Total cost of ownership

[cswiger <cswiger@widomaker.com>]

  Glenn T. Livezey, Ph.D. <glivezey@netserv.unmc.edu> writes:
  
  >MS "OS" Windoze3.x Win1895 P2000 Crapolas Lose98 turkeys
  
  Heee.
  
  Bottom line: Macs cost more, people stayed away in droves.
  
  Just another observation: The rocket fuel that powered this
  industry the last 24 years has been lowering costs - what
  used to cost $300,000 and was made of transistors could
  suddenly be had for $5000 and was made of IC's. Intel et al
  have been pushing forward with more and more performance/price.
  Don't underestimate the power of price tag competition in 
  this land of WalMarts! Many, many domestic and foreign PC
  manufacturers were stumbling over themselves to produce a
  cheaper product and undercut the competition. All the while
  Apple choose to be the sole source of a higher price box,
  go for an upscale market, and lost. They even did that at
  a product strategy meeting - someone help up a cheap, plastic
  low quality flashlight and said "This is your typical PC",
  we're going to be better than that. They're free do that.
  And shoppers are free to take it or leave it.
  
  The rest of your reply goes into the TOTAL cost of ownership
  issue, the agressively, competitively priced PC 'trojan horse'
  with all it's hidden support and maintenance costs, which
  Apple could capitalize on to fight back, IF they can get the
  word out on the street and convince people that the higher
  up front cost is worth it in the long run, but it's a risky
  strategy that's bucking the above mentioned trend of getting
  more bang for your buck, warts and all.
  
  Returning to the cost ignorant benchmark chart: a java app
  running on system8 running on a PowerPC 604 may outperform
  a java app running on Win9X running on a pentiumII - but
  boy is it going to cost ya, dollars. If you can just work
  out the price tag issue, you gotta business deal! If all
  the hidden maintenance costs were as bad as your insults
  make it out to be, you'd think people would learn and 
  make different purchasing decisions, and 'tip' the market
  to a different, more reliable standard platform, IF indeed
  it really is and not just someone's personal prejudices
  that they feel needs to be forced upon a public unable to
  make rational buying decisions.
  
  Chuck
  cswiger@widomaker.com