those of you who followed Apple back in the 80′s here’s a bit of sweet of nostalgia for you; it seems we have finally come full circle:

    http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/04/16/ibm_launches_internal_pilot_program_to_test_migration_to_macs.html

  • Doug S.

    I agree with CoA in that Apple may have less interest in changing the conventional wisdom than one might think. They’ve been so successful with an image as an upscale consumer brand that they probably won’t want to change that anytime soon.

  • http://clicknathan.com/secretblog nathan

    I wonder why they chose a Gateway and an Asus…the former is pretty well known to be junk, right? And the latter is pretty well known to be pretty much unknown…it just seems to kill the credibility a bit.