my 6 old 'floating screen' desktop is still going strong and my 2 year old laptop has survived a coffee spill and a seven foot fall....plus no viruses
In all seriousness, I have owned 5 mac laptops (metal ones, not plastic ones) over the years, never had one break down and their useful life is two to three times that of a PC laptop. They may cost more upfront, but the overall cost of ownership is lower.
It is always the Power Supply Units that seem to go for me, guess that is my fault for running downloads 24/7
Well, I have had a couple of Apple external power supplies fail in my time but always replaced on the spot at the Apple Store no questions asked.
Not this whole Mac's are more reliable then PC rubbish. Try looking inside the box and see the components that make up the machine, you will then see Mac's and PC use the same parts today. Only difference is if you put it in an "Apple" box it cost 2-3x more. And with a Mac you get a OS that restrict you from doing what you want. I've had 6 PC spanning from 1998 to today and I've never had a PC die on me. If you buy good quality parts they will last and if you buy shit they will die after a few years.
Somewhat of an over simplification maybe (and exaggeration on the price difference). Yes, they all use Intel chips but there is a wide variance in available quality of any given component. Apple you will find tend to use higher quality components. Most PCs that are sold are low end and thus low quality, whereas Macs are either mid-range (the plastic ones) or high end (the metal ones) and are thus more reliable. It is like saying that if you look under the hood of a Mercedes Benz and a Chery they all have the same components, yes but...
Don't get me started about crap apple service. I have owned 7 apple computers over the years and even written software for them but the apalling experience I have had with this last one (still under apple care) has me considering never buying another one.
Barnby Joyce when he was shadow finance minister made a statement that he didn't know how the USA was ever going to pay the debt of $13 trillion back..He didn't have that job too long.. there is not one Australian politician of any party that talks about the state of finances in the USA. Come on Jonesy lets admit it, the only time you hear anything resembling a political debate is here on SS and not on TV ,radio or newspapers. Did you know anyone in the government or opposition in 2006 who predicted the global crisis of 2008..Several financial observers in the USA did, but they were ridiculed by Fox news and main stream media. Now please tell me who is the financial guru who will warn the Australian people of any financial storm that is heading our way or even tell us that don't worry the recession/depression will never eventuate under my government. There might be a few that know but they can't tell for fear of creating fear. Regards Errol43
<b>Warning:</b> The following are/maybe incoherent ramblings from someone who has no degree of economics or commerce or politics, etc., but just someone who feels queasy at the current events unfolding around us. Ok, disclaimer out of the way, and hopefully back on topic (not Mac vs the world). Just before the US market opened, I was looking at the cnbc site at the European markets, and thought, since everywhere things are dropping like flies (stock indices), that I'll just check out what it was like compared to say the recent x years highs. So just clicking on cnbc's charts of the major indices around, and just doing some + and and / since the top of 2007ish, I got this (didn't find Greece on their site, but other places I found that they are around > -90%): (Note I just rounded some numbers up/down, but should be close enough) Index Percentage Down 2007High Now(Before Market opened) Italy 69% 43,755 13,547 Shanghai 59% 6,030 2,443 CAC 55% 6,121 2,775 Nikkei 53% 18,290 8,650 ASX 41% 6,706 3,964 Hang Seng 41% 30,300 17,900 DAX 38% 8,000 5,000 SING 29% 3,830 2,720 FTSE 25% 6,700 5,000 S&P 25% 1,549 1,166 DOW 21% 14,066 11,124 Kospi 13% 2,064 1,800 Nasdaq 9% 2,805 2,538 Why I did this was I am trying to understand where we (Australia) is at in the scheme of things, our economy, interest rates, and so forth. Supposedly, we are doing much better than so many other countries, especially, the troubled EU, USA, and so on. Sure, simply looking at the above table does not indicate much, but does it at least give a small indication that maybe all is not the crash hot here either? Everyone is so focused on Greece, but looks like Italy is or maybe on her last legs More troubling from the table, is that our two biggest trading partners' exchanges have dropped so much. Not so much for Japan, but we only hear "growth" news about China, yet it does not reflect at all in the above table. And there was news somewhere today that China is also slowing down. This was what led me to think that maybe this plays a significant part in the quite rapid decline of our exchange rate? I had asked before on the forum regarding why our rate was falling against the USD given that they have been printing, debt ceiling raising, etc, and we here are supposedly "doing more well". One response was that that's what happens when there is uncertainty as people just rush to the USD (tradition thing). (It maybe, it maybe not, but logically, if Oz is so good, why would you dump it and go into a seemingly less favourable bet (USD) just because that's how it's always been???). I then just checked up on how big is China in terms of a trading partner DFAT says they're about 13% (http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/focus/081201_top10_twoway_exports.html) . And so if we are so heavily dependent China (and Japan), then surely if they are slowing down, we will cop a very big wack. Might not this also be a big influence on the minds of traders and speculators? It just seems strange that after the two day FED meeting and now knowing that more printing is happening that our exchange rate is dropping against theirs. This started (our rate slide) happening from their August meeting. Even more strange is that gold and silver dropping given that more printing is going to happen. I have alluded to a member on the forum that during the two day meeting, if I was Ben, I will try and find a way to print, and also not have the gold price shoot through the roof (have cake eat too). Seems like it's working, but I don't know why. All I know is that Ben is very glad that there is some poor part of the world called the Euro-zone. I just feel like the 2 day meet was a trap and diversion exercise. How? They already announced in August that there will be a 2-day w*nk fest. Um, somehow IMF meet is also around that time, how convenient. All the talk leading to the 2-day thing led all to believe that metals will be rocketing up for sure. So maybe they actually want this to happen, and then somehow engineer to big drop like today/tonight to then scare everyone of the PMs.??? So what's the conclusion from the above rambling? 1. I am very concerned about the state of where our country is headed 2. Look at the top 10 exports of the DFAT table, we export GOLD!!!!!! At rank 4. What the FFK do we get back for that gold!!! USD????? Ok, uneducated ramblings complete
Currency traders and speculators trade AUD (buy) as a means of proxy trading the Chinese economy because the Yuan is not really freely traded on the market as such. So when bad stuff happens, these traders ditch the Australian dollar and run back to the US dollar, and yes this is because of 'tradition'. The Australian economy has nothing going for it apart from mining and commodity exports so the risk levels of AUD are quite high despite some people trying to say otherwise. Our balance of payments have been negative for ages. When Ben spoke, basically it sparked an equity and commodities sell off into USD (safe haven, as they don't want risk) and as such the USD rallied from the lows and AUD plunged as the supply increased on the market. As you can see, Gold has not really shifted if you pitch the USDX rally chart against the Gold decline chart. Silver on the other hand got hammered, manipulated or otherwise (commodity!).
You also need to compare apples with apples (pardon the pun) You cant compare a $500 HP notebook to a Macbook Pro for example. Compare something like a Lenovo T520 or W520 or a high end HP to a Macbook Pro and see how they compare. 3 Year International Warranty on the Lenovo (not sure about the Apple), Whisper quiet performance, Solid Machine, etc... Same thing applies to Desktop PCs VS Macs.
m8 im going to give you a good 101 on computers today. 1) Apple use alot of crap component in their mid range computers today; just coz it's in a apple box don't magically make a cheap part good. 2) Apple support is a joke! my local PC store is much better and faster in dealing with a problem and i know from experience as i had to deal with apple in the past. 3) The price difference is was a bit of an exaggeration, but not huge. Everything is about 50 - 100% more. 4) The average PC uses the same quality of parts as the average Mac and a high end PC use just as good parts compared to a high end Mac. Only difference is with a PC you have more choice, more power and it's cheaper in every class level. 5) The only reason you may "think" Apple is more reliable is because A LOT less Macs are sold compared to PCs. 5) It's not like comparing a Mercedes Benz to a Chery; i have no idea how you came about that very poor example. After saying all this i don't hate Mac, i just dislike when people claim they are better just coz... It's like someone saying Australia's housing market cant crash coz things are different here, yet have no fundamentals to back it up. Well Bullion Baron made a good point with our highly regulated big 4 anyhow silver went under $35, US banks are hit hard again last night and the 30 Treasurys are now well under 3! Lucky the FED trust the US to buy them up.
Thanks fish, your comments on the forum are always informative. The thing is, this country has so much potential, but absolutely no direction or leadership, yadda, yadda, yadda. We truly are just a big quarry, but there comes one day that the family heirlooms will all be gone.
looks like our gut feeling is right. something is definitely happening. Normal seat belt wont do, need to get a harness belt!
Having bought a top end Mac laptop a couple of years ago and being told that it can't be upgraded because they've changed the internals I'm not happy Jan! and as for iPhones ..... what a joke!
