I think dell keeps the price up hoping that some of the customers won't see the coupons, so they pay full price, which is a little extra money for Dell
I believe I have made my share of ignorant comments, and I'm sorry. I really do not know enough about Mac's software bundle or the difference between MacOS and Vista to make an intelligent opinion.
It also helps their margin when people do use the coupons. Dells sales have plummeted over the last two years, and Apple's laptop sales have beat out almost every PC manufacturer for the past two years. I think Acer and Lenovo beat out Apple in overall sales, but as far as growth percentage goes Apple is the number 1 selling laptop right now.
I mean they didn't get 30 billion dollars in their bank account for selling a crap product. Granted some of that was from iTunes and iPods and iPhones, but never the less their laptops are selling a lot more these days.
They went from a 6% market share to an 11ish% market share in like 2 years, that is a huge increase. Vista is killing PC sales. It is only a matter of time before they catch up with the other PC companies.
I believe I have made my share of ignorant comments, and I'm sorry. I really do not know enough about Mac's software bundle or the difference between MacOS and Vista to make an intelligent opinion. I still do stand by the fact that if you just need to watch videos, play music/burn dvds, and browse the web, there is no reason to pay the extra cash for the software that they won't use (which I think you would agree with too)
The differences are huge when it comes to security, and windows xp and vista are actually based off a Unix kernel to begin with, but that is totally beside the point (Unix is like the grandfather of every OS). If you just want to do basic stuff and want a mac, you can buy a Macbook. It comes down to personal preference and Apple is getting more competitive each year. Like I said, I used to be a windows only user until I took the time to learn Linux and Unix and now I really do like OS X a lot more than windows, especially Vista. From an administration side, Unix is a godsend, I can shell script automated tasks for days. I can do the work of 3 people that would normally take days in hours with one simple shell script and network policies.
You could easily just buy a cheap Eee PC if you wanted basics and run Linux, or spend $100 more and buy a copy of windows XP pro.
Like I said, the OP wants to create video and create music (is what I gathered) and the Mac is way better geared towards that out of the box is all. It is all a preference, and I could care less what you use, however I do care that idiots and elitists spread all kinds of ignorance on the subject. Trust me I have a friend who tells me macs suck all the time, but he doesn't even know that much about Mac to begin with. I have to tell him to shut up and ignore him. Like I said, I don't hate windows (except for vista) and I have used it since 3.11 and DOS, and I have chosen to mainly use Macs now as my main computers at work, and sometimes at home as well. It was a choice I made. Then again i didn't pay for my laptop, my work bought it for me, so I chose a mac book pro.