Anecdata on PC vs. Apple

So I’m in line for an upgrade on my workstation at $EMPLOYER. It’s a negotiated company buy so definitely not retail. Yet the same spec’ed laptop at the Apple store comes in at $6.00 less than the PC laptop that could be coming my way.

So, yes, you can get cheap-ass PCs any day and twice on Sunday. However, when you’re buying workstation-quality PCs, Apple is way more competitive than it gets credit for. Either that or our purchasing department is horrible at negotiations.

Grrrr

From the “Everyone loves this but you never seemed to get off your ass to try it yourself” files I bring you Growl. In and of itself it’s pretty innocuous—just an operating system alert widget. However, when you plug in all sorts of applications it keeps you from ⌘-Tabbing or space jumping all over the place to get alerts of incoming stuff. Alerts just pop up wherever you happen to be when “things happen.” Currently I’m monitoring:

  1. Mail.app
  2. iTunes
  3. Hardware
  4. CC.NET

In the past half hour I think I’ve increased my productivity twofold just because I’m not jumping to different spaces every time I get email.

Related, I’ve installed CC Menu to monitor all the freaking builds going on at work. This frees up a bit of space in my cramped RDC connection to my worktop as the monitor now runs in my menu bar and I can open the project window and move it off to the side on the secondary monitor. Sure, it might be easier to just work directly on the worktop but I’m just that committed to using my powerbook. Who says mac fans aren’t zealous?

Mac Rumors post generated drool

Assuming Apple doesn’t blast the prices on the Mac Pro given the current prices reflect 2006 prices for 2006 technology, I will soon need to re-evaluate my tolerance for buying on credit. I haven’t purchased a computer since January of 2006 and no PC tower of any sort since November of 2001. The drool-inducing factor of a Mac Pro able to address 16GB of RAM and 1+ TB of hard drive space, all with 4 – 8 processor cores and big improvements on the motherboard (look at that FSB!) is too much to resist. It’s the kind of machine that, if properly maintained and upgraded as time goes by, could prove useful for well into the next decade.

What could spark such a post?

Mac Rumors: Intel Announces 45-nm Penryn Processors