Microsoft Plays The Too-Expensive Lie. Again.

"A series of Microsoft ads are aimed at budget consumers worried about price tags, further perpetuating the pricey Mac myth. Associated Press reports the ads were shot by recruited unwitting subjects by posing as a market research firm studying laptop purchasing decisions. It picked 10 people who answered a call for volunteers on Craigslist and other websites and sent them out with a camera crew and budgets ranging from $US700 to $US 2,000. If they found a computer that fit their criteria, they could keep it. In the first 60-second ad, a red-haired recent college grad named Lauren is on the hunt for a speedy laptop with a 17-inch screen and a “comfortable” keyboard, all for less than $1000. She strides into an Apple store; then, the scene jumps to her walking out empty-handed, telling the camera that the only laptop in her price range has a 13-inch screen. Back in the car, she sighs and says, “I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person.”"

It isn't that you're not "cool enough," Lauren.  It's that you're not smart enough.

Just because two laptops have 17 inch screens doesn't make them comparable.

The laptop above in all its Bronze / Chrome glory is the piece of crap she decided on.  Doesn't the AMD Turion just scream speed?  I think it does.  Doesn't that flat laptop style keyboard just seem so totally different than all the flat laptop keyboards out there?  But hey; disregard the fact that it's a total piece of cheap garbage.  After all.  It's so much cheaper than teh Max0rs!  WIN!!!!

But, like most direct comparisons, Microsoft relies on price.  After all, if I just want a car with a V6 engine and 17" tires, it doesn't matter what the car is, right?  I can get any car with a V6 and 17" tires and it's the same thing!  There's no difference whatsoever between a 2009 Chevrolet Impala and a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu, right?

Let's look at the shortcomings of this appropriately colored chrome turd (and for comparison purposes, I'll compare it to the MacBook Pro 17", not the MacBook 13" which, aside from the screen size, still slays the hell out of this thing).

It has an AMD mobile processor, a line of processors not known anywhere for their speed; on the MacBook Pro, you get an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66.  The two aren't even comparable.  You're getting ATI's mobile Radeon on the HP, but on Apple's MBP you're getting an nVidia 9400 and an nVidia 9600; a switch you can make to save yourself some serious battery life.  And while HP's bronze turd offers up to 8 gigs of RAM, the MacBook Pro's ram is siginificantly faster, and there's a much bigger L2 cache onboard.

The MacBook Pro's "comfy" keyboard is illuminated, meaning those late nights when you're sitting on the couch crying over Grey's Anatomy could be accompanied by some posting to your Blogger blog about how Dr. McDreamy just said something so sweet and your keyboard would be more visible.  I'd say that counts as comfy.

The MacBook Pro also comes with an LED backlit screen and a battery that people who own one will tell you gets five to eight hours out of.  So not only is it faster, almost half the thickness, and almost a pound and a half lighter, it'll last you longer on a charge and it's a much higher resolution than the 1440 x 900 on the HP (a resolution comparable to my 15" MBP).

Oh yeah, and just to round things out, the HP lacks 802.11n, AV inputs, or Gigabit Ethernet.  Nice.

But what if something goes wrong with it?

Figure 2: The image above is that of the power cable to the motherboard of a Wintel machine. Notice the clean cut?  Geek Squad's handy work according to Dave Baker who also shared pictures of the severed IDE cable and broken off power connector from the IDE drive inside the case.  Is this representative of Geek Squad?  You decide.

Well, you can get Apple Care if you want an extended warranty.  For a MacBook Pro, 3 years of Apple Care is $349.  For the Bronze Bomber, it's $149 for 2 years of Geek Squad support.  That's right folks; the Geek Squad.  I won't even go into the fearmongering of how AIG is backing that warranty.  Just imagine yourself having computer difficulties and having a choice of dealing with the techs on the other end of the Apple Care number or going into Best Buy (which is where they filmed this commercial) and having the Geek Squad look at it.  Here's some fun research on the kind of folks that work at Geek Squad.  Frankly, I wouldn't be terribly comfortable with them touching my computer.

Let's face reality here for a second.  Comparing Apple computers to Windows computers based on stupid things like price or screen size is often a wasted endeavor.  Do people shop strictly on price?  Sure they do, but in reality most of those are the same people who think the blue E on the desktop is the Internet and Yahoo! is their ISP because it's their homepage.  When you compare a 17" MacBook Pro to the cheapo deluxe bargain-basement HP model, sure the HP comes out on top in terms of price, but what are you going to do with it once you buy it?

Not everyone can afford to drop the $2700 on a MacBook Pro that I'm talking about.  I understand that.  But comparing computers on price alone is just like comparing cars on price alone.  Just because they're both laptops doesn't mean you're getting a comparable piece of equipment.

Oh yeah, and one more thing.  Can we stop pretending that Lauren is just some average chick pulled off the street for a random experiment?  She's a member of SAG.

Yeah.  Real random.