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Is Dell kicking Apple’s Butt In The Notebook Value Equation?

"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.

Of course, the big distinction between the Dell and the Apple is the operating system. Both machines will run Windows, the Inspiron ships with "Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium," a dubious boast, but only the Mac will (legally) run the Mac OS, although I have a friend who has made a modest college business of hacking OS X installs onto PC boxes (which is in flagrant violation of Apple's OS X EULA, even if the hacked installs are of bought and paid for copies of Leopard).

Nevertheless,being in the market for a new laptop, I have to wonder if it weren't for the fact I need a Mac for professional reasons as a Mac journalist, I might not be irresistibly tempted by those Dell prices, if not to contend with the frustration and heartbreak of Windows, but perhaps to take a fling at desktop Linux with.

Besides that low-ball $599-priced Inspiron 1525, Dell also offers the Inspiron 1720 with a 17-inch HD widescreen display, a Core 2 Duo processor, two gigs of RAM, a 160 gigabyte hard drive, and an 8x DVD burner for $799. The cheapest Apple Canada will sell me a 17-inch MacBook Pro replacement for my current 17-inch PowerBook is a whopping $2,899.00. It's pretty lopsided, and more than a little distressing for a prospective MacBook Pro buyer.

And it's not just Dell. On Monday, Toshiba announced that its updated its Satellite A200 series laptops now have a starting price of less than $600.00, for which you get a machine with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core processor clocked at 1.9 GHz, with 512KB L2 Cache and HyperTranspor Technology up to 800MHz. a gig. of PC5300 DDR2 SDRAM (supports upgrading to 4 gigs.), a160GB - 5400 RPM SATA hard drive, A DVD burner, a 15.4" 1280x800 display, WiFi, and stereo speakers, but just ATI Radeon X1200 integrated graphics support. For 50 bucks more you can move up to a 1.73GHz Pentium Dual-Core processor, two gigs. of RAM, and Intel's Graphics Media Accelerator (GMX) X3100 integrated graphics. Add yet another $100, and you get a 2.0 GHz,AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core processor with 1MB L2 Cache, a 200 GB HD.

If you want a 17" machine, Toshiba also announced a new addition to its 17.1-inch, 1440x900 (same resolution as my 1.33 GHz PowerBook G4 desktop replacement laptop Satellite® L350 series with a starting price of $749.99, which gets you the 2 GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core processor, two gigs. of RAM, a 200 GB - 4200 RPM HD, a built-in Webcam and microphine, ATI Radeon X1250 integrated graphics, a DVD SuperMulti drive with Labelflash support, three of Toshiba's USB Sleep-and-Charge ports which make it possible to charge and power electronic devices regardless of whether the laptop is powered-on, off or in sleep mode. These machines can be purchased directly from Toshiba at:
http://www.toshibadirect.com

I know, I know. Only an Apple 'Book is a Mac, for all the reasons we Mac-heads are aware of and appreciate. However, it all does beg the question of how Dell can sell laptops that much more affordably than Apple does. Are we being ripped off? How much better can the Mac OS be?

Well, enough better, in my estimation, to keep me in a Mac, but, if there were a legal way to run OS X on the Dell, I have to concede and that I would more likely than not choose the Inspiron over the MacBook, and ironically, even with the choice of the colors, I would probably opt for white. I just like white computers, although the Espresso Brown is tasteful and interestingly different. This is absolutely why Apple resolutely refuses to commercially port OS X to the PC platform.

Another specification in which Dell trumped Apple just this past week is in shipping not only Blu-ray laptops, but a Blu-Ray equipped consumer machine for under $1,000. You can now pick up the Inspiron 1525 with the optional Blu-ray disk drive starting at U.S.$879.00. The Inspiron's The Blu-ray playback drive is fully backwards compatible, able to both play and burn regular DVDs and CDs. Also available is a Blu-ray burner drive, which is great for backing up and storing, well, probably all your digital data, since a single Blu-ray disk can hold up to 50 GB of data, vs. 8.5 GB for a typical DVD disc.

Apple is still selling a ton of computers and gaining market share hand over fist, but if Dell can sell decent-quality laptops for 30-50 percent less with more or higher-spec. standard equipment and features, then there seems no logical reason why Apple can't sharpen its pencils a bit as well, or at least just have a spring sale.



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cmoore@macopinion.com


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