Village Idiot
No longer a newbie, moving up!
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2008
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Macs today have the same hardware in them that PCs do, and they cost about 20-30% more. I have nothing against Macs, but I can't, in good conscience, recommend a Mac to someone on a budget, especially one under 1k.
Try 100% more.... a bare bones iMac starts at $1,200... an equivalent PC about $600. Toss into the mix the fact that the Mac operating system is based off of Unix, which is essentially Linux.... which is free....
But you are right.... I would never recommend a Mac to anyone... budget or not.
Something I forgot to mention in my first post. Avoid at all costs building a computer. Unless you are a high tech gamer, it isn't worth it. 10 years ago, it was a great thing... but today, computers are so cheap you aren't looking at saving much money by building one... and when you build one, you get no support. The $100 you save by building it yourself is going to get washed out in the 8 hours it takes you to build, configure, and install the OS on a homemade.
And another thing.... don't bother asking what brand to buy. You are going to get 10 different answers from 10 differnt people... and each of the 10 answers is going to get bashed by the other 9 people. Just shop around for a name brand computer... Dell, Gateway, Sony, Toshiba, IBM, HP... and you'll be fine. Some of them run good deals at times, and the bottom line is all the parts are made in the same place anyway.
Did you include about $300 for a good 22" IPS display?
And I'm assuming you're comparing it to a budget PC. What about a Sony AIO with the same specs? They run about the same price.
And OS X's design goes far beyond something like Ubuntu. I've only ever once had to manually install a driver for anything in OS X. Plus the built in features are something I have to use 3rd party programs in Windows to acheive.
Rosewill ATX mid tower $40
Mobo and Intel i5 - 750 2.66ghz quad core processor $315
GeIL 4x1GB memory $120
EVGA 1GB Nvidia GTS 250 $135
Antec 650W PS $110
You can get 1TB HDDs for about $100 and DVD driver for something like $20.
A basic build with a quick browse through Newegg. $840 + tax, etc...
Cheapest comparable computer on Dell's site in an Inspiron 580 with 20" monitor. Thing is it has a mediocre 512MB GPU and a 300gb HDD, irrc. Not to mention, with a self built rig, you know where the parts come from.