Old People and Computers

I speak from my experience and what I'm told by my friends who do high level tech support. I only Google a few things as I need them. I don't start arguments then make a left hand turn because I uncovered something new on Google.
 
Zeets, I understand that you just took a pretty severe logical thrashing, and that must smart, but this petulant whininess is embarrassing for everyone.

There was no "left hand turn." The first thing I said in this thread: Macs aren't really overpriced compared to PCs with comparable hardware. That's the statement you took issue with. You'll notice that's also the same chorus I've repeated over and over. That's why I built you a PC with the exact same (internal) hardware, using your own site.

You are the dude who always tries to spin off to talk about something else completely irrelevant ("PEOPLE WHO BUY THE MAC PRO TO GAME ON WILL NOT GET GOOD VALUE" or "THE MAC PRO IS A GAMING MACHINE"), or who wastes both our times pointing out machines with non-comparable, cheaper hardware ("brah, I'll just throw a 780 on there, no prob, same diff"). I finally get you to focus on a PC (from a site you posted) with the EXACT SAME HARDWARE, and you throw up your hands like a baby, say it's pointless to talk about the thing you yourself brought up, and then you whine about me "googling" information.

I honestly don't know how this has been so difficult for you. Macs definitely aren't shy about the premium label, so I expected you to easily be able to build a PC with the same parts that was at least a little bit cheaper. I mean, I was just claiming that they aren't really overpriced, but I expect them to have a little bit of a price premium built in, especially against a custom build. But here we are...
 
Here, let me flesh out an argument you claimed you "could" do, but that you didn't ever follow up on:

Take an HP workstation with the same processor: (link)

HP Z420 Workstation - $1,829
- Same 1620v2 processor as Mac Pro
- 8 GB ECC RAM (vs 12 GB for MP)
- No graphics card (two D300s for MP)
- 128 SSD + 1 TB 7200RPM (256 SSD for MP)

So let's add 4 GB of ECC RAM from HP (link) - $145

I'd say the hard drives are a push. Just quickly eyeballing it, the difference in cost between a 256 SSD and a 128 SSD is roughly the same as the cost a 1 TB spinning drive.

Let's assume that the D300 graphics card will cost less than the W7000, due to the reduced vRAM. Basically it has the vRAM of the W5000, but everything else is comparable to the W7000. Newegg has the W7000 at $700 (link) and the noticeably lesser W5000 for $420 (link). Let's further assume the D300 get's priced at the midpoint between the two: $560.

Thus, the cost of adding two D300s: $1120

Total Cost: $3,094 (vs. $2999 for MP)

So here we have a machine that is almost identical internally, and the price is also almost identical.

Now, I could completely understand someone preferring the HP; it has definite advantages over the Mac Pro, with the big one being greater expandability. If you wanna pop a new GPU in there in a couple years, that's gonna be a heck of a lot easier in that big ol' tower. The form factor on the Mac Pro that will attract some people will drive just as many away.

But in terms of the actually hardware being overpriced... I just don't see it. Even if you assume the GPUs are $100 cheaper, the price is still basically the same.
 
Meta you don't realize sadly yet that your entire pricing is based off of a speculative cost for a graphics card. Only info I have been able to find on it's performance came from the gaming side. Which isn't your idea.

PErsonally I find your arguments amusing. Baically your Mac Pro is great for people who need a workstation, but never want to make changes to it because it's design is limited, which defeats one fo the key advantages to having a work station. Sub-market.
 
zitothebrave said:
Meta you don't realize sadly yet that your entire pricing is based off of a speculative cost for a graphics card.
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So? Just because we don't know the exact cost doesn't mean we know nothing. It is very easy to ballpark their value. I even deliberately lowballed it in that last price comparison. This is just you losing the argument and pretending it doesn't count based on a minor point.

zitothebrave said:
Only info I have been able to find on it's performance came from the gaming side.
Click to expand...

No you didn't. And for the 500th time, we aren't talking about the performance, we are talking about cost.

zitothebrave said:
PErsonally I find your arguments amusing. Baically your Mac Pro is great for people who need a workstation, but never want to make changes to it because it's design is limited, which defeats one fo the key advantages to having a work station. Sub-market.
Click to expand...

Sure, AS I JUST SAID the Mac Pro isn't for everyone. Obviously, if your main concern is rapidly upgrading your GPU every year, then you aren't going to buy this. That has nothing to do with my argument on cost, though.
 
So wait one cotton pickin second. I cannot value a Mac Mini vs a desktop because of the Mac Mini's size and the potential benefit of needing to carry it around. But the ultimate real life application that comes way too often with a work station (need to upgrade to tinker with latest parts) is not viable in the argument on cost?

You do realize you can't have it both ways. You either have to admit the Mac Mini is way overpriced or have to give a phantom untainable value to PC workstations that can easily be upgraded.
 
Mac vs PC interesting.

I see pros and cons on both since I have to deal with them in my field of work.

Macs are versatile on the software side and the PC is on the hardware side.

If it wasn't for the cost factor, we would be using macs because their virtual programs can mimic microsuck quite well, you can't the other way around.

I would love to have a mac so I can do web editing, then virtual to my Studio to do VB, .NET and SQL programming.
 
Zito, I'm not sure where to start with that. The point I made about the Mac Mini was threefold: (1) it is a completely different kind of thing than a desktop tower, so a direct internal hardware comparison is useless; (2) the miniPC machines you found were not even similar on the specs; and (3) there was real value in the actual engineering of the Mini's hardware. Anyway, I would readily admit there is a slight price premium on the Mac Mini, but I don't think it is by an unreasonable amount.

For the workstations, point #1 is moot, since we are now talking about two products in the same class. Point #2 is also moot, because we have found two incredibly similarly spec'd machines. But as to the third point, the engineering costs: when applied to the workstations, this would be added value to the Mac Pro, not a big ol' tower. I haven't bothered arguing that aspect because your original argument was so completely wrong that examining the design considerations was unnecessary. But put simply, the idea that a generic tower chassis has more "engineering value" than the Mac Pro is absurd.

Further, I'm not sure what you want me to admit? I've already said (multiple times) that if you put high value on rapidly switching out GPUs (which is something you greatly overestimate the prevalence of in the professional world), the Mac Pro is a bad match for you and you should put that money towards a customizable PC. Of course upgradeability has value, but that's not a hardware cost. We are in agreement that the Mac Pro is for a pretty limited client base, but that doesn't have anything to with the direct cost comparison of what parts are actually in the Mac Pro.
 
Metaphysicist said:
Zito, I'm not sure where to start with that. The point I made about the Mac Mini was threefold: (1) it is a completely different kind of thing than a desktop tower, so a direct internal hardware comparison is useless; (2) the miniPC machines you found were not even similar on the specs; and (3) there was real value in the actual engineering of the Mini's hardware. Anyway, I would readily admit there is a slight price premium on the Mac Mini, but I don't think it is by an unreasonable amount.

For the workstations, point #1 is moot, since we are now talking about two products in the same class. Point #2 is also moot, because we have found two incredibly similarly spec'd machines. But as to the third point, the engineering costs: when applied to the workstations, this would be added value to the Mac Pro, not a big ol' tower. I haven't bothered arguing that aspect because your original argument was so completely wrong that examining the design considerations was unnecessary. But put simply, the idea that a generic tower chassis has more "engineering value" than the Mac Pro is absurd.

Further, I'm not sure what you want me to admit? I've already said (multiple times) that if you put high value on rapidly switching out GPUs (which is something you greatly overestimate the prevalence of in the professional world), the Mac Pro is a bad match for you and you should put that money towards a customizable PC. Of course upgradeability has value, but that's not a hardware cost. We are in agreement that the Mac Pro is for a pretty limited client base, but that doesn't have anything to with the direct cost comparison of what parts are actually in the Mac Pro.
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Great post. You are correct.

I do not know what you all are using them for.

But Meta you nailed the pros of cons of each.

Fortunately my company is being budget minded, I personally can get a mac if I choose so. I have that power at work as a programmer, but for the other 50 pc users, they aren't programmers and only log into the network/web to run reports that my programs generate so a PC (Dell, boo) at $500 is feasible since it is web based and all the back-end is on the servers.

I just might ask for a mac for my needs when the next purge starts. Their virtual pc is awesome to use and I have equivalent processing power when crunching programs.
 
If your company had a good IT person they could just build a simple linux OS to pull up the web based stuff. In my recent years of tinkering with computers for some of my SMB buddies and one of my programmer friends and I worked on an OS/program that basically was used to access a website POS for a mail order business. All it could run was an email client that was sandboxed to prevent viruses from infecting anything, that POS, UPS and a sandboxed web browser that only could go to certain sites (USPS, UPS, their site and maybe a few other)

What happened with them was people would look up things on the computer and it would infect their computers which they'd have to wipe, reload, etc. We went this route and it worked well for them. Haven't heard of any issues since then, but we'll see now that they will probably need the new UPS program may have to update it some fun back door way. We're hoping they do it automatically.
 
Metaphysicist said:
Further, I'm not sure what you want me to admit? I've already said (multiple times) that if you put high value on rapidly switching out GPUs (which is something you greatly overestimate the prevalence of in the professional world), the Mac Pro is a bad match for you and you should put that money towards a customizable PC. Of course upgradeability has value, but that's not a hardware cost. We are in agreement that the Mac Pro is for a pretty limited client base, but that doesn't have anything to with the direct cost comparison of what parts are actually in the Mac Pro.
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You think that people who need to have the high end graphics card, processors, etc. in their work computers won't want to upgrade when the new ones come out? Would they rather spend 1500 bucks to get a new GPU or 3000 for a whole new computer?
 
BTW to the original topic. I stand by my assertion that old people should own chromebooks. I got one the other day from my girlfriend for christmas. It's good for email. internet and word processing. It maybe isn't the most user friendly because it requires some special clicking with the touchpad. But for someone who needs a mouse function you can get a bluetooth or USB mouse for it. Same if you don't like the screen or keyboard. You can chromecast your screen to a TV or attach via HDMI, you can do much more of course but I like it for what it is. I wanted a little comptuer I can take with me for web browsing primarily.

The one I got is super cheap 200 bucks, weighs about 3 pounds, screen is a little small 11.6" but is very nice. Boots in no time, setup literally takes a minute.

Overall I'm pretty impressed with the device. LG is building a Chrome All-in-One, if the price is right I'm thinking about getting my parents one so I never have to fix their computer again.
 
zitothebrave said:
If your company had a good IT person they could just build a simple linux OS to pull up the web based stuff. In my recent years of tinkering with computers for some of my SMB buddies and one of my programmer friends and I worked on an OS/program that basically was used to access a website POS for a mail order business. All it could run was an email client that was sandboxed to prevent viruses from infecting anything, that POS, UPS and a sandboxed web browser that only could go to certain sites (USPS, UPS, their site and maybe a few other)

What happened with them was people would look up things on the computer and it would infect their computers which they'd have to wipe, reload, etc. We went this route and it worked well for them. Haven't heard of any issues since then, but we'll see now that they will probably need the new UPS program may have to update it some fun back door way. We're hoping they do it automatically.
Click to expand...

If something happened, there is no one to fix a Linux/Unix issue. The other programmer I work with is useless in Unix/Linux. My previous job I was in OS2/Linux/Unix. I am Oracle certified as well so it would not be an issue, but if I get ran over, car accident or what not, our company will be screwed if we use that platform. The old company I worked for ask for me to comeback at a much higher salary because of my cross the board credentials. I said no because the owner is an asshole, he told me as much.

I do not do all the web stuff, the contract programmer does and she is an expert. I am not. I just fix any issues that comes up because she trained me on it (she taught me VB, ASP, AJAX, CSS and how they all worked together, I learned C++ and C# in school). This is the reason why there are two of us. If I am on vacation, she takes the calls if something goes wrong.
 
zitothebrave said:
BTW to the original topic. I stand by my assertion that old people should own chromebooks. I got one the other day from my girlfriend for christmas. It's good for email. internet and word processing. It maybe isn't the most user friendly because it requires some special clicking with the touchpad. But for someone who needs a mouse function you can get a bluetooth or USB mouse for it. Same if you don't like the screen or keyboard. You can chromecast your screen to a TV or attach via HDMI, you can do much more of course but I like it for what it is. I wanted a little comptuer I can take with me for web browsing primarily.

The one I got is super cheap 200 bucks, weighs about 3 pounds, screen is a little small 11.6" but is very nice. Boots in no time, setup literally takes a minute.

Overall I'm pretty impressed with the device. LG is building a Chrome All-in-One, if the price is right I'm thinking about getting my parents one so I never have to fix their computer again.
Click to expand...

One of the sups ask me what should he give for his wife for christmas. I told him a tablet for reading, Nook or Kindle.

In the end, she got a Surface and a IPad, and I looked at them both with envy. I wish I made his money. Been with the company over 40 years, insane. Great guy and business savvy.
 
I'm debating what I want to do with as far as tablets go. I am fixing my old Xoom and selling it to my mom for a deal. I'm gonna repair as best I can my clunky laptop and hope that if I do I can sell if for a few hundred. Otherwise I should be able to get 200+ from parts alone. Has a 2.3 GHz Sandy Bridge i5, q NVidea GeForce GT540M and 6 gigs of Ram. Those alone are worth probably 200. Add in the dell backlit keyboard, camera, DVD burner, a decent hard drive (maybe 30 bucks for it)
 
zitothebrave said:
I'm debating what I want to do with as far as tablets go. I am fixing my old Xoom and selling it to my mom for a deal. I'm gonna repair as best I can my clunky laptop and hope that if I do I can sell if for a few hundred. Otherwise I should be able to get 200+ from parts alone. Has a 2.3 GHz Sandy Bridge i5, q NVidea GeForce GT540M and 6 gigs of Ram. Those alone are worth probably 200. Add in the dell backlit keyboard, camera, DVD burner, a decent hard drive (maybe 30 bucks for it)
Click to expand...

Selling to a family member? A car I can see, but something like that.

Good God that is so wrong on many levels.
 
BTW I really like the Nexus 7 for my tablet. I'm switching more of my stuff to be small and compact. I'll want a nice new desktop sometime next year. Mine is about 6 years old and functions fine. I want to switch to an all-in-one though.I'm thinking the ENVY Recline 23 with Beats. I'll take the stock with maybe the only change being going from the 1TB Hybrid to the 256 Solid state since I don't use too much storage. For 150 bucks the added speed may be worth it. Or I may decide not to go with a desktop though as they're much more cost effictive. I was considering the Envy 700-210xt which I can get much nicer features for around the same price. For example for 1234 I get an i7 3.4 GHz GeForce GT640, 256 GB SSD
 
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