Reversal of Fortune? Vista May Make Macs Substantially Cheaper Than WIndows PCs

Even though Microsoft is making attempts to woo users to upgrade to Vista, the truth is that many more users will require a new computer to get the most out of Vista than, perhaps, has been the case with any previous version of Windows. In fact, the hardware manufacturers are salivating over the prospect of being able to sell more advanced, higher-priced computers during a time when hardware prices have fallen to record lows. According to a recent article in eWEEK Strategic Partner:

The reality is harsh. After years of making do with cheaper hardware, businesses will need to consider serious upgrades to their existing PCs and plan on buying heftier configurations than previous PC refresh cycles.

“Vista needs a lot more memory than the PCs out there,” Leonard said. “You went from not needing much horsepower to needing to upgrade your PC for Vista.” CHIPS recommends that customers deploying Vista should budget for 2GB of RAM and 128MB of graphics memory, the latter being a bare-minimum recommendation.

A December report from Toronto-based Softchoice concluded that only half the average business PCs in North America would meet Vista’s minimum hardware requirements. Ninety-four percent of these business PCs fail to meet the requirements for running Windows Vista Home Premium, which would need much less horsepower than Windows Vista Enterprise—the version Microsoft expects will ultimately dominate corporate desktops.

For desktops, “if you bought your PC within the last 12, maybe 18, months you could get by with some upgrades. Everybody else will need to replace and deploy,” Leonard said.

A recent Computerworld article details vendor efforts to market the type of high performance systems to regular consumers that used to be the province of hardcore gamers. Many of Vista's new features will need a lot more horsepower than is typical of most of today's PCs. As the capability of the hardware running Vista decreases, so do the available features. One of the most notable examples of this is Vista's beautiful Aero interface; on the type of low-end system currently common on many desktops, Vista would automatically disable this interface, instead presenting the user with the older, XP-type interface. This also necessitates disabling many of the interface-related features such as the 3D window browsing, video thumbnails, etc. which make differentiate Vista from its predecessor (in both usefulness and coolness).

So what does this mean in practical terms? What are a few of the implications? What does any of this have to do with Apple? Well, in practical terms it means that you may not even be able to buy many simple, low cost computer configurations anymore – they simply will not be sold because they cannot run Vista well. This, of course, means that PC prices will effectively rise. Although the price of formerly high end systems will drop, the average price that one will pay for an "entry level" computer may very well rise, especially in the near term.

So what does this have to do with Apple? For many years now, Apple hardware has been labelled as "more expensive" than that of other computer hardware vendors. While this may have been true in the 1990's, this has not been the case for a while now, especially since Apple switched to Intel chips last year. In fact, Apple systems have consistently been than similarly configured computers from other vendors.

However, Vista changes everything. In the short term, we can expect to see the price differential widen between Apple and other hardware vendors as Vista's hefty requirements push the average price of an "entry level" system up. Over time, things will balance out and the prices should reach a state of equilibrium that will bring the others to near parity with Apple. This is partially because overall prices will fall as previously high performance components become commoditized and partially because Apple's tendency to push the envelope in both innovation and adoption of new technologies will increase the prices of Apple hardware as well.

So, even though things may well even out in the end, for the near term, Apple hardware – which also runs Vista very well, by the way – should represent an increasingly attractive and quite cost effective option for shoppers looking to either upgrade an existing system or purchasing a new system for the first time.