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• Wednesday, November 7, 2007 03:12 PM

  What color is the sky in the Mac Utopia?

  I don't have anything against Macs. You prefer Macs, that's fine, you'll get no static from me, they are good computers. But what's with this parallel fantasy land where Macheads seem to live? It's a Mac Utopia where PC's crash twice a day, are constantly jammed with viruses and spyware, and annoy their users with an interface that is terribly counterintuitive and difficult to use. This puzzles me, because I use PC's for many hours every day, and I can testify that they rarely crash, can be kept clean of malware with a few basic precautions, and that Windows is simple to use, provided you know how to look at things and click on them.

  Now, supposedly, Macs are even cheaper than PC's when considering resale value. But I see two glaring errors in your analysis, Farhad. The most obvious is that your Mac-PC comparison sets are dishonest -- in both cases, the PC comes with more storage and a ton of extra memory (twice as much in one case, four times as much in the other!). What is the Mac "premium" with truly comparable specs? More than $100, I'd wager.

  The other error is that many people -- people like me, for instance, who are not power users -- have no interest in reselling their computers. I've had the same PC for six years. I use it for word processing and internet surfing, and it works fine. If I bought a new computer (Mac or PC), I wouldn't sell it in a year or two; I'd keep it until it's hopelessly obsolete and has no resale value regardless of the logo on the case. For frugal, low-voltage users like me, the PC is still the easy choice.

  —Lawrence Pelo Read Lawrence Pelo's other letters
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