Anandtech posted a story comparing the Dell and Apple 20″ cinema displays and highlighting the “price difference” between them.
I got rather involved in the debate myself and (long story short) this is what I had to say (shamelessly copying my own post):
Check out the websites of both Dell and Apple – the retail price is 749 and 799 USD respectively. Though Dell is offering it at 561.75 on their website as a current promo.
How justified is comparing the promo price of one of the vendors of a manufacturer (which is how the ~350 comes in) with the retail price of another product of a manufacturer? Not at all.
The only comparison that can be there would be between 749 and 799 (fair) or 561.75 and 799 at best (somewhat fair). The Dell is available for “17 USD a month” for 5 years and the Apple for “18 USD a month” for 5 years on the official sites. That doesn’t seem like a lot of difference does it?
There’s a 50-60 USD difference between the two the way I see it, which can be explained by the Firewire ports alone I should think, if not the better “looks”/ display quality as some have reported/ economy of scale etc etc. What “deals” you can get on a product can’t be a point of comparison, or can it?
What spins people can put on a story.
Since we’re copying posts..
“^^^
This one goes in the archives in engadget under “the fanboys strike back”.
You’re obvisouly not familiar with Dell’s business practices at all. That’s
completely excusable though so here u go: Dell marks EVERYTHING up ALL the
time and ALWAYS has the same things on sale AT LEAST 30% off. NO ONE has
ever paid $749 for that dell LCD. You don’t even have to try and the most
it’ll cost u is $500, and that’s if u’re not familiar with what we call the
Internet (I won’t put that past a lotta mac users). They were selling for
$384 over the weekend. Also, iEatPoo only dropped the price to 800
yesterday. It was significanlty higher than that before (don’t know exaclty
what though). What’s the cheapest u can get the apple LCD? When was the last
time ANYONE bought the ap*le display for even close to 600?
You have no point, save urself some heartache. You can only justify ur mac
purchases to yourselves, coz no one else will EVER be convinced. But hey as
long as u’re happy, that shd be all that matters. But if u get into an
argument about it, u’ll end up with heartache coz the facts will never be on
ur side on this one. Consider this an education and don’t keep repeating ur
mistakes.”