Quote Originally Posted by aposhark View Post
Hi,

I was told by many Currys/PC World sales people in different towns that the increased cost will be amply repaid by the longevity of the product.
Apple do have normally quick decent bulid quality and will normally be very good with the warranty and sorting things.

But where it fell down for me was the Currys/PC world sales people bit. After telling you it last for a long time often the next line would be you need the extended warranty or whatever they are trying to sell.

Due to the small about of models apple create over the years compared to MS PC's often its much easier for them to gurantee to a degree they will run the latest OS.
Basically only intel core 2 duo processors are supported (ie older devices may work but apple wont help you if there is any problems~) so any thing from about mid 2006 onwards should work Apple are saying. Possibly older high spec devices will run Lion but at your own risk..

With windows 7 its more complicated at launch the below was the minimum specs

1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 GB of RAM (32-bit)/2 GB of RAM (64-bit)
16 GB of available disk space (32-bit)/20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with Windows Display Driver Model 1.0 or higher driver

But then it depended what you were expecting to do with windows 7 ie xp mode etc then you need more power and memory normally.

So some devices which I have seen windows 7 is running on can be quite old, 2004/2005 models. Again typically desktop PC's seem to be easier to upgrade than desktop Mac's so that can prolong desktops sometime for years if not required for anything to intensive processingwise.

Laptops how much you can upgrade the memory and HDD's will vary from model to model.


I think you need to consider how long you hope to keep the device (in your household and possibly then handed on to Phill) of course in 5 years much may change in IT.

One point about the very new Apples is they have no DVD/Blu ray reader now some people wont care but if you like to load on your own films or music or have backups of pictures or other data how will you read them?
You may need possibly to add on the price of a external drive or first convert to a usb drive or flash card on a Drive equipped device.

Also Apple are very quickly moving towards the app store as a medium for all its devices seeing as its such a large cash cow already.. For some this is great all data in one place for others its a little bit to controlling and rigid. Microsoft would love to do but I think the MS market is to big and fragmented to shift over to this sort of format anytime soon.