Quote:
Originally Posted by DoubleARS
As said, the pricing is pretty set. Apple usually offers student discounts if you or a household member is in school at any level. There of course are opportunities to buy from online sites that won't charge you sales tax.
Some sites (I don't know if I'm allowed to post it) don't lower the price much but instead offer free things to sweeten the deal. Macmall for example. A lot of times they are offering things like free printers or Parallels Desktop. Apple used to offer $100 of printers when you buy a Mac but they stopped that a couple of weeks ago.
I have a 27" iMac and a MacBook Air and I bought my wife a 15" MacBook Pro about 6 months ago. I got my first Mac around 2001 and I haven't turned back. I use Windows (XP and 7) and UNIX (Solaris) at work and I am always so happy when I sit in front of my own gear. It's just a better experience.
As for price, other posters are right, they last a long time and they tend to hold their value. I just sold a 5 year old Mac Pro (tower) to Gazelle.com for $900 that I paid $2,500 for new. That's $900 on a 5 year old computer. You would be hard pressed to find a computer from another manufacturer that would hold it's value better. I could have probably got more if I wanted to try and sell it myself.
I have sold every one of my Macs when I have upgraded and I have always received 30%-50% of what I originally paid. The computer my wife replaced with the MacBook Pro was a 15" Alienware laptop. After only a year and a half it was a dog. I checked out Gazelle and they offered around $200 for it. We gifted it to one of our adult kids. My wife still uses Windows quite a bit via Bootcamp. She plays a lot of games. We've both been playing Star Ware The Old Republic on our Macs via Bootcamp.
Like others, I am a huge Mac fan and I would be happy to answer any questions you have. I worked as a sys admin of a Windows and UNIX network and have done a lot of scripting. I also used to build most of my own computers before I switched to the dark side so I have a frame of reference.
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I know the entire operating system is completely different and takes some time getting use to which is something ive stayed away from for a long time because i am so use to windows. But im sure it would just take some time learning it all (have never even touched or used an apple computer) lol