Wintel 5 Mac 4

My youngest son has been enjoying his computer for several years now. And, sadly, after almost 10 years of service, the old Compaq machine, a 500MHz Pentium box running Windows 98, must go.

So the big decision was Mac or Wintel. And Wintel won. Primarily because of all the great kids software that we have on the Wintel platform. I ordered a Dell 1100 machine last night. Good thing too as the prices went up overnight. I got the following configuration for $399 (taxes extra, free shipping):

• 2.66 GHz Intel Celeron D Processor (533 FSB)
• 512MB DDR SDRAM at 400MHz
• Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator
• 80GB Hard Drive
• 48x CD-RW / DVD-ROM Combo Drive

I could not build a comparable clone for that price. I priced out the components at Logic Computer House and to equip a clone with the same specs as the Dell machine (processor, memory, storage) would cost almost $100 more, before taxes, plus the time it would take me to assemble the machine.

There is now an imbalance in the force. 5 wintel machines. 4 macs.