I love Apple computers and their focus on sensible, elegant design, intuitive operating systems, and reliability, but I am not a fan of their market practices.
I have dozens of reasons for getting the PC over the MacBook Pro that I really salivated over, but the main concern was the most obvious: The Dollar Ballot.
I needed a new computer. My Dell Dimension 4550 is what I lovingly refer to as "pre-war." Though I actually bought it in May of 2003, right around the time that the mission was "accomplished," it's very old and very very slow. I've tried every home remedy that I can think of to speed it up, but to no avail. It now is sitting in the other room serving as my admin workstation for my home wireless network.
As I type this, Chad is using his Nintendo DS on WiFi, and I'm in the comfy pleather chair, pounding away on my Toshiba Satellite A215 S6804 laptop.
The original price range of the machine, according to CNet was arount 900. I got a killer special with a mail-in rebate and my final cost will be less than $650. I have 2 GB of memory and 200GB Hard drive with a 1600 MHz bus speed.
To get any similar kind of specification from a Mac, I would have paid four times the price. If you don't believe me, just check the Apple Store online, or walk into your local best buy.
I could have also waited until I had saved some more money, but as a writer, I really needed a machine that could work. I started looking for used. I tried Ebay, I tried all avenues until I finally settled on the Toshiba. There was no better machine out there for the same amount of money. I have firewire, a built-in webcam (iSight be darned), and I can burn dual layer DVDs and laser-encode my own labels.
My next agony will be trying to get rid of Vista, but that's a story for another time.
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