So, this is news?

Now DELL will double their effort in complaining about Apple laptops being green. More hot air out of DELL.

You get what you pay for when you buy Apple.

If I paid the low prices for buying either of these brands, I wouldn't expect to get much help if something goes wrong. I could probably just buy another identical computer and swap parts and come out ahead.

Look, we sold it to you cheap, now beat it!

So you're saying you'd rather pay twice retail price for a computer just for good customer service?

Personally, I remember the days when I could proudly claim "I have no idea how good or bad Apple's customer service is. I never have a problem with my Macs that cause me to call them."

Sadly, those days have long passed...

"So you're saying you'd rather pay twice retail price ... blah blah ..."

This lazy comment is getting tiresome. Yes, a top of the line Mac costs twice as much as a bottom of the barrel Dell, but is that really relevant? If any of the people making it would bother actually CHECKING comparable products from Apple and DEll, they would find that the Mac product is SLIGHTLY more expensive, but only slightly. For instance a Macbook pro 17" costs $2499, an similarly configured Dell 17" costs $2379 (price as of this morning). Twice the price? I think not! Better build quality and service is just icing on top of the cake.

I wonder how much of an advantage Apple has in this area from owning both the software and hardware? There's less chance for a customer to hear "well, that sounds more like a more serious software problem which we don't handle.".

I think Apple gets away with having to not do a TON of support simply because a lot of people mainly use Apple made software and hardware, and most of those work pretty dang well with each other.

This lazy comment is getting tiresome....they would find that the Mac product is SLIGHTLY more expensive, but only slightly.

And that argument is getting tiresome. Because you have to start with a limited supply on the Mac side, then match that with something on the PC side. The Mac side always just compares mac specs (and I thought Macs weren't about specs) but not about needs.

I want a tower so I don't have to daisy chain a bunch of hard drives on my desk or buy some extra NAS case or something. Mac price, $3000. Now, I don't need quad-code processors, but that's what you get. So to do comparisons, the Macs out there tell you I have to now price out a Dell with Quad-core xeons, even though I would end up with much more than I need or want.

For instance a Macbook pro 17" costs $2499, an similarly configured Dell 17" costs $2379 (price as of this morning). Twice the price?

Oh, and that Dell 17" probably has more USB ports, PC card slot, smart card slot, and several other things the mac doesn't, but I'm sure we'll ignore that as well. We'll just add a bunch of dongles to the mac with external peripherals!

And, no, not twice the price. But Constable Odo was comparing cheap PCs to expensive macs and then arguing that paying twice the price was worth it to get support (the twice the price, I'm assuming, coming from how he said he'd just buy another cheap PC, swap parts, and still come out ahead, so I guess actually more than twice the price).

Testudo, I will give you that Apple does not offer as many low end choices as some PC vendors. But that's an entirely different argument than claiming Apple charges more for the same hardware.

And yes, the Dell laptop probably has a few features the Apple does not, but the Mac also has a few features the Dell does not such as unibody aluminum construction, LED backlit screen, backlit keyboard, and MUCH lower weight (the Dell weight FIVE POUNDS more!). But it is the closest we can come to matching components. I find the argument of comparing expensive macs to cheap PCs without putting it in exactly those terms to be extremely dishonest.