Powerbook vs. Latitude

Monday, May 20, 2002

Just some notes to see what would be involved in switching to a Mac, strictly from a cost perspective, regardless of the technical merits. I'd love to get my hands on a cool Titanium powerbook, and the prices actually come out about the same, even with the additional software purchasing required for the Mac. The trouble are those "n/a" in the Mac column: what can replace Publisher, MapPoint, and Trendmicro? Wordperfect is mainly there to access old files, which I could just convert to Word or StarOffice. Any suggestions?

Model Dell Latitude C840 Apple PowerBook G4
Price $4,940
$4,550 + $390 in software		 $5,090
$3,800 + $1,290 in software
Key specs 1.8GHz P-4m
1GB RAM
60GB drive
DVD/CD-RW
Nvidia GeForce4 Go		 800Mhz G4
1GB RAM
60GB drive
DVD/CD-RW
ATI Radeon 7500
Apps Music Match 7 iTunes
Office XP Office X ($500 full)
Dreamweaver MX ($150 upgrade) Dreamweaver MX ($300 full)
Corel Graphics Suite 10 ($200 upgrade) Corel Graphics Suite 10 ($200 upgrade)
AOL IM AOL IM
Publisher XP n/a
Online Bible Online Bible
WinDVD DVD
Quicken 2002 ($40 upgrade) Quicken 2002 ($40 upgrade)
Adobe Acrobat 5 Adobe Acrobat 5 ($250 full)
Canon Powershot G1 Photo Tools Canon Powershot G1 Photo Tools (OS 9 only, but PhotoStitch alone might be fine)
Quicktime 5 Quicktime 5
Wordperfect Suite 8 n/a
MapPoint 2002 n/a
Palm Palm
Trendmicro Officescan n/a

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