IT pros: Macs cost less to manage than PCs

by Chris Rawson (RSS feed) on Mar 15th 2010 at 7:00PM

The Enterprise Desktop Alliance (an association of several Mac-centric IT vendors) recently surveyed 260 IT administrators in the US to find out which computing environment is cheaper to manage: PCs or Macs. It turns out Macs cost less to manage than PCs for 65% of the IT admins surveyed. 19% of survey respondents said the two platforms cost the same to manage, while 16% said PCs cost less to manage than Macs.

According to the survey, Macs were cheaper to troubleshoot and required fewer help desk calls; system configuration, user training, and servers/networks/printing were all cheaper for a Mac environment than a PC environment. Software licensing fees turned out to be nearly identical for both platforms.

The survey doesn't factor in the costs of the Macs themselves; Macs do present a large up-front investment, especially compared to the budget-priced Dells you usually see populating most office cubicles. However, half of the survey respondents noted they switched to a Mac platform because of a lower total cost of ownership.

The up-front cost is still a turn-off to many IT admins, though, some of whom clearly haven't even bothered shopping around for a Mac because of the perceived expense: "You can buy a PC for $400, while the cheapest Mac is over a thousand," one admin noted. Apparently someone's never heard of the Mac mini, which ranges from $599 for the cheapest model up to $999 for the server-class Mini. Even the cheapest Mac mini would be a more than capable replacement for a $400 Dell or HP computer.

After having worked in a PC-only office environment, I'm not surprised at all that Macs turn out to be cheaper to manage than PCs. The Dell workstations we used at my last job in the US crapped out on us all the time, and software issues cost us hours of lost productivity every week. Between Windows XP, Office 2000, IE 6, and Lotus Notes, our IT admins were kept very busy, especially since almost none of the rank-and-file office workers had the confidence to troubleshoot even the most basic Windows errors themselves. This was at a very large media corporation, too, one that easily could have afforded better hardware and software if they hadn't been so entrenched in the "Macs are too expensive" mindset.

Apple doesn't tend to go out of its way to target Macs to the enterprise, preferring instead to focus on everyday consumers. Even so, it looks like IT admins, frustrated with the support issues and high maintenance costs of PCs, are at least starting to consider the Mac as a viable alternate platform.

Apple Surpasses Wal-Mart in Market Capitalization

Friday March 12, 2010 12:55 PM EST
Written by Eric Slivka

Note: This is a Page 2 News Item

Just days after reaching $200 billion in market capitalization, Apple has pushed past Berkshire Hathaway and Wal-Mart to take the third spot in market capitalization among publicly-listed U.S. companies behind Exxon Mobil and Microsoft. Apple and Wal-Mart remain neck-and-neck today, with minute-by-minute fluctuations in the two companies' stock prices causing them to rapidly swap positions.

Apple's stock price has continue to drift upward this week as excitement from the iPad pre-orders continues to abound, while Berkshire Hathaway and Wal-Mart have remained stagnant or even dropped a bit, allowing Apple to catch up.

Apple has a ways to go to reach second place, however, as Microsoft holds nearly a $50 billion lead over Apple. At present share counts, AAPL stock, currently at $226 per share, would have to increase to the $280+ range to match Microsoft's current market capitalization.

Apple Acquires Streaming Music Service Lala Media

Friday December 04, 2009 10:32 PM EST; Category: iPhone
Written by Arnold Kim

It appears the last minute reports of Apple's interest in streaming music company Lala media were true. Both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal are reporting that Apple has indeed acquired Lala Media.

Lala is a four year old startup company that offers customers streaming music not unlike the popular Pandora music service.

Lala's engineers have built a service that music enthusiasts say is very easy to use. Lala scans the hard drives of its users and creates an online music library that matches the user's collection, making it painless (and free) for people to get their music in the cloud.

Like Pandora, Lala's music is streamed from the internet rather than stored locally. This allowed users to listen to a catalog of over 7 million songs for free as a stream over the web -- much like internet radio. If you wanted to buy the right to listen to a particular song on demand an unlimited amount of times from the web, it would cost $.10. In order to permanently download the song to your hard drive or device, however, it would cost the more traditional $.79-$.89 per song.

Of the acquisition, Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not comment on our purpose or plan."

Apple's interest in Lala sparks a number of possibilities for the direction of the company. Pandora's iPhone app, in particular, has been enormously successful by allowing individually tailored music to be streamed over cellular and Wi-Fi connections. It's natural to believe that Apple may offer a competing service for the iPhone based on this acquisition or Apple could also use the technology to bolster their iTunes Genius recommendations with personalized streaming music.

Rating (4 Positives; 1 Negatives)
[ 3 comments ]