Vista

I know a chap with a horrifyingly expensive Mac Air? laptoppy thing. It's bloody horrible, non-intuitive, and achingly slow if you actually want to do anything with it. Small and light, but by Christ it's a piece of 'style over substance' s**te. Chap with it is a total Macfiend?, loves them to bits, sings their praises to everyone, always has the latest iphone thing, works as a vastly overpaid IT Geek for a large multinational company and constantly tells everyone how it's the best piece of kit there is.

I gave him a challenge. One of those cheap Acer PC laptops Vs his ÜberMac. Using the same cable internet connection had to set up the internet (from scratch), download a music file as MP3, send it to the iphone and also burn it as an audio file on CD.

I did exactly the same tasks on the Acer but not using any Apple stuff, PC to Sony Ericsson K750i, same tune, same internet connection, same source for the file.

The Mac lost, and lost spectacularly badly. IT Geek has hardly spoken to me since, and he no longer goes on about how wonderful his Mac is.

That's just bolocks ad you know it. How much would an I7 mac with 6gigs of DDR3 RAM, blu-ray burner, 300Gb VelociRaptor and a 1gig 280 cost you? I built one for £1300 with Vista using only top quality components for my birthday last month.

Don't confuse him with facts.

You also missed:

Throw away printer as no mac drivers, buy new printer. Miss out on latest game as no mac version. Sync with phone, except it doesn't. Sync with office mailserver, except it doesn't as it's exchange. Buy scanner. Return scanner for dearer mac compatible scanner. Connect to AD resources. Realise it's all smoke and mirrors. Put it all back in box and go buy a PC.

There is only one compelling reason to buy a mac instead of a PC and that is if the best software for your work requires it (and the only thing I can think off the top of my head is Logic, because I use it, or Final Cut). And then buy a PC to run everything else. Of course if you're buying with your own money it's better to learn Vegas or Premiere as by the time you've shelled out for the right hardware to use Final Cut you'll be skint.

You're comparing Macs to disposable Packard Bell Plastic s**te. My Toshiba came needing no registration or activation, and needed either a Mcafee registration or (in my case) an uninstall.

The basic Z400 is a dual core Xeon, not a quad core Nehalem and it only has a single socket, t also has only two PCI-express slots vas the Macs four. Hence it's not comparable to the MacPro which is a dual socket even when it only has one Xeon fitted. The HP model which is equivalent to the Mac is the Z800.

Both the Mac and the HP will use the same monitor, so there's no need to add £315 to the price of the Mac package. Either both use a £635 monitor or both use a £320 monitor.

The HP Z800 is £2111 before VAT with a quad core Nehalem 3GB RAM, 640GB HDD. Add £120 for a 512Mb GeForce 120, +£635 for the same monitor as the Mac add £85 for OSX and VAT all round: Total 3,393.65.

What were you saying?

Oh, and the Z800 case design is s**te.

I call bullshit.

The Air doesn't have a CD drive. Which means he'd need to swap USB cables between an external (ie. slow) drive and his iPhone.

Then there's iTunes, which is a lot more than 'transferring music'.

There is absolutely no way anyone with even the slightest bit of technical knowledge would get in a strop about some crappy 'test' that has no real world relevance.

You miss the point, though - OSX is only not intuitive if you are too stubborn to realise that you can't just sit down in front of an alternative OS and try to 'drive' it like you would Windows. It's completely different - as different as expecting to be able to ride a bike just because you can drive a car. The OS is solid, stable, and exceptionally easy to use.

Then there's the hardware - no other manufacturer has come even close to offering the screen quality, battery life, thin-ness and light-ness of the Air, no matter what the cost. It's by far the nicest laptop I've ever had - wasn't even that expensive - got mine for £749.

Built.

Not bought.

Apples / oranges, ffs.

That's just like claiming that the Elise is s**te, because you could build a Locost for a fraction of the price.

Strange, I've never had that.

I've got phones here that won't sync with Windows without cables and loading drivers / software.

My printers all work with the Mac, so do my scanners. And all my phones.

The phones 'just work' using BT, too. They also sync with each other, iTunes and my iPhone.

Games just don't come into the equation.....

For the average home user - doing a bit of office type stuff, downloading music, syncing with an iPod / iPhone, playing with photos and browsing / email, a Mac makes a hell of a lot more sense than following the advice of a PC World salesman and buying a 300 quid PC that'll be pretty much useless by the time MS launch their next Fisher Price OS.

the HP isn't in the same league as the Mac Pro. Pick the HP that is and it costs £800 more than the Mac. Go figure. More typical fanboi massaging of figures.

I remember reading ages back that the average hard drive size at any point in time is likely to be the average amount of RAM 10 years later. So when the average PC's shipped with a 16TB hard drive we've got 10 years to panic.

Bing - Apple monitor, Apple computer. HP monitor on HP computer. You're moving the goalpoasts. That's before of course realising the base price on the Mac is still more than the HP WITH the monitor.

Which they are just about.

I've bought a few of them, they're aluminium panelled steel chassis with plastic trim.

But there's no "comparison" then, as the 'consumer' macs don't have separate monitors other than the mac mini.

Hmmm. Mac Mini - £499, 2.0GHz, 120 gig HD, 1 gig RAM . HP ultraslim 2.5GHz,

80GB, 1 gig RAM, £493. Apple don't do a 2.5GHz, only a 2.25 for an additional "£120...

Basic iMac is £949, 2.66 GHz, 320 gig HD, 2 gig RAM. HP ultraslim 3.0GHz,

160GB, 2 gig ram £644, add an integrated workcenter stand at £57 and a 22" monitor at 149 to make a 22" all in one for £850, or if 19" is enough the 19" monitor/stand bundle is £152, making a £796 system. And again, not a cheap Packard Bell Plastic Shite PC.

Erm, see Mr F's post.

Just because it's an Apple machine, you don't need an Apple monitor.

You can use any monitor you like.

Still look like a big, black, ugly hulk of plastic tat, though.

Find me an equivalent form factor PC for the same money.

Find me an equivalent form factor PC for the same money.....

Feels metal to me. Plastic frontage, mind you. Seems to not really affect the running of it though.

Aren't the only PCs that come with loads of trial versions of s**te installed stuff like Packard Bell machines (now Tiny have gone bust). Hold one, it was TIME that chucked a load of s**te on theirs, thinking about it...

-- "For want of the price of tea and a slice, the old man died."

What's UAC? Stuff like window animations are amongst the first things I turn off upon a fresh install of XP.

And Toshiba, on evidence of Mrs H's laptop.

Which is s**te, despite only being just over 12 months old, and she's making noises about replacing it already.

The only way to salvage the situation is to wipe Vista and install XP Pro.

But she's making noises about buying another Mac once her 6 month loyalty bonus is paid out at work.

I'm beggining to think you actualy belive this.

Well that's a bit crap isn't it.

Why not have the iPhone in one USB port and the CD drive in another?

You never download music (from a legal source) and put it on your phone or on a CD?