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OEMs like Dell were shitting all over the Windows brand with plasticky (and still expensive!), heavy, unreliable, loud-as-shit laptops with terrible screens. T
by corresation 13y ago
OEMs like Dell were shitting all over the Windows brand with plasticky (and still expensive!), heavy, unreliable, loud-as-shit laptops with terrible screens.
This is utter nonsense. There simply is no other way to put it.
There have always been premium Windows machines (Sony was doing the extremely-thin, fits in an envelope, made-with-unobtanium laptop thing years before Apple did), and discount machines. Focus-on-aesthetics machines, and ugly but functional machines.
That is how a diverse ecosystems work, and the consumer gets to choose what they want, and what matches their priorities (the fact that you have some sort of hipsterism dislike of "plasticy" should not restrict my purchase when I see it as simply a material that is often optimal. I don't have a fetish for materials).
- polyomino 13y agoEven the $3000+ laptops from Sony or other oems were littered with crapware. When consumers shifted from desktops to mobile all of the hardware innovation was moved to the oems' suppliers, which led them to drop all of their technical talent. Now the likes of dell and hp are full of mbas whose job is to make deals with companies like McAfee to squeeze an extra penny out of each sale and to annoy clueless consumers who buy that shit.
- corresation 13y agoMy most recent purchase was a Dell laptop with a 3rd gen i7, 16GB RAM, eMMC accelerated TB magnetic disc, IPS 1080p screen, fingerprint reader, backlit keyboard, blah blah. Weight and battery life fit my usage. I believe it was somewhere around $800, and is a perfect device for my needs. Spent a few minutes after booting removing the various trials of junk on it. Colour me clueless, I guess.
- Aldo_MX 13y agoThe first thing I did with my HP Laptop is a destructive recovery and the junk was gone.
- 300bps 13y agoFor me, i7 2650QM, 8 GB of RAM, 500 GB hard drive, 17.3" monitor, fingerprint reader, 9 cell battery. $550. People who buy Macs can't even conceive that you can buy 4 PC notebooks for the price they are buying 1 Mac notebook. They can't conceive that the typical person doesn't buy overpriced Ultrabooks that are different only in marketing name. All they will say is that their computer "holds its resale value" or that it will "last longer". When it is literally 4x more expensive for equivalent speed, these things are meaningless.
- MikeCapone 13y agoIt's because they use different criteria than you do to judge the machine, and that's fine.
- calbear81 13y agoGross oversimplification of the "Mac" consumer. I use Macs and PCs every day and have worked in the computer hardware business with a specific focus on gaming (Newegg) and it's not that people who buy Macs don't realize they're paying a premium, it's that they value more than "equivalent" speed. When I have a notebook, I don't want it to weight 10lbs because I'll be walking around with it. What's the point in having a fast notebook when you dread taking it around with you? I also appreciate the design aesthetic and the "it just works" feeling I get when I use OS X. The battery life is great, the laptop is portable, the design is beautiful, I get the job done. That's why I use my Mac notebook and that's what I'm paying for.
- biot 13y agoSome people don't see computers as fungible computing commodities priced in $/GHz and $/GB. Much like they don't see cars as fungible transportation commodities priced in $/Watt and $/N·m.
- ShirtlessRod 13y agoaka "Some people just have more style." What would we do without our shiny status symbols?
- pbz 13y agoThe only laptop I could find that matched the specs you mentioned is the XPS 15 which is a $2K machine: http://www.dell.com/us/p/laptops?~ck=mn#!everyday-laptops&facets=226291~0~14720665,241891~0~15646052,236387~0~15191881&p=1 http://www.dell.com/us/p/laptops?~ck=mn#!everyday-laptops&fa...
- nemothekid 13y ago>Even the $3000+ laptops from Sony or other oems were littered with crapware. Not 100% true. I remember buying a $2000 Vaio Z a couple years ago that had the option of getting a clean windows install (for $50 more)
- yuhong 13y agoAnd you get a Windows edition upgrade too, all for only $50.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoMy Sharp MM10 wasn't.
- lotso 13y agoSo why would Intel dump hundreds of millions pushing the ultrabook, if the OEMs were creating the right devices already?
- marshray 13y agoWithout wanting to agree or disagree with the parent discussion, one very plausible answer is simply that they had hundreds of millions and felt an obligation to invest it in support of their market ecosystem.