NZMac.com - Supporting the New Zealand Mac community

duck wrote:
Locally, the rationale is the upfront $/year/machine, and Dell wins out with $1200 systems with 19" LCD monitors unfortunately.

But it's been proven time and again that the TCO of a Mac is far lower than a PC. Yes the hardware costs more initially, but it lasts longer.

Especially for a business, who would most likely be writing off the cost of the machines over three years. How much will the $1200 Dells be worth after 3 years? The Macs will still have some value, and a good few years of use in them.

If they are doing it purely for cost then it is a very poor decision in my opinion.

lowededwookie wrote:
I do remember an article talking about how Windows was not energy efficient on account of the virus checker bringing the machine out of sleep mode constantly.
Sleep mode isn't as efficient as a full shutdown though. For those offices where the employees are working 9-5, it's more efficient to shut the machine down fully from 6-6 and save 12 hours of electricity trickle being consumed by sleep mode.

Nick Jennings wrote:
But it's been proven time and again that the TCO of a Mac is far lower than a PC. Yes the hardware costs more initially, but it lasts longer.
That assumes you're not operating a standard replacement cycle regardless of what the hardware is. We operate on a four or five year cycle - and everything gets replaced when it's turn comes up. Combine cheaper warranty support (Dell bundle insurance as well) and the only deficit is additional software costs (Antivirus).

The TCO argument also works well when you factor in the cost of support - but when the accountant is looking at the fixed asset accounts separately from payroll accounts, they don't factor that in.

Nick Jennings wrote:
Especially for a business, who would most likely be writing off the cost of the machines over three years. How much will the $1200 Dells be worth after 3 years? The Macs will still have some value, and a good few years of use in them.
I can't speak for the corporate world, but we're no longer working with a three year cycle (c.v.) - someone in the command chain noticed that a four year old PC could still work fine if all you needed was Word+Email+IE+Corporate Applications.

And after the planned life cycle of the computer, if you've done your accounting correctly, the computer has a net value of $0 since you've depreciated it every year.

That's what writing off means. If the computer still has some value, then you've been depreciating it wrong - and you should make sure you recoup that value during disposal.

Nick Jennings wrote:
If they are doing it purely for cost then it is a very poor decision in my opinion.
While I'd like a Mac, in all honesty, the PC in front of me that I'm typing this on works perfectly fine.

And that's a principle that may be hard to hear, let alone come to grip with (and I forget the name of the principle) - but the majority of people will settle for something that does the job at an acceptable level, rather than continue to look for something that does the job at an excellent level.