Thurrott pits Apple Mac Pro vs. similarly configured Dell, figures out the Mac is less expensive
Friday, August 18, 2006 - 01:00 PM EDTYesterday, we covered an article in which Paul Thurrott asserted that he had "little doubt that one could possibly configure a Dell workstation that undercuts a Mac Pro," to which we responded, "Then do it. We'll wait." Well, the wait wasn't very long. Paul got to work and first erroneously figured out the Dell was $1279 cheaper, then was chided repeatedly by the online community to fix his mistakes (some examples: here and here), eventually got it right, and in the process proved himself wrong.
"There's been a lot of baloney published online about the pricing of Apple's Mac Pro lately. I've had numerous emails from readers curious why I won't 'admit' that the Mac Pro is not only competitive with a certain Dell workstation, but it's actually quite a bit cheaper," Paul Thurrott writes for Paul Thurrott's Internet Nexus.
Thurrott reports, "Here's what I did, and I think this is where most Mac Pro/Dell workstations comparisons go wrong. I tried to configure two nearly identical systems as cheaply as possible. That is, I upgraded the video card in each to be the same exact video card. I got the same hard drive. The same memory. The same processors. And I used the Dell workstation model that most closely matched the Mac Pro."
Here's how it came out:
Dell Precision Workstation 490 (32-bit) = $5,530
Apple Mac Pro = $4949
Apple price advantage = $581
"I won't make any excuses here (though adding a display lowers the price difference), as my point orginally wasn't to 'prove' that Dell was cheaper, only to logically compare the two systems in ways I don't feel were done accurately online previously," Thurrott writes. "So sure enough, you can configure an Apple workstation that is cheaper than a Dell. There you go."
Full article here.
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Related MacDailyNews article:
Thurrott: Apple Mac Pro ‘at least competitive and often cheaper’ than similarly configured Dell - August 17, 2006
Dude, you got a Dell? What are you, stupid? Only Apple Macs run both Mac OS X and Windows! - April 05, 2006

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