Comments on: Mac Total Cost of Ownership

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 20:22:05 +0000

It’s interesting…when I look at the overall design of Apple’s laptops within the last 8 years am reminded of the overall design of the VW Beetle. A 1963 VW Beetle looks an awful lot like a 1993 VW Beetle, 30 years later.

I was shocked to see some old 12″ Powerbooks running recent versions of Adobe’s suite last weekend at SXSW. Those old machines can still handle some hefty chores.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:55:14 +0000

For all the crap that people gave the Cube, my 2001 500MHz G4 Cube has been running 24/7 since I bought it (probably less than a total of a few days downtime in all these years) and has never once given me troubles. It runs as my home server without issues, not making a sound, never needing maintenance. While I may change to a new server this year or next, I’m sure the Cube will function happily for years to come.

I like that Macs can run just about any OS these days, and that the hardware isn’t any more expensive than equal offerings from other companies (often cheaper, especially on high-end machines). The engineering is fantastic, too, as with my Mac Pro.

By: Andrew Carter

Andrew Carter — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:18:04 +0000

Well, I’ve got a Dell PowerEdge 400SC I bought in 2001 that is still going strong as a server running the latest version of Ubuntu. I don’t think this is mac specific - Linux and Mac both have good shelf life. And Ubuntu Server (or CentOS or whatever your favorite) is much cheaper than Leopard Server.

I’m happy to pay for the desktop OS but for servers, it’s really hard to pay the Apple prices. You guys might be the sweet spot that fits the Mac server market - you know what you are doing but don’t want to spend the time on it. For smaller or larger, I’d argue that Linux is nearly always a better choice.