
IBM says it is 3X more expensive to manage PCs than Macs - bb_mn
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3131906/apple-mac/ibm-says-macs-are-even-cheaper-to-run-than-it-thought.html
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nunez
Well sure; they're using a Microsoft stack to do the job!

You can manage and provision thousands of Windows machines with a
configuration management tool like Puppet or Chef, though you'll spend more on
the engineers needed to dole that out. This is what Google does to provision
all of their machines (Windows, Mac and Linux) and it's working out well for
them.

SCCM and InTune get VERY expensive at scale and the clients don't work well on
anything other than Windows. (You can deploy to Macs with it, but I've heard
that it's choppy.)

Then there's the whole issue with their fleet. I'm curious to see what their
numbers would be like if they got Surface Pros for everyone instead of a mish-
mash of Dells, HPs and Toshibas. The build quality on the Surface is at par
with the Mac and Microsoft definitely have great support options to back them
with.

What I'm basically saying is that they're comparing a likely-outdated
deployment infrastructure and crappier machines (Windows) with a more modern
stack and better hardware (Mac), so of course they're going to conclude that
Macs are cheaper.

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hcarvalhoalves
Not surprised. Anecdotal, but I have a 2010 MacBook Pro and still use it daily
for development. Battery report still shows it as "healthy" w/ 600 cycles, and
upgrading to an SSD increased it's (useful) lifetime by a lot, too. Nowadays I
see it was good ROI (and Apple products are particularly expensive here in
Brazil).

It seems it could last the decade, but I'll likely upgrade before that for
better battery life.

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gnashville
I've always wondered why this doesn't come up more in the mac/pc cost debate.
The HP I was issued at my last job needed to be replaced three times in the
eight months I was there. Current company issued me a MacBook air that I've
used 50 hours a week for three years.

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Spooky23
If you have a Microsoft EA, it's more complex, because you need to license any
PC-like device as a PC.

