pasithea

Time and again, I've heard from people 'Oh, I have Windows because it's cheaper than a Mac!'

Having spent most of my day yesterday in a Windows-induced Hell, I paused a moment to think about this.

I can only conclude they mean cheap as in 'shoddy', 'poorly made'. Like 'cheap Wal-Mart socket wrench set'.

Let's look at the facts, shall we?

I'll compare my two machines at work. A mid-range Dell with a mid-range Apple.

Mid-range Dell $499.
No monitor, of course, but you probably have one.
Expandable (sorta) They don't solder in a AGP socket even though there's pins for it.
Mini-tower. Loud fans.
Built in video, sound, usb, ethernet.
DVD-R

Starting iMac $1299.
LCD display built in.
Not very expandable, but what do you use expansion slots for these days anyhow?
Silent unless fans are on. Fans quieter than Dell normal operation.
Built in video, sound, us, ethernet, firewire, bluetooth
DVD-R

Not an auspicious start for the Mac. We could niggle on what your space and noise floor is worth, or the value of Firewire and bluetooth, or whether or not you use those, but let's just go on for now.

In fact, let's cut right to the heart of the matter. Software costs.

Both machines come with their OS installed, but let's pretend they didn't or you need to upgrade.
Mac OS runs $89.
Windows $169 for the Upgrade version, $279 for the complete version, > $400 for the 'professional' version.

Now that you've got your machine, you probably want to do something with it. Well. What?

Office work?
iWork (included on the Mac) comes with decent word-processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software.
If it's not included, it costs $49. Imports and exports Microsoft formats. The OS natively supports PDF publishing.

MS Office (comes with 30 day free trial that spams you with ads and is crippled in some ways)
If not included or demo expires.... Hope you've got some deep pockets. It's what? $289? Often not compatible with other versions of it's own files, let alone other software. You can publish to PDF as a free plugin from Adobe but you have to install/configure it.

'Art'
iLife (included on the Mac) iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD. If it didn't, purchasing these apps is $99. There's not really an MS-Paint equivalent but that's probably a good thing.
Windows? The Dell came with free 'demos' of different apps from Correl and other companies. They seem sort of buggy and they want to you to buy full versions of them. Yay! 3rd party crippleware that you can't easily uninstall!
You can probably hunt down free software on the net for the PC though if you want to take the time. Otherwise, it's time to throw in some more 3-digit $$$.

How about software development! (What I do at work)
Mac: gcc/g++, XCode. ... FREE. Distributed builds... FREE. version control tools. FREE and built in. SSH keychain tools. FREE and built in. X-Windows client/server... FREE.
Windows: UT-OH! MicroSoft Visual Studio $1299! (There's a 'free' compiler if you don't feel you need the MFC, Direct-X, or any of that stuff, but you can make a HELLO WORLD app for free!) Distributed building? CRAP! $300 PER SEAT. Version control? WHAT VERSION CONTROL! You can download a bunch of freeware apps and spend a while configuring them and get something that precariously works 99% of the time (and wipes out your repository the remaining 1%) SSH? Come on! The first letter in SSH or SSL is SECURE. That's not the Windows way! Again. You can download something free and get something that works precariously but... You do realize you're downloading freeware from the net for your 'security', right?

Alright, alright. Maybe you're just a gamer. Compare lemons to lemons instead of comparing them to Apples. What's your XBox or PS2 cost compared to your PC?

Okay. So, for a basic setup to do what I do, a PC is roughly twice as expensive as the Mac just to get something basic. Now let's talk about the value of my time. Let's assume I make minimum wage, since any other number reflects only my level of skill or my geographic location.

I spent approximately 30 minutes setting up the Mac and getting it ready for use to compile and test C programs and link to my CVS repository. An hour if you include checking out the files and doing my first build.

The windows box? It didn't come with a C compiler. I spent an hour and a half installing that. Windows needed a new service pack. I had to install that too. Firewall, Virus scanning? Surely you jest. Okay;. It had McCaffee.. I had to spend time uninstalling that and then installing something that would actually work. Mail client... OUTLOOK? ARE YOU INSANE? Uninstalled that, downloaded Thunderbird. SSH? Found and downloaded PuTTY. Without input form coworkers, this step would have taken a good deal longer. Ditto for WinCVS, WinMerge, and Incredibuild. Getting this precarious pile of plugins, sharewares, and tenuous links working (WITH DOCUMENTATION ON THE PROCESS) about 2 hours. Time without documentation would have been significantly more. So... All in all, it took about a full day (8 hours) to get Windows in a usable state.

Of course, the fun doesn't end there. Nonono. With Windows, the fun never stops! Because you see, things BREAK constantly and you have to spend time debugging them and figuring out what's gotten tweaked and if you're LUCKY it won't be something that got broke in the registry. In the month I've spent at my new job, I've spent roughly 25 hours debugging and fixing problems with this pile of share-ware and Windows poo. That's 25hrs I could have been doing real and important work. Lets not forget though, this isn't just my time, it's the time of other people too who are waiting on something I'm working on or assist me in debugging the problem (and I do the same for them because indeed this is not a problem unique to me) And there will be another 8 hours today because see, something DID hose up the registry so I'm reinstalling the OS. Windows doesn't handle having multiple users very well and that was the source of the problem, though, no doubt, MicroSoft would say the '3rd party software' is to blame.

That's a convenient excuse, isn't it? I mean by definition, almost all software on Windows is '3rd party software'.

So... Maybe I'll be generous and assume that this will settle out after a few months. Perhaps in the future Windows only costs me 2 hours of productivity a month. It's a continuing cost. It's as much as a WoW subscription or an ISP. It costs me a minimum of a hundred dollars a year to use Windows (assuming minimum wage and only 2hrs/mo lost which I can assure you, both are higher) We could also get into the power consumption of the Dell tower versus the iMac's power usage but that's probably only about $50/year difference.

In summary. Windows IS cheap. In the same sense that a cheap socket wrench set from Wal-Mart is cheap. It doesn't cost much to get it but you'll be replacing it every few months because it keeps breaking and in the long run, it will cost you a lot more than just buying a decent set of tools in the first place. Save yourself the time, frustration, and bleeding knuckles.