I’ve got to say watching the ‘I’m a Mac’ commercials were fairly excruciating for me being a Microsoft employee. The first reason: They were rarely factual. The second reason: My wife would always laugh at them. Ouch. So, it’s with some amount of pride I see us finally answering in a tangible way with the Laptop Hunter series of advertisements. I alluded to this on Twitter the other day: “How do you know when an ad is successful? When, instead of Apple fan boys ridiculing it, they start defending against.”

Brandon summarizes a Microsoft sponsored whitepaper here (click through to get the underlying study). AppleInsider.com has a response here. In my opinion all of the discussion surrounding the costs of Mac vs. PC miss a simple, obvious fact. No matter how much you debate processor speeds, memory, hard disk space, screen size, optical drives, ports, operating systems, etc. one thing is clear.

The starting price to purchase a Mac is considerably higher than a Windows PC.

Here’s is the proof: at the time of this blog post these were the starting price points comparing Apple and Dell entry level (lowest cost) models:

Desktop

Apple Mac Mini = $599
Dell Inspiron 530s = $289

Laptop

Apple White 13" Macbook = $999
Dell Insipron Mini 9 = $299

I think it’s pretty darn cool you could get the entry level Dell desktop AND netbook for under the cost of the Apple Mac Mini (desktop) alone.

Michael Gartenberg writes "Same joke, still as effective."

I went out and purchased Leopard a day or two after it shipped. I installed it clean (not an upgrade) on my less than year old MacBook here at home. At some point I needed to add up a few numbers and therefore launched Calculator.

This is what I eventually got:

So, enjoy the ads.

But if you are a consumer considering purchasing a Mac you should definitely separate the hype from the truth -- no operating system is flawless. None. Oh, and make sure you have your fact radar on when you visit your local Apple store.

Edit: Adding links to Apple Hot News: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/  and RSS http://images.apple.com/main/rss/hotnews/hotnews.rss .

I subscribe to the Apple Hot News RSS feed. It's clearly biased, as any official corporate public relations web site is going to be. I think they let one slip through the censors. I'm going to copy it here because I'm willing to bet it will be taken down as soon as someone realizes what they are saying:

Vista blazes when running under Boot Camp on a Mac
“If you install Boot Camp on a well-equipped Mac model, it can become a blazing fast Vista computer.” That’s what Walter Mossberg (Wall Street Journal) concluded after installing Vista and Boot Camp on a new iMac. Mossberg tested the iMac’s performance “using Vista’s built-in Windows Experience Index, a rating system that goes from 1 to 5.9, with scores above 3.0 generally required for full, quick performance. My iMac scored a 5.0, the best score of any consumer Vista machine I have tested.” That score, he remarks, is “very impressive for a computer that wasn’t designed with Vista in mind.” [Aug 23, 2007]

That first sentence *could* imply that any other operating installed on the Mac makes it not so 'blazing fast' by comparison.

Whoops!

Seriously, if the MacOS is all that why even bother installing another operating system. Oh, what? You want a blazing fast computer? Then install Windows Vista on that MacBook (Pro) and you'll have your wish. Of course, some folks will point out Mossberg limited it to comparisons with 'Vista' computers. Lots of people will miss that distinction as I did when I first read this pull quote.

Furthermore, what Apple is reinforcing is the concept of the Mac being the best Windows Vista machine out there. If true, that backs up my assertion that the Mac hardware is gaining personal computer market share directly as a result of the fact it is a Windows machine, capable of running the best darn operating system in the world: Windows Vista. Yeah, there is a Halo Effect -- it's called 'we do Windows and do it great!'

I've remained silent about Thomas moving most of his computing to the Mac simply because I was so very disappointed to lose him as a resource to make Windows Media Center a better experience. I was pretty amazed to see him so quickly jump on the 'Get a Mac' bandwagon with Chris' latest post given (1) a majority of his problems with Windows at the time he 'switched' seemed to stem from his chosen OEM and (2) as far as I know he doesn't have a ton of experience with Windows Vista to objectively compare it to MacOS. In his defense, he might have a ton of experience with Windows Vista but hasn't posted about it (yet).

For the record, Thomas commands my respect with regards to his computing experiences.

But today, he lost some of his shine with me -- I was very disappointed by the way he ended this post today.