From: mike_steiner@qm.claris.com (Mike Steiner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Macs cost too much (NOT!)
Date: 24 Jul 92 21:37:40 GMT

In article <1992Jul24.143921.19730@nsisrv.gsfc.nasa.gov>, smoon@strfleet.gsfc.nasa.gov (Sang J. Moon) writes:

> > There is a big difference between reinstalling the system and rebuilding the
> > desktop.  Combining them into one statement that you do either is meaningless.
> > Rebuilding the desktop takes a few minutes; reinstalling the system is a much
> > more time-consuming job and indicates a serious problem.  Personally, I haven't
> > needed to reinstall my system since I started using system 7--on any of the
> > five machines (both work and home) on which I use it.  I'd suggest that you
> > check the media of your hard disk if you have had to reinstall your system
> > as much as you imply.  So, out of dozen times, how many were system reinstalls,
> > and how many were rebuilding the desktop?
> 
> Maybe I should have made it clear that in the process of trying to fix
> problems on my mac, I had to reinstall system 7 and rebuild the desktop.
> This means that when I first encountered the sound problem on my IIsi, I
> reinstalled system 7 once and rebuilt my desktop once, but the overall
> time I spent trying to track down this problem was huge.  And when
> some extensions wouldn't work properly, rebuilding the desktop took ten
> minutes a shot, but figuring out why an extension didn't work including
> checking for conflicts with other extensions and control panels took a
> long time.  And when running ethernet applications caused my system to
> hang (especially when I run Microsoft Word 5.0 in foreground), trying
> to find the cause took a very long time, and reinstalling system 7
> took a small percent of it.  The time when a destructive trojan got on
> my mac, reinstalling system 7 became an automatic thing to do, but running
> Norton Utilities took up most of the time.  But it sounds like your mac
> has been pretty much trouble-free, so you wouldn't know the amount of
> time that can be wasted on a mac.

You didn't have to rebuild the desktop for any of that stuff.  If you knew
what you were doing, you would have known that.  yes, my Macs have been
pretty much trouble free--every one of them that I have owned since 1984,
when I bought my first one.  It is amazing that when people knows what they
are doing, they don't have much trouble with their equipment.

> > I find it very interesting that DOS people continue to talk about their
> > hardware, whereas Mac people talk about what you can do with it.  Computers
> > are a tool--a means to an end; they are not an end in and of themselves.
> > Macs are better tools; they let you get your jobs done faster and with less
> > effort--and usually allow you to produce a better end result.  You can get
> > a Mac that looks less capable on paper than your DOS machine, but with that
> > Mac you will be able to do a better job, and do it faster and easier--which, 
> > in the end final analysis, is the only important thing
> 
> The reason I ask people like you to post what they have is to see if you
> are espousing that the macs are worth the extra cost when they haven't
> actually bought a mac for themselves.  It doesn't sound right to me when
> people say how much the mac is worth the extra money when their company
> was the one who had to put out the dough.  Also it would show that those
> people who have bought mac systems comparable to the 386 systems I have
> described have a much bigger wallet than the average person and that
> cost may not be a priority to them.  And again I'll restate the
> point of my posts is that macs cost too much.  The 2 to 3 times the cost
> to a corresponding PC system is not worth the little extras you get on a
> mac.  I use a mac at work because I like it better and I don't pay for it,
> but at home, I have a PC because it is the best bang for the buck.

Yes, I have bought Macs for myself.  So far, I've bought a Mac 128K (which
was upgraded to a Mac 512Ke); a Mac 512ke (which was upgraded to a Mac Plus);
a Mac SE; and a Mac IIfx.  I still have all of them except for the 512Ke, which
I donated to a charity earlier this year.  I'd tell you how much I paid for them,
but it has been so long ago (the IIfx is almost 2 years old), that I have
forgotten, and they are all discontinued models, so I can't even look up the
current list prices.

I do not look for the immediate savings; I look for the long-term savings.
I use them for pleasure and not for profit, so I don't have any tangible
cost savings as a business does; however, I do have other things to do with my
time and my life, so the less time I spend at the computer, the more time I have
for other activities.  Therefore, I opted to get a computer that lets me get my
job done with the least amount of time and effort--and the fact that I can enjoy
doing it is a plus.