Whenever someone tells me they are thinking about getting a Mac or, when they ask me what computer to buy and I say Mac, generally the response is “but they are so expensive!” Microsoft liked to hammer this point home recently in a series of TV ads. Can you buy a PC for cheaper than a Mac? Absolutely. But can you buy a new car for $6,000? Yes, but would you?

Recently I have been pounding it home to people that you get what you pay for. There is a reason those $400 notebooks at Best Buy are $400. My family has had first hand experience. My sister had a Dell in college that she constantly had problems with and after 4 years was basically unusable. My mom has a notebook (Toshiba maybe?) that was on the cheap side and has had a bunch of problems as well. Now, is this related to the person using it? Perhaps. I use my computers far more than they do, but maybe I take better care of them? I think that is negligible.

I recently stumbled upon this article that tries to “debunk” the Apple tax. They price out a comparable Dell (vs. a 24 inch iMac) and arrive at the conclusion that Dell is $1500 more. Now before your jaw drops, I think they cheated a bit. They spent $150 to upgrade to Vista Ultimate, $200 to get Photoshop (trying to say that iPhoto is a comparable product) and adding WiFi for $70 which most people buying desktops don’t need. The Dell also has 6 GB of RAM vs. 4 GB, 750 GB hard drive vs. 650 GB and a nicer video card. When it’s all said and done there is no way that it’s $1500 cheaper, but, it a minimum it’s a few hundred dollars more to get the Dell.

But if you want to make the argument of buying the $400 Dell notebook, I will make some other points for you. I bought the original MacBook the day it came out in May of 2006. I believe I paid $1099 for it before my company discount. It has been nearly three years and according to the fairly accurate Mac2Sell, my MacBook is worth $460. That is a lot of money 3 years later. I think you would struggle to get anything for a 3-year old $400 Dell notebook, if it’s even running. Then there is the Operating System. Apple is about to release their 3rd version of their OS since I bought that computer in 2006. Vista has since come out since then, but Windows 7 isn’t that close yet. Not to mention the fact that OS X costs $100 for a full version instead of $99 for a pain in the ass upgrade version.

When it’s all said and done, I understand that some people just flat out can’t afford a Mac, but anyone who can and still tries to play the “expensive” card is just uneducated.