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Dell Precision twice the price of Mac Pro

August 10, 2006

A fundamental reason behind the commercial success of Windows PCs over Apple's Mac has been the wide price gap between the two platforms. Apple computers always cost more than PCs, so most people save money by buying into Windows.

Right? Wrong. Today's Macs are often cheaper than their Dell equivalents. And the new Mac Pro is ridiculously cheaper than the Dell Precision 690 workstation.

I configured a Dell Precision 690 to match the tech specs of Apple's base Mac Pro. In fact, I even paid to add more RAM to the Mac to exactly match the Dell.

And the saving was still £2,046! Enough for me to add a second DVD-R drive and Apple's iLife suite of creative apps, and still be less than half price.

Dell Precision 690, dual Xeon 2.66GHz, 2GB RAM, 250GB hard drive, 256MB nVidia graphics: £3,975 (inc. VAT)

Apple Mac Pro, dual Xeon 2.66GHz, 2GB RAM, 250GB hard drive, 256MB nVidia graphics: £1,929 (inc. VAT)

Whether Apple focuses any marketing on this amazing turn around remains to be seen, but this switch in expenditure is truly astounding.

Posted by: Simon Jary

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Comments

Posted by Aram Fingal on August 10, 2006 :

You are quite right within the scope of your comment that Apple Computers are quite often competitive or even better priced than PCs. The problem lies in the cases where you do the comparison the other way around. In many cases, you can take a PC and find no real equivalent at all from Apple. How about a sub-notebook or an economy model that has expansion slots.

Posted by price advisor on August 10, 2006 :

We'll see how long that lasts. I love seeing Macs win in the price war, but Dell is just too big and has too much control over the channel to stay far behind in price.

Posted by addaramchp on August 10, 2006 :

Aram,

especially since apple bumped up the base price of the mac mini - that was dissapointing. It was really bad since the low end is core solo.

A $499 mac mini is really needed. They need a basic mac mini, a standard, and the Home Theater version (with TV tuner), at $450, $600, and $900.

Posted by Mac Pro - true workstation on August 10, 2006 :

The Mac Pro is a serious workstation - amazing power. I'm glad Apple passed on the Conroe for the towers and went with the Xeon.


Up to quad 3Ghz for $3K. drool. The Quad G5 with Quadro graphics was probably the first true workstation from Apple, but now all of the towers are true workstations.

In a few weeks we will see real benchmarks and comparisons to the Dells/PCs and G5s - then we'll know the true power.

Still waiting for Kentsfield and a 4-way with quad core (16chips in mid 2007, yummy)

Posted by Mac Expert on August 10, 2006 :

"...and Apple's iLife suite of creative apps..." Uh, Simon? That software was already included with your computer. All Macs come with iLife, no matter the configuration (except the Xserves). The bigger problem, really, is that these comparisons are rarely directly equivalent. Most PCs also offer TV-out, for example, and modems are usually on the mobo. None of the current Mac lineup has either of these features. Six slot mobos, support for SLI video, LightScribe burners, PVR functionality...... These are often included on many PCs but are nowhere to be found on Macs.

Posted by ADeweyan on August 11, 2006 :

Hmm. Not such a Mac Expert...
All of the features you mention are available as add-ons when purchasing a Mac. The total additional price would be just a few hundred dollars. Of course, the key difference between these products for the Mac and the PC equivalent is that the Mac products would actually work.

Posted by Bennco on August 11, 2006 :

Doesn't the new macs already come with iLice suite software?

Posted by Bennco on August 11, 2006 :

Sorry - "iLife" ... fat fingers

Posted by simonjary on August 11, 2006 :

Actually, you can configure the Mac Pro without iLife - which is what I did in this scenario. And I took out the modem from the Dell. It really is an equal comparison.

Posted by James on August 11, 2006 :

> We'll see how long that lasts. (....) Dell is just too big and has too much control over the channel to stay far behind in price.

I'm not sure of that. Problem for Dell is that its profits are being badly squeezed in the cheap end by HP and Lenovo and so it has to make (and plenty) with the top end machines. This strategy is now badly threatened by the new Mac. Sure Dell can reduce prices there... but, where does it make money?Anyway, that is irrelevant. The point is that Mac Pro are cheaper than equivalent machines. Dell is just an example.

Posted by Seele on August 20, 2006 :

It is perhaps not quite the first time that a Macintosh is cheaper than an equivalence PC, but by having such a price advantage margin, it helps to dispel the myth that "Macs are expensive" since a lot of people use sticker price to judge the cost of a product. TCO is not something which comes to mind of the man in the street but a lower ticket price can indeed get them through the door. However, the Dell had to be configured to match the specs of the Mac Pro, and the missing parts are not often mentioned in the advertisments. Dell, or any other PC assembler, would rather leave the computer quite pared-down so as to appear to be less expensive than a Mac, and that is what gets the man in the street into the PC platform in the first place.

Posted by SwissMac on August 22, 2006 :

One thing that is being overlooked here is that the Mac comes with a vastly superior operating system, the acclaimed OS X Tiger, soon to be updated to the even more desirable OS X Leopard. You just can't get OS X on a PC (but you can get a virus).

Posted by Martin Hadfield on August 22, 2006 :

Not only are they beating Dell on price vs performance, the new Mac can run Win XP and MacOS X at native speeds using Apple's bootcamp. You get a superior hardware for less with more options. My Dells are already on ebay ;-)

Posted by stringy on August 22, 2006 :

Quote: - "Posted by simonjary on August 11, 2006 : Actually, you can configure the Mac Pro without iLife"
Are you sure about that? seems to me you can configure without iWork but seems that Ilife is included in any config.

Posted by Stringy on August 22, 2006 :

Also as far as I can tell on the UK Dell site you can only only configure your PC with a single Dual Core processor and not with 2 of them like the apple. I guess I might be missing something though. Dell website is like a labrinth

Posted by Adam on August 24, 2006 :

Intel Macs don't run XP at native speeds. XP relies heavily on virtual memory (HDD access), and doesn't support the MacOS drivers/format (EFI is it?)

Posted by BIO on September 4, 2006 :

While I checked the US site, the only 256 mb nVidia card Apple offers is the GeForce 7300 GT (~$90), while dell offers 2 nVidia cards with 256 mb, the Quadro's FX 3500 ($1300) and 3450 ($900).

Doing an Oranges to Oranges comparison using the the nVidia Quadro FX 4500 (that both offer)...

Dell is $3800
Apple $4150

Posted by uidiot on September 7, 2006 :

the dell includes a display. try comparing lowend macs to pcs stupid.
macmini is 600 NO display monitor.. for that price get a DELL with 17"flat panel, all goodies and upgradability.

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