Wanna buy a cheap Mac?

I wonder if Wow Sight and Sound will be taking steps to secure their premises a little better.

Drive past the Mac1 store in Fyshwick sometime and you’ll see what measures are considered acceptable for securing high value portable property.

Grrrr said :

gospeedygo said :

Hmm you mean that computer with the screen that flexes an ungodly amount and is made entirely made out of malleable heatsink metal. Just because its made out of metal doesn’t make it any more durable than plastic. As if you would buy something with only 64gb of flash storage.

Also:

ThinkPad T420, $1,179

You’re right about just one thing: I wouldn’t buy something with 64gb of flash because the 13″ only comes with 128gb or more, and I wanted the higher-res screen. I spent a third of the price on a Dell a year or so earlier, and can safely say it’s 1/3 the machine – even after replacing XP with Linux.

It’s sitting right next to a 3YO Thinkpad, who’s screen flexes more. I have zero issues with screen flex.

As for heat, the CPU fan is either off or dead slow and is completely silent right now. The case is cool to touch. That’s how it is 99% of the time. I would also love to see you make a polycarbonate (or other plastic) case this thin that’s as durable as aluminium.

Also, T420 is not comparable to the MBA. It’s not an “ultrabook” – it’s triple the thickness and double the weight. Again, oranges to apples.

Thin ? durable but lets not try and derail any further.

gospeedygo said :

Hmm you mean that computer with the screen that flexes an ungodly amount and is made entirely made out of malleable heatsink metal. Just because its made out of metal doesn’t make it any more durable than plastic. As if you would buy something with only 64gb of flash storage.

Also:

ThinkPad T420, $1,179

You’re right about just one thing: I wouldn’t buy something with 64gb of flash because the 13″ only comes with 128gb or more, and I wanted the higher-res screen. I spent a third of the price on a Dell a year or so earlier, and can safely say it’s 1/3 the machine – even after replacing XP with Linux.

It’s sitting right next to a 3YO Thinkpad, who’s screen flexes more. I have zero issues with screen flex.

As for heat, the CPU fan is either off or dead slow and is completely silent right now. The case is cool to touch. That’s how it is 99% of the time. I would also love to see you make a polycarbonate (or other plastic) case this thin that’s as durable as aluminium.

Also, T420 is not comparable to the MBA. It’s not an “ultrabook” – it’s triple the thickness and double the weight. Again, oranges to apples.

Grail said :

dvaey said :

Hang on a sec, these macs were worth between $1000 and $2500 each? How on earth did they find a mac that cheap?

Sorry to break it to you dvaey, the “Macs are expensive” bandwagon has been retired. These days it’s “Macs are too cheap and we can’t compete with their low prices”, or “Apple have tied up the supply chain.” This problem is impacting the industry so heavily that Intel has promised $300M to fund the development of “ultra books” (i.e.: MacBook Air competitors).

Remember these key points when beating the drum for the new bandwagon: a) Apple has an evil monopoly on Apps and Music, b) Apple cross subsidises hardware by selling expensive software and music (there are apps on the App Store in excess of $200!), c) Apple restricts users by limiting choice to a small number of models.

Of course, the “Apple fans would buy dog poo with an Apple logo on it for any price” argument is still working, so feel free to bang that drum!

And incidentally, if you’re looking for non-Apple music try Bandit.FM – it’s Sony’s online music shop (just like in the song, “we released under Independent Records. Yeah, it’s a Sony label”). You’ll need Flash installed to use their site, but all the music is DRM-free.

What a load of crap. Apple products are still considerably more expensive than the competition for similarly spec’d machines – particilarly when it comes to their laptops. That’s not to say they aren’t good, but that are most definitely more expensive.

Who cares? They’re all the same thing: Computers.

Back to the issue at hand, stolen ones?

“Sure, it might be close to $1,000 but its about the same specifications as youd get for a $300 netbook.”

No its not.

Good luck finding a netbook with a dual core i5, as opposed to an atom processor, for $300.

A better comparison would be with the ultrabooks that are coming out, which are in the same ball park config and price wise.

Grrrr said :

Nice try dvaey. You’ve compared oranges to apples (pardon the pun):

CPU speeds without mentioning the architecture, screensize without the type or even resolution, a spinning hard drive to the much faster and more expensive flash storage, plastic casing to monoblock aluminium, etcetc

Also, you ignored Grail’s post which points out that no-one can make a MBA clone cheaper than Apple. Fail.

Unfortunately, brand-new never-been-used Macs are not trackable – software must be added to do this.

Hmm you mean that computer with the screen that flexes an ungodly amount and is made entirely made out of malleable heatsink metal. Just because its made out of metal doesn’t make it any more durable than plastic. As if you would buy something with only 64gb of flash storage.

Also:

ThinkPad T420, $1,179

Nice try dvaey. You’ve compared oranges to apples (pardon the pun):

CPU speeds without mentioning the architecture, screensize without the type or even resolution, a spinning hard drive to the much faster and more expensive flash storage, plastic casing to monoblock aluminium, etcetc

Also, you ignored Grail’s post which points out that no-one can make a MBA clone cheaper than Apple. Fail.

Unfortunately, brand-new never-been-used Macs are not trackable – software must be added to do this.

dvaey said :

Sure, it might be close to $1,000 but its about the same specifications as youd get for a $300 netbook.

I’m not denying that apple products are bad value based on specs. Your question was where is there a apple laptop for 1k

Henry82 said :

Macbook air has an RRP of $1,099.

My last laptop (2.5ghz, 4gb RAM, 750gb disk, 17″ screen) cost $450. A quick check (DSE) shows a 15″ (they have 17″ but $2900) macbook with similar specs for $2499.

The $1,099 macbook air, is a 1.6ghz with 2gb memory and 64gb of storage. Sure, it might be close to $1,000 but its about the same specifications as youd get for a $300 netbook.

Waiting for it to be listed on ebay…

dvaey said :

Hang on a sec, these macs were worth between $1000 and $2500 each? How on earth did they find a mac that cheap? .

Macbook air has an RRP of $1,099.

dvaey said :

Hang on a sec, these macs were worth between $1000 and $2500 each? How on earth did they find a mac that cheap?

Sorry to break it to you dvaey, the “Macs are expensive” bandwagon has been retired. These days it’s “Macs are too cheap and we can’t compete with their low prices”, or “Apple have tied up the supply chain.” This problem is impacting the industry so heavily that Intel has promised $300M to fund the development of “ultra books” (i.e.: MacBook Air competitors).

Remember these key points when beating the drum for the new bandwagon: a) Apple has an evil monopoly on Apps and Music, b) Apple cross subsidises hardware by selling expensive software and music (there are apps on the App Store in excess of $200!), c) Apple restricts users by limiting choice to a small number of models.

Of course, the “Apple fans would buy dog poo with an Apple logo on it for any price” argument is still working, so feel free to bang that drum!

And incidentally, if you’re looking for non-Apple music try Bandit.FM – it’s Sony’s online music shop (just like in the song, “we released under Independent Records. Yeah, it’s a Sony label”). You’ll need Flash installed to use their site, but all the music is DRM-free.

dvaey said :

Hang on a sec, these macs were worth between $1000 and $2500 each? How on earth did they find a mac that cheap? This seems like the reverse of the street-value for drugs.. for drugs it seems the street price gets doubled, for macs it seems the street price gets halved.

hmm – there’s only one Mac notebook with a RRP over $2500, and I seriously doubt anyone who needs one would actually buy it at WOW.

However I’d imagine it’s unusual to not witness at least some suspicious behaviour in Wollongong Street. Fyshwick on Saturday evening…

Pity the Starbucks closed down, that would have been a good place to look.

Hang on a sec, these macs were worth between $1000 and $2500 each? How on earth did they find a mac that cheap? This seems like the reverse of the street-value for drugs.. for drugs it seems the street price gets doubled, for macs it seems the street price gets halved.

They would be hard to to hide as they’re very traceable. (if they are used on line)