Hi all,

I just finished up a radio interview on one of the Los Angeles AM radio stations about MacBook Air vs. Netbooks -- which obviously don't target the same market.

The host asked me if I would be willing to do a "shootout" with him of the Mac vs. PC (or Windows). It's been a while since I've done the shootout argument, so of course, research is going to be necessary.

If anyone has time to help research this out, that would be great.

In short, I need to come up with the arguments of the Acer Aspire One vs. a White MacBook as an example.

But also, regular Windows notebooks.

In any event, I'm going to see what models we want to shootout ... and I'll post that when I hear from the show's host.

Thanks!

Neil

I thought the shoot-outs become moot when Mac went Intel.

After all, you can just boot the Mac into Windows and do an easy comparison between a Mac and PC. Run the benchmarks yada yada and when all is said and done, just boot the Mac back into OS X. Leave the two laptops unattended and see which one gets stolen first - that will settle any remaining arguments

This one:


or this one:

Well, the argument is about price. Is the Mac worth the "extra" money in people's minds.

Ok, but you're comparing an Acer Aspire One to a Mac Book. Since the two machines are not even identical in specs, one could just stick to Dell laptops and argue whether or not a Dell XPS laptop is worth the extra price over a Dell Inspiron 15.

I would at least pick a laptop that is close in specs to the MacBook and agree the one advantage PC laptops have over Mac Laptops is a greater variety of low end laptop availability.

Maybe something like this -

http://www.notebookshop.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=146

It's a Toshiba, similar specs, faster front side bus, card reader, 3Gb of RAM for $1199. The White MacBook you linked, can be upgraded to 4Gb for $1224. So you get a GB more RAM, but at 667Mhz instead of 800Mhz and you lose the card reader, but gain a DVI connector.

With these kinds of examples, you're now talking about a smaller 'extra' money difference.

I'll go with the chromed Svend dude. It's not a fair comparison if comparing dollar value with the Acer. The Toshiba he linked to was a good comparison. The MacBook is close in specs, and it runs two OS's instead of 1.

But instead of Apple's RAM price you can do 4G for $50-60 yourself, so $1050 instead of $1224, much cheaper than the Toshiba.

Let me see how things go with the radio show host and what he wants to compare.

When folk ask me if a mac is worth the extra expense I ask them how much they earn per hour - and then how many aggregate hours a year they spend cleaning spyware/malware/viruses/etc. off their pc (plus the software cost for all that scrubbing). Generally speaking, a mac pays for itself pretty quickly.

- padmavyuha

Dang, I was going to dig into this one but the two huge differences have been already covered.

1) I would not hold the additional money needed to buy the Acer against it. The difference is too small.
2) The Acer cannot easily run the Apples OS whereas the opposite is easily accomplished on the MacBook. Why buy a computer like the Acer that is so hobbled?
3) Unless you're flipping burgers at Mickey Dees the per hour time involved with keeping the Acer virus free per year makes it very expensive.

I haven't read or seen shoot out numbers in years. Comparing the Acer to a MacBook would be like giving the best Special Olympian a chance to participate against Michael Phelps. I would let that sleeping dog snooze away with his medal. Why be so mean?

ps. I would not use my Olympian analogy on the radio program if you want to be invited back unless the station airs the Rush Lumbaugh program.

It is a difficult task.

Last month I bought for my wife the MSI-U100 netbook: 160

GB HD, 1MB RAM (add extra 1 GB for $14.00), Wifi G-B-N,

Bluetooth, Webcam, 6 cells batery,4-in-1 Card Reader, SD/MMC

/MS/MSpro, 10" LED display, Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz Processor

(overclocking up to 25% via bios )3 USB 2.0 ports, Windows XP

Home Edition, all this for $429.00, and with a little of time you can

convert this baby in a Macbook running Leopard 10.5.5 (not with

virtualization) and dual boot with WXP, all this weights 1 KG.

the new MSI-U120 comes with 3G network, just insert your SIM.

card.

My wife and all my family are Mac users, but for portability,

price, configuration,"etc" this netbook in my opinion is a

winer.

Hope the above lines can help you.