I don't own a "MAC" and have never really shopped for one

[ChandlerJr]

but can they cost $5500, and if they do why would you bring one to a protest? This whole story sounds fishy, made to make OWS look bad.

NY Post my butt


“Stealing is our biggest problem at the moment,” said Nan Terrie, 18, a kitchen and legal-team volunteer from Fort Lauderdale.
“I had my Mac stolen -- that was like $5,500. Every night, something else is gone. Last night, our entire budget for the day was stolen, so the first thing I had to do was . . . get the message out to our supporters that we needed food!”


Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/criminal_occupation_oh3CnKANUqYHrGPCaZaLRK#ixzz1b9mL7bcC

[Flitzy]

1. What Mac costs $5,000?

Even if he - for some reason - felt like lugging around a Mac Pro, that's only half of that.

[Electric Monk]

8. A brand new 12-Core Mac Pro with 64 GB of ram and 8 TB of RAID HD space will run about $10,000

but why someone would bring something like that to the protests is beyond me.

[Flitzy]

16. True ;P

But that's a custom build and you'd have to be crazy to lug that around to a protest <grins>

[Puregonzo1188]

2. Things being stolen at the protest aren't necessarily being stolen by protestors.

There were a lot of Macbooks at Occupy Wall Street, as everyone has commented on, and I am typing on a Macbook right now so I can't really be critical. As a rightwing talking point it is pretty overblown and irrelevant, but if you were looking to steal shit heading down to Zuccotti Park would be as good as place as ever. People there are probably pretty trusting, etc.

It's a same.

[FarCenter]

7. In New York City, if it is not locked down, it will walk away.

It's not Ft Lauderdale (although parts of Ft Lauderdale are not better).

[tridim]

21. I once left a backpack in a restaurant booth in Manhattan

Went back three hours later and it was still there. I was stunned.

After I moved to Queens I had all of my clothes stolen from a laundromat, it only took 5 minutes while I went next door for a soda. I still think the laundromat stole them for resale.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

40. My girlfriend had her clothes stolen from a laundromat...

by a transvestite in the time it took her to walk across the street to use the bathroom in a Starbucks.

[tridim]

3. Macs are expensive, but not that expensive.

They are about double the price of comparable PC's.

[Tesha]

11. You sure do like to trot that one out, no matter how many times you're proven wrong.

Macs cost about the same as similarly-configured
systems bought pre-assembled from "A-list" name
brand vendors.

Tesha

[tridim]

14. Sorry, I've priced them. On average Macs are twice as expensive than comparable PCs.

It has been that way for almost the entire history of the Macintosh.

This story is 3 years old, but nothing has changed..

Study Finds Macs Cost 2X Windows PCs
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-mac-windows,6071.html

Also, unlike Apple, there is no rule that says you have to buy from a name brand retailer (I advise against it all the time). You can buy a pre-built store brand PC at Microcenter for about 33% the price of a comparable Mac. And then there is DIY which provides even more bang for the buck than pre-built.

Honestly I don't care about Mac/PC wars these days, but I will defend disinfo on DU every time.

[sce56]

18. But MAC's are more durable!

I know people that have had the same one for going on ten years and it has passed down from Brother to sister maybe a little obsolete but still runs!

[TheWraith]

32. No, they're not. They're just more durable than a shit PC.

Buy something from a reputable vendor like IBM/Lenovo and see how long it lasts. My Thinkpad laptop is 7 years old, endures amazing amounts of abuse, and is still running.

[abelenkpe]

26. But PCs are shit.

[Confusious]

34. So macs run the same hardware as a PC

The only difference being the operating system,

are you saying macs are shit too? or are you saying the operating system is shit, which I can agree with?

[Atman]

47. Oh, this is soooooo tedious and boring

And complete bullshit. A basic Mac has more features off-the-shelf than any store-bought crappy PC. That is why the price comparisons always seem to favor PCs. Once you actually configure a PC to have the exact same features as a Mac, they cost the same. And there is no reason you can't buy off-the-rack hard drives and memory to upgrade your Mac, instead of buying Apple-branded upgrades. If you own a Mercedes-Benz, buying M-B headlight bulbs will cost you significantly more than generics from the auto parts store. But there is no reason to do so, other than branding.

[TroglodyteScholar]

25. I'd sure like to see you back that claim up...

...because you can't honestly do it.

[Logical]

31. LOL....you are so wrong! I bought two dell laptops for less than one ac laptop and

The apple sales guy admitted it but said "I would not get virisus". What a stupid thing to say to justify twice the price!

[SomethingFishy]

41. That is 100% not true.

I can buy a Desktop or laptop from I Buy Power, Alienware or a comparable company for half what I would pay for a Mac. And those are bad ass custom boutique systems. I buy systems all the time for work, I promise you I can get a comparable PC for about half the cost of a Mac. However Mac is a more stable system.

This PC/Mac debate is pointless. Both have their good and bad points. Price is the worst factor against Mac. Next to no good games :)

[Tesha]

43. There's a very high correlation between "gamers" and people who dislike Macs.

Speaking for myself, I've never found the alleged lack
of games on Macs to either be: 1) true or 2) a compelling
reason to buy a different system.

But then I've never been much interested by "first person
shooter" games which seem to be the games that provoke
all the debate about ultra-high-end graphics and the like.

My tastes run more to games like "Myst" (which was
developed on and first available on Macintosh), strategy
games (Bejeweled), and physics games (e.g., "World of
Goo"), all of which play fine either on Macintosh or on
any of our iDevices.

Tesha



Tesha

[SomethingFishy]

44. It's because gamers like to "tweak" their systems

and there is no tweaking a Mac. Personally I love to tinker, so I use my Macbook on the road and keep a PC at home for gaming and "tinkering".

Ever tried "Peggle"? That is on the Mac and fits right in with Bejeweled and Goo, you'll probably like it. Bejeweled is a nice time waster and Goo was absolutely brilliant.

[Tesha]

45. Thanks -- I'll take a look at Peggle! (NT)

[Atman]

48. I love the silly shit on PC's like LED's to show you how fast your processor is running.

What a great "feature!" Who gives a shit? The computer will run at the speed it is running...a glowing green readout is meaningless. But wow...it looks cool, and your geek friends will be, uh...geekafied.

[alfredo]

23. My Mac desktop cost $599. I can get a Macbook Air for $999.

[RebelOne]

27. I have a Mac Mini and it only cost $500.

And it very powerful. No problems with it at all.

[tridim]

29. That's just for the CPU.

How much was it with the monitor, keyboard and mouse?

[nadinbrzezinski]

30. The top end can be that expensive

But the top end gaming PC can be that pricey too. This falls in category of bring a netbook or something else that is almost disposable.

[FarCenter]

4. Sound a little high, even with all the expensive options.

Including software, you might get there, depending on what you've loaded. But you should have the media and keys for that in a safe place.

www.macmall.com

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

5. Something is fishy here alright. nt

[pacalo]

10. This report is coming from Rupert Murdoch's make-em-up-as-you-go rag.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

15. I know that. I was talking about the OP. nt

[tularetom]

6. You'd have to really work to get a Macbook Pro up to $5,500

You could probably load it up with faster processors more memory and storage and an enhanced display.

But as you say once you do that, the last thing you'd want to do is keep it in a tent where it could be ruined by a sudden downpour or somebody stepping on it.

You have to consider that the NY Post is a Murdoch rag and the people that read it want to believe the worst about the OWS people.

[NashVegas]

12. Software

Photoshop?

Director?

Pro-Tools?

Dreamweaver?

It adds up.

[meegbear]

9. Since she's a legal-team volunteer, she probably got it from them

[blogslut]

13. It's from Murdoch's NY Post

'nuff said

[canetoad]

17. Here's a bit more

Of Nan Terrie's supposed words.

"Crafty cat burglars sneaked into the makeshift kitchen at Zuccotti Park overnight and swiped as much as $2,500 in donated greenbacks from right under the noses of volunteers who’d fallen asleep after a long day whipping up meals for the hundreds of hungry protesters, the volunteers said."

“The worst thing is there’s people sleeping in the kitchen when they come, and they don’t even know about it! There are some really smart and sneaky thieves here,” Terrie said.

“I had umbrellas stolen, a fold-up bed I brought because my back is bad -- they took that, too!”
http://occupywallst.org/forum/thieves-at-ows/ (Quoting NYP)

Now you tell me how many 18 year olds speak like that. Pure, made-up bullshit.

[Xithras]

19. In any random slice of the population...

If you could read the minds of all the people participating in the OWS protests, you'd find drug abusers, rapists, thieves, pedophiles, and every other sort of criminal known to man.

If you could read the minds of all the people participating in the Tea Party protests, you'd find drug abusers, rapists, thieves, pedophiles, and every other sort of criminal known to man.

If you could read the minds of 1000 random people grabbed off the streets of any city in America, you'd find drug abusers, rapists, thieves, pedophiles, and every other sort of criminal known to man.


In any group of people of sufficient size, you'll have a subset who are there for nefarious purposes, hold objectionable ideals, or engage in criminal activities. This isn't unusual, and is a non-story. The fact that Murdoch is trying to make it into one is simply a demonstration of his true agenda.

Are they going to claim that nothing has been stolen at a Tea Party protest? Ever?

[ChazII]

28. Agree 100%.

Whenever there is a large crowd of people, there will always be other people there to steal from them.

[Honeycombe8]

20. A friend got one of those all-in-one Macs (desktop w hard drive built in) for about $2K incl tax.

Expensive.

I'll probably never own a Mac. I need a pc that works naturally well with Microsoft software, and also, Macs are just too expensive.

[frazzled]

22. MacBook Pro and iMac start at $1199

You can get a Mac Mini for $599. Certainly she didn't bring along a Mac Pro 12-Core, the only Mac that even comes close to costing $5,000--and that's for, like, professional book designers.

I have to kind of laugh at people there to rail against the big financial/corporate interests bringing expensive computers with them.

[ChazII]

39. I had to chuckle at that as well.

Hopefully, no more thefts will happen.

[brooklynite]

24. Unless OWS has a gas-powered generator to power desktop computers...

...which I suspect the Fire Department wouldn't allow, I suspect all the computer equipment is of the laptop variation. The most fully tricked out 17" MacBook Pro (really a desktop computer with a foldable screen) comes in at $4,000.

[jmowreader]

33. Add in software and $5500 is reasonable

Adobe Creative Suite Premium is $1849 (street price) and Office for Mac is $280 if you get the "for business" version.

So...$2129 worth of software leaves $3371 to spend on the machine, and if she bought it a couple years ago that's feasible.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

35. And another hit and run from you, Why an I not surprised? nt

[ChandlerJr]

37. A lert is your friend

lert
(n) A small furry woodland creature that senses are always very intensely attuned to its surroundings.
You must be a lert.
To be a lert you must be constantly aware of the things around you.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

38. Oh I can do both, but I prefer to call people out to their face.

[fascisthunter]

46. Bravo!

[Odin2005]

36. FUCK MURDOCH'S LIES!!!

[Sparkly]

42. "NY Post my butt"

No kidding. :eyes: