Back in 2009 we didn’t see the iPad and Tablet revolution

This is Easter Sunday and I’m supposed to take the day off but I’ll just write little teenie weenie articles OK. Let me weigh in on the Mac versus Microsoft.

I’m probably a Microsoftie; however, I’ve had both almost continuously since the 1980’s. My kids love Mac’s – they’re cool. I’ll agree, Mac wins a lot of style contests. But for lowest cost, most computing power and freedom – I’ll take Windows. 

Common sense will tell you the market leader is cheaper since they make 20 times more of them. There are more competitors in the PC world than in the Mac world. More adds, cheaper memory,hard drives, monitors, everything is more plentiful, with more choices and lower costs.
I think the thing that I hate about Mac’s is control. Apple is a control freak company that decides what’s good for you but not me. I’m a freedom loving rebel.

I sold, serviced and have been in love with computers for over 25 years. I have several on all the time. I want a new laptop for my kitchen table so I can read the brain dead Charlottetown Guardian with my Shreddies. In that time, I learned they are just boxes.

Manufacturers and Microsoft want us to think of them as magical but they are not. This year’s top computer will be mid-powered next year and bottom of the barrel in two years. If you buy the latest and the greatest, Intel wins the game of taking the most money from your bank and putting it in theirs. Computers are just boxes and they are worth less than half what you pay the minute you turn them on. Try paying half price and get ahead of them.

Cost isn’t everything. Cool is cool. But Mac’s aren’t really cool. My cheap HP notebook has a better case with 3rd holograms and a screen that those tiny Mac notebooks can’t touch. It’s lighter, faster and was half the price of the Mac at Staples.

The new dual Quad Xeon Nehalen MacPro is enticing but it’s over $8,000 configured to work and the specs Apple publishes only show small incremental improvement in performance for video and graphics work. Same old story: big price small, performance improvement.

Mac service sucks. The hours are too short and they don’t look after you. HP takes calls 24×7 and ship you a complete new computer that arrives the next day. That’s service. Everything I’ve tried to fix a 2 year old Mac the parts cost more than a new one.

Apple store, the only place to get their software, sucks big time. For months they locked my account with the illogical US country code for a Canadian address. I’ve had that account for years. Once they screwed up, the account was useless since they wanted an non-existent zip code when I have a postal code. I was on the phone so many times with nice but helpless people I quit. All I wanted was the upgrade for Quick Time pro. In the XP Vista world, if one vendor is brain dead, I move on within seconds.

I don’t know why you Mac-heads put up with that. Do you belong to strange cults or social groups that control your life and you feel good about it?

A few years ago I bought the best Mac PowerBook money could buy with all the accessories for about $3,900. It drove me crazy. They kept hiding OS features. The disk took too much trouble to browse and the software set was too limited. I sold it to my lucky cousin a year later for half price. He and his wife are Mac-heads. They love it.

She’s a designer and uses Adobe Premiere and Illustrator. I use the same programs on my PC. Only mine work faster and better. The last box I got was a Dell XPS 630i gaming machine for HD video editing. The system from Apple to do it was about $7,000. You had to order it: I hate that. This one was a Friday night whim purchase at Future Shop for $2,000. I was looking at Tom’s Hardware yesterday and the quad processor is more powerful than the new i7 920. Sure the 960 Extreme can work faster but it costs like $5,000 for only some speed improvement.

For my Windows box, I can buy Terabyte drives for under $150 and memory is cheap. The thing looks like a black space ship and acts as night light for my office and the hallway. That’s pretty cool and speed is always cool.

This is about the time I listen to the siren call of Mac. I need a new cell phone. iPhone? Naw, I already own an iTouch that sits on the shelf. I don’t like it. Maybe a Blackberry storm: I tried one and didn’t need anyone to tell me how to do email or make calls. If I’m smart I’ll stay where I belong.