Comparing Apples and oranges--er, Dells

Mac users are known for a lot of different things but frugality sure isn't one of them. Macs have long enjoyed the reputation of being either "high end" or "unnecessarily expensive," depending on how you slice it. I've got a good friend who often chides me for investing in what he calls "overpriced, design-based technology" and I'd say his opinions aren't exactly unusual in the tech community. And it certainly doesn't help when Steve Jobs dusts off the old BMW analogy in interviews. Apple has tried to make their products more accessible in recent years, with low-priced lines like the Mac Mini and iBook, yet even these products often fall into the higher end of the price spectrum.

It may come as a surprise then, that Macs occasionally offer a price advantage over PCs from other OEMs. ZDnet's Ed Burnette decided to do a price comparison between a Dell XPS M1710 and a 17-inch MacBook Pro. He tried his best to configure the machines similarly; outfitting them with the same Core 2 Duo processor, storage, memory, wireless connectivity and support packages. In the end, the Dell's final price was $3,222 while the Mac clocked in at $2,699.

A few things worth noting: it wasn't possible to configure the machines to be exactly the same and the few key differences are noted. And considering these are two machines running different operating systems and coming bundled with completely different software, at the end of the day this is sort of like comparing, well, Apples and Dells. Still, while this is just a comparison of two very specific models, it's still encouraging news for anyone looking to make a case for buying Macs in a corporate environment.

For more comparison shopping:
- check out this ZDnet blog post