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One of the biggest obstacles to Mac evangelization is still a price issue -- Macs are simply a lot more expensive than PCs feature, power, and value-wise.

And I'm not just talking in comparison with off-brand PC cheapo boxes.

For example, I am planning to upgrade my system sometime in the next six to eight months. One of the machines on my short list is the 450 MHz G4 Cube/15 in. LCD Studio Display combo, which currently will set me back Can$3,148.

By comparison, for virtually the same money (Can$3,168), I can get a Dell Dimension 8100 with a 1.4 gigahertz Pentium 4 processor, 256 MB of RAM, a 32 MB NVIDIA GeForce2 MX GTX graphics card, a 15 in. flat panel monitor, and Altec Lansing TXX certified ADA885 speakers with subwoofer, plus a three-year warranty, as opposed to Apple's one-year warranty. Of course, the Dell won't run the Mac OS, but package-wise it leaves the Cube in its dust, and I can't accept that having nearly three times the nominal clock speed and twice as much VRAM isn't going to give it a speed advantage, not to mention getting four times more RAM.

It doesn't get any better at the lower end of the market. The 400 MHz iMac currently sells for Can$1,349. For 50 bucks more, Dell will sell me a Dimension 933 with a 15" monitor, 933 MHz Pentium 3, 64 MB of RAM, Altech Lansing 340 speakers with subwoofer, a one-year warranty (with in-house service), PLUS a bundled Canon BJC. 2100 inkjet printer, a Canon Canoscan 340p scanner, one year of AOL access, and Intuit QuickTax Personal 2000 tax software. Once again, Dell mops the floor with Apple in terms of specification for the money.

And like I said, it isn't as if Dell boxes were low quality junk. In fact these are the machines that rated "Outstanding" (the only brand to do so) in PC World magazine's latest reliability and service reader survey.

This price/value/MHz gap is awfully hard to argue with, especially to someone who is already a PC user or who is purchasing a computer for the first time and has no particular affinity to the Mac platform. Apple needs to address this issue somehow.

Charles W. Moore

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