i have 2 macs and 2 passats.

here's some old news: cheap is not generally synonymous with best.

of course the opposite is true as well....

But a premium product has a reputation to defend. A cheap products only selling point is its low cost.

Edited by deleted (Sun 29-Mar-09 19:27:14)

very true reputations are everything which i suppose is why alot of premium manufacturers would like to rubbish those offering cheaper alternatives.... You know I`m typing this on a Dell, which whilst i`ll agree is not top quality but it does exactly what i need it to do for a fraction of the cost of a premium product Sony/Apple etc

If true I'm glad. Apple need a reality check, they need to come down to Earth on the pricing front.

In reply to a post by macduffintosh72:

If true I'm glad. Apple need a reality check, they need to come down to Earth on the pricing front.

The same could be said of MS... in view of their near-monopoly position and their volume of sales, I'd like to see a proper justification of their prices.

Indeed £299 for an Office suite.

With Dell you're often best buying the business models. We had some Dell laptops that were aimed at home users and they were very unreliable. Hard disks failed, mainboards had to be changed etc.

We've had problems on their 17 inch models, one has had a new mainboard.

in view of their near-monopoly position and their volume of sales

Which is infuriating why Apple don't make their products more competitive. You and I know that Macs are superior in so many ways, but charging £500 for the cheapest mac, which doesn't even come with a keyboard and then increasing the price on their new model Macbook to a couple of hundred quid over the old one is just astonishing. I despair sometimes.

Price has a huge impact on how a product is perceived. Go too cheap and people think it will be rubbish.

Anyway, most of Apple's software is very affordable compared to the competition.