An article on MacWorld.com claims that the Dell isn’t cheap anymore, despite costing $100 less, when you consider all that it lacks in comparison to the Mac Mini.
They’re wrong.
The specs table on their page states compares the Mac Mini’s “Two USB 2.0 ports” with the Dimension 2400’s “USB 2.0 (assumed–Dell doesn’t list this in the specs)”.
The Mac looks better, right? It actually isn’t. The Dell computer has six USB 2.0 ports: two in front, four in the back. As far as USB ports are concerned, it’s superior.
In the wireless category, they say the Mac Mini is “AirPort Extreme- and Bluetooth-ready”, while the Dell has “No wireless”.
The Mac also has no wireless. AirPort and Bluetooth cost extra - a lot extra. Did anyone mention that you can easily get an 802.11g USB adapter for $20? It’s probably about the same for a Bluetooth adapter. And you can use them, too, without an additional USB hub, because the Dell has six USB ports rather than two.
By the way, the Dell also has two PS/2 ports for the keyboard and mouse (you can also use USB ones). On the Mac Mini, you must use a USB keyboard and a USB mouse. That immediately uses up both ports, unless the keyboard has a built-in USB hub (some do).
When we look at audio on their comparison chart, the Mac Mini has “Audio out” while the Dell has “Integrated audio”. Integrated audio, much like integrated video, has the connotation of being low quality. Now, I’m not saying it isn’t - in fact, it is - but guess what?
The Mac Mini’s “audio out” is also integrated audio!
Now, to clarify, I’m not a big fan of Dell, but I just had to post this because the facts were so slanted and skewed.
Apple makes it (by stealing it from XEROX). Microsoft copies it (from the other thieves).
Apple makes it. Microsoft copies it.
you all need to get a life! your are all bloody losers (mac and win users alike), they are just computers. i use a mac but i don’t get passionate about it and waste my time arguing back and forth.
“Anonymous Says:
June 12th, 2005 at 2:15 am ”
I think the last guy got it in one, Mac is superior without a doubt….look at the statistics and market changes in the last ten years.. mac growing others are decreasing. As I have my qualifications in “ICT prac” Cisco & am doing Computer Science at deg.. Ive used pcs most of my life, I took a chance and converted and found Ive been missing out.
“dont knock it untill you try it”
M$ fix NONE of their bugs, they don’t need to. People just buy Windows because they’re afraid to change their platform and are unaware and ignorant of alternatives (Linspire, RedHat, Mac OS) due to huge “brainwashing” on Microsofts part and totalitarian control over major hardware suppliers threatening that MS will take their multi-million dollar contract elsewhere leaving the hardware firms bankrupt (that is if they support another OS or MS alternative.)
Economic models states that large firms in Oligopolistic/Monopolistic competition, that is owning a large share in a sector with a few other weaker competitors, will not innovate - just use their Fiscal muscle to buy out threatening companies and keep competitors at bay by using its financial control over related suppliers, like HP, Compaq, Dell etc.
Look at WIN ME, why fix 98 when you can just use the old “must upgrade must be compatible. Alternatives? None exist. oh, and Compaq… install Netscape in your systems to compete with IE and we will Kill you and your loved ones.”
This is no farce, Windows always do this. They insist on repacking the same old crap to their customers who mostly unknowingly buy what they already have. Windows 2000 and XP are basically the same OS, only XP has more eye candy.
Windows 95, 98 and ME all had the same bugs, if anything the number of problems grew as Windows “progressed.” MAC OS 9, 10.1, 10.2 and so on are quantum leaps from each new OS.
“Writing viruses for Mac is not any harder than writing for Win machines, it’s just that the honey pot isn’t there.’”
True the market is smaller, true that writing them isn’t any harder - however getting them to install on Mac OS machines is much harder than getting them to install on M$ machines.
XP will install anything through IE without needing authentification, MAC OS needs you to type in your password (Thanks to the new UNIX system) before anything is installed. This is thanks to permissions that allow you to read, write, read & write and have no access to certain files.
Also MAC OS has a root user which is protected from virus/infection as IF you were infected you can just delete the problem from the Root account and then create a new user, presto.. virus gone. As virus’ can only affect the user in question not the Root user. Where as if Windows gets infected, everyone on that computer gets infected and suffers the problems.
Internet Explorer and M$’ sub-standard OS allow these infections and vulnerabilities to occur. As a converted Mac user as of 18 months now, I ran no anti-virus software or spyware programmes. Just last month I downloaded Norton antivirus and Omni’s Spyware Removal Tool and it report I had ZERO, that’s right 17 months of use and ZERO virus’ and spyware on my system.
Even if the market is smaller, there still should be SOME spyware/virus’ that get into the Mac OS but THEY DONT. Symantec and CA acknowledge that Mac Virus’ exist, but there is no recorded event where a Mac machine got infected in their databases.
MAC OS uses the BASH shell, as do most Linux OS’ so theoretically MAC OS + Linux should be taken into account together, making the market size bigger and more tempting to potential hackers. Apple has about 5-6% market-share and Linux around 4-5% so that’s 1 out of 10 machines – still no virus’.
When I ran XP I would have to remove 100s of spyware items a week, I’ve been lucky with virus’ Only got infected twice on XP (only ran the OS for just over a year), one removed all my drives bar the C: the other was a reformat and reinstall job. Mac OS has closed the gap on XP with OS 8.5. I think Longhorn might manage to beat OS 9.
If Microsoft were really interested in their customers and delivering the best OS, they wouldn’t be buying competitors who are trying to bring the Industry into the future with innovative ideas. MS buy out competitors to save valuable $$$$$$ so they don’t need to innovate, so they can remain stagnant. This is the formula to Micro$ofts success:
Profit = No Competition + No Innovation (that way when a new OS comes out, companies will buy it and have it pre-installed on their systems and MS just sit back and collect the dollars.)