Other Sites

"Why doesn't Apple ever have spring sales?" I ask myself rhetorically upon perusing the Dell flyer that arrived with my daily newspaper last Friday, offering, among other things, to sell me an Inspiron 1525 laptop for the eye-popping price of $599.00, or just a bit more than half what the cheapest 2.1 GHz MacBook from Apple Canada would send me back.

Now, that $599.00 machine has only a poky Intel Celeron processor, as opposed to the MacBook's Penryn Core 2 Duo chip, but the Inspiron does come with two gigabytes of RAM - twice the standard allotment for the base MacBook; a 250 gigabyte hard drive, which is more than twice the capacity of the MacBook's standard drive, and an 8x DVD-burning optical drive as opposed to the MacBook's combo drive, a more than two inches larger (15.4" vs. 13.3" - both 1280x800) display, and your choice of eight colors: Jet Black with Matte Finish, Alpine White with Gloss Finish, Expresso Brown with Microsatin Finish, Ruby Red with Microsatin Finish, Midnight Blue with Microsatin Finish , Spring Green with Microsatin Finish, Flamingo Pink with Microsatin Finish, and Sunshine Yellow with Microsatin Finish.

And you can upgrade to Core 2 Duo power for another hundred bucks, for a total still $450.00 less than the MacBook's price. True, it's just a 1.83 GHz Core 2 Duo, but keeping it real, that's plenty enough power for most of us. Both machines use intel's GMA X3100 integrated graphics support, so that's a wash, except that you can upgrade the Inspiron to a 128 MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400 M GS graphics processor unit for $100 extra, an option not available on the MacBook.

Sometimes I wonder about Apple continuing to gain market share. I mean, I'm a consummate, dyed in the wool, Mac fanboy, and even I, if a friend came to me and asked which was a better value - a $600-$700 Dell or the $1,149 MacBook (these are Canadian prices), I would have trouble looking them in the eye and declaring that it is the Mac.