When it comes to buying any item whether its as simple as a bottle of milk or as high involvement as a car one of the biggest things that our decision is based on comes down to the dollar figure of the product. If we perceive it as too expensive or bad value for money then we won’t buy it, likewise if we perceive it as too cheap then we might think that there are quality sacrifices. Nothing is different about computers.
When it comes time to look at purchasing your new computer you will undoubtedly think about how much you want to spend. Now before you look at the price tags on the Mac compared to the PC cousins in the stores there are a few things that you really should be aware of. It is no secret and Apple don’t pretend to hide the fact that they have a premium product with a premium price tag, in fact Microsoft advertising frequently reminds us of this. Here are a few reasons why I believe it really is worth spending the extra $’s.
1. Software: Yeah fair enough, you can get a PC at a nice price, but what you fail to realize is just how much you will then need to spend on software to do what you want. One of the benefits of Mac’s is that they come bundled with a stack of preloaded software. The iLife suite of programs is the best example of this and it includes iPhoto, iWeb, iDVD, iMovie & Garageband. To get movie editing software even equivalent to iMovie on a windows system you would be spending in the range of $200 up, and that’s one program! This all comes bundled with your computer, you also have the choice to pay about $100 and get a fairly full featured lineup of Word Processing, Spreadsheet & Presentation software. That price tag really beats microsoft’s Office price! By the time you spend what you need to on your PC you would have spent enough to buy a Mac anyway!
2. System Longevity: We all know that the computer and Technology industry progresses at an astounding speed, and no matter what computer you buy it will become outdated quicker than you would like. Traditionally speaking if you purchase a windows system, once Microsoft release a new version of their operating system if you want to get it you would have to upgrade your system for a faster meatier one. Windows 7 will be an exception to this rule as it actually has lower system requirements than Vista, however with the Windows 7 price tag – you’re going to wait until you purchase a computer with it already installed anyway. Mac’s just keep trucking! A great example of this is Melissah’s mums computer is an Apple eMac. These were built between 2002-2006, I would put its age at probably 2004 ish. Now admittedly it is slower than our much newer system (of course) but it has kept up and doesn’t suffer any of the problems that a PC of a similar age would be suffering. Also on this point, Apple prices new operating systems at incredibly reasonable prices, the next one to be released in September will be priced at about A$50, that is if you already have the most recent OS, but standard pricing is about A$130, that sure beats Window’s $700 OS in my books any day!
So I really feel that the benefits of spending a little on your system initially will reward you in the long term with lower operating costs in terms of upgrading your OS when that time comes as well as running the appropriate software you need.
Posted by Luke | Posted on 10-07-2009
Category : Internet/Tech
Tags: 3G, broadband, Gadgets, internet, price, Wireless
I think that the invention of wireless broadband dongles is one of the greatest things to come to broadband internet access in the last few years, mainly because it allows you to get online anywhere you have 3G mobile phone coverage and on top of this it allows people who only have one computer in the home the freedom of doing away with landlines and DSL at home.
I do however have a bit of an issue with the phone companies over these devices. While the plans for them are fine if this is your only method of access to the internet, I think it is a terrible ripoff if you allready have your home broadband and possibly your mobile phone with that carrier as well. If you are anything like us we already have the highest broadband plan our service provider allows which costs us over $100 a month, and we also both have our phones with the same carrier thats almost another $100 a month there as well. I feel that it is pointless paying another $50 dollars a month over two years or having an even more expensive pre-paid arrangement just to allow you to access the web anywhere you go.
What I would like to see mobile carriers do is bundle their products, what would be so wrong with us paying a little extra each month say $10-$20 to have a dongle that is linked to our home broadband account. Allowing us to utilise the data allowance we have at home, anywhere in the country. Rather than having another whole contract for a separate device giving us an extra 1-5 gig’s of data, which we allready get (and often don’t use) in our home broadband anyway.
I understand that there are probably extra costs associated with providing broadband via 3G but I think that it makes good sense, not only that but it would give the company who adopts it a good marketing and competitive advantage over the competitors in the industry.
Do you have any thoughts on this topic? If so please feel free to leave a comment below!
I was looking the other day at my mobile phone plan, more specifically the data portion of my plan which allows me to access the internet on my phone. This got me thinking, if I’m am to go over my data allowance it would cost me an extra 35cents per megabyte. Now this if fair enough but then I looked at the charge for every single SMS I send…25cents…
When we break down what exactly an SMS is it is kind of mind boggling to think that mobile carriers can get away with charging that price. An sms is a very simple way of sending information and each SMS that you send can only contain 160 characters. Within the message each character that you input takes up a small amount of space.
- 1 SMS = 160 characters = 1120 bits (the size of the data)
To put the value 1120 bits into perspective lets look at what exactly that means:
- 1 Megabyte = 1000 Kilobytes
- 1120 bits = 0.14 Kilobytes
Now I understand that SMS is not sent using the data allowance on your phone but I thought it would be a good comparison to see how much you get for what you pay. Now broken down if I am being charged 35c for every Megabyte of data, this divided by 1000kB would equate to 0.03 cents for every 1 Kilobyte of information. Given that the size of a single SMS is approximately 1/7 of a Kilobyte that would equate to much less than 1 cent. This means that for every individual SMS I send whether I use all of the characters or not I am paying 25cents.
When in actual fact if I am to use every character possible the cost would be approximately 1 cent to send this information based on the cost of mobile data. So what gives mobile providers? It would seem to me that we are being grossly overcharged for such a simple and small portion of data being transmitted over your networks.
Now while I don’t expect a service provider to only charge this amount as they have to take into consideration wages, infrastructure maintenance, other expenses. It would still seem to me that they are overcharging for this. Perhaps the reason for the price of 25 cents if more of an economic thing, for if they are to lower the price it would make it so much more affordable to send a text, we would then find ourselves willing to send more and more. This could possibly increase demand on the mobile providers to the point of flooding their networks, yeah this is possible and maybe they have found that 25 cents is the perfect point of equilibrium.
But really the companies must be making so much money of this business which we have all come to rely on and accept the price for what it is. I think that moving forward and as we see more and more smart-phones like the iPhone, Blackberry etc it would be reasonable to assume that services like instant messaging or email could take over our reliance on SMS and all at a much lower cost to ourselves. Especially as it becomes more possible for devices to push notifications to us from these programs like email can on the iPhone and Blackberry, it will be just as instantaneous as an SMS but cheaper!
Any way these are just my thoughts on the topic and I thought it would be interesting to break down the actual cost of an SMS as though it was data being sent over the mobile broadband networks. If you have any thoughts feel free to leave a comment! 
