After much anticipation Steve finally introduced to us his latest addition to the Intel powered Mac family, the new 2x Xeon dual core powered Mac Pro and, with an reasonable price of only $2499 I was ready to make a purchase. However, as always, the prices in Europe in Euros are the same as the US prices in Dollars.
Setting me back over $700, which I could have used to upgrade the Mac Pro, or purchase additional hardware, how honest is this gap? As a consumer I must say it does not feel that honest. Maybe ‘honest’ is not the right word, try ‘reasonable’ instead then.
Using the build-in Widget on my Powerbook I see that EUR2499 Euro is about $3208 USD. A difference of $709 USD. To compensate the difference I must downgrade the CPU to 2Ghz and the Hard Drive to 160GB.
I rather have spend the money to upgrade to the 3Ghz CPU and double my RAM, get the 500 GB hard drive and the ATI videocard. If I would do that now, the different would be even bigger. This would be $ 4149 USD, and in the Netherlands EUR4147 Euro. And EUR4147 Euro converts to $5324 USD, a difference of $1175 USD. I rather spend that money myself on a weekend to the US, fly there and enjoy the trip, scenery, meet my friends from the internet etc, instead of just throwing it away.
Is it worth yet to upgrade my Desktop from Windows to Mac, if I can get a proper Dell comparable system for less, only losing the ability to run OS X 10.4? And knowing if I buy the Mac Pro now that even more Euros get lost when Leopard gets released Spring 2007?
The standard configuration was equal in British Pound Sterling, perhaps I can assume this applies to Europe? It at least does here in the Netherlands. And if anybody knows why the difference is this big please post it as a comment. I wonder what Apple tells me when I call them with this question.
Be well,
Floris