Our Blog

As a follow on from yesterdays MacBook Pro vs DELL Notebook comparison where we discovered that the MacBook Pro was slightly cheaper AND faster than the closest comparable DELL system I decided to take a look at the more popular consumer MacBook.

Apple announced a new MacBook this week so I decided to take a look at the high end model (where presumably Apple make the highest profit margin) and up the spec here and there, for example increasing the RAM to the full 4GB. Now for the purposes of this comparison I let Apple do the upgrade at the factory but in reality I would do myself as it always works out cheaper to buy the RAM from Crucial, fit it yourself and sell off the old RAM on eBay…

So what do you get for your money?

13″ LCD backlit display
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
320GB SATA HDD @ 5400 rpm
NVidia GeForce 9400M 256MB DDR3 RAM
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Backlit Keyboard
Wireless N, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.1
OS X Leopard
1 Year Warranty

£1,319.01 inc VAT and delivery

Now lets see what DELL can offer in a 13″ package:

XPS M1330
13″ LED backlit display
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM <- Slower RAM
320GB SATA HDD @ 5400 rpm
NVidia GeForce 8400M 128MB DDR3 RAM <- Slower card
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Wireless N, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.0
Windows Vista Home Ultimate
1 Year Warranty

£1,209 inc VAT and delivery

Now, in this case the DELL is a whisker over £100 cheaper than the Apple system, a reversal of what we saw yesterday with the Macbook Pro and its closest competitor. But as with the MacBook Pro comparison, the DELL is once again using a slower graphics card and slower main RAM. Plus it’s made of plastic not billet aluminium, it doesn’t have the backlit keyboard, it doesn’t have the sudden motion hard drive protection, it doesn’t have the magsafe power connector and it doesn’t include anything comparable to iLife.

So you can save £100 (less than 8%) by going with the DELL although it will be a slightly slower system and not as well made. That £100 difference could probably be wiped out by buying and fitting the RAM and hard drive upgrades yourself and selling the old ones off on EBay. At the end of the day it comes down to the cost of having the latest cutting edge technology and it seems it doesn’t matter who’s name is stamped on the front, Apple or DELL, they’re typically priced within 10% of each other, sometimes in Apple’s favour, sometimes in DELL’s favour. I certainly see no evidence of the so called “Apple tax”.

EDIT: I just got a DELL leaflet on the post and it seems they’re offering £150 off that notebook until the 22nd of this month (just under a week from now). Now that’s more like what the DELL should be priced at given the slower graphics, slower ram and cheaper plastic casing.

Filed under: Computing