Comment by bearjaws
9 hours ago
Dell needs to admit they're in deep shit.
I just bought our entire G&A team M4 Macbook Air 15" for the same price as our Dell Pro laptops.
They are 20% faster, have 2x the battery life, and 8 more gb of RAM. Also standby actually works.
We had done an initial batch of Dell Pro 16 laptops and with 16gb of ram + the 255h (now 258v) it's over $1100 a laptop. Only problem is... they need 32gb of RAM on Windows 11 because the performance was terrible. We were seeing average 88% memory usage for our G&A team at 16gb. The upgrade to 32gb of RAM moves the price to $1500+ each, they also recently swapped to soldered RAM for both Intel and AMD, so we are forced to the $1500+ option with a faster CPU.
Initial reactions have been overwhelmingly positive, about 50% of them are new to Macs and have figured it out, additionally they all love the battery life and performance (most are switching from 11th and 12th gen Intel).
Our more tech savvy members have mentioned the better screen, webcam and audio as positives.
I am considering switching our call center (~200 members) to Mac mini's, the same price as our Lenovo mini PCs and will last a long time, the Core Ultra 210 is not great. My only fear is people stealing them really.
Why would I pay $2000 for Dells mid line series of business laptops? How much is this XPS going to cost vs a Mac book Pro?
> We were seeing average 88% memory usage
My 64GB MacBook Pro sits around that level after using it for a while, too. So do my Windows and Linux machines even with different amounts of RAM.
There's a popular page explaining it for Linux, but it's applicable to every OS: https://www.linuxatemyram.com/
Isolated RAM usage numbers aren't useful because spare memory is used for caching. Even if you are using 88% of the RAM, that's not indicative of a problem unless you're encountering a lot of swapping. Even swapping a little bit isn't bad if it's not stalling the machine out. You have to look at actual performance, not RAM usage percentages.
I’ve had to explain too many times to people who should know better that “rss” is not how much memory a process needs but how much the operating system allows it to have. Put other stuff on the machine and that number will go down. No it’s not that improvement you think you made to that data structure. If you want that, look at total memory or heap size after GC if it’s a garbage collected language.
I don't understand why the default way to show RAM usage on Linux isn't to simply show "In Use vs. Available".
I don't care how much cache is being used and I can't really do anything about it even if I did.
Cache is super important though. Not having enough memory for cache will tank your system performance, even if you have a ton of "available" memory
atop (one of the many variants of top) reports numbers for "free", "available", and "cache" in its total systems report. As long as "available" is high, I don't worry about the RAM.
My 32 GB MacBook Pro sits at about 50%, even after months of being powered on, unless I'm running programs that use a lot of memory. That's at least what Activity Monitor reports, perhaps Activity Monitor reports it in a different way.
I truly hate, more than anything else in the tech discourse, that this gets trotted out every time the discussion of RAM comes up. "unUsED rAM iS wASTED RAm", always used to defend and justify abhorrent and incompetent software development practices. Even with 32gb, I routinely run into out-of-memory crashes on a near-daily basis with workloads that should not in principle be anywhere near that usage.
If they were making decisions based on RAM, they were almost certainly encountering real-world issues which prompted looking at their usage statistics in the first place, rather than just looking up their RAM usage metrics for funsies.
This is talk about how the OS uses that RAM to make your software better.
But to that point, having to explain to people why this 32GB machine with two processes using 10GB each can not, in fact, fit another 10GB process because the response times of the two existing processes relies heavily on that “unused” memory that is actually part of the working set of the machine. And also occasionally one of those services spikes to 14GB so what happens when that happens?
So in that regard showing that memory as used has advantages for avoiding arguments with people who are not equipped to have their half of the argument in a useful and meaningful way.
I think the point is not that one should not look at RAM use, but be careful when looking at it since total RAM use may include the amount that is used for disk cache which will fill to use whatever is available (and will be freed back if necessary).
It makes sense to watch memory use but one should make sure to discount the amount used for disk caching from the total.
Apple has kept prices stable for existing models, but is rumored to be paying 50% more for DRAM in 2026, which may impact pricing of new Apple devices that will be launched in 2026.
edit: https://hanchouhsu.substack.com/p/overview-of-the-memory-mar...
> The full-year price increase for Samsung’s storage products supplied to Apple in 2026 has been finalized, with DRAM prices rising by 53% and NAND prices rising by 52%. Earlier rumors suggesting an 80% full-year increase for DRAM were inaccurate.. Apple negotiated the prices down to the aforementioned levels and signed long-term agreements (LTAs).. Kioxia also signed a similar agreement with Apple, with price increases consistent with Samsung’s.
Apple may be a good deal now, but historically they have been the expensive option. I would be concerned about the rug pull of spending time training people on macOS, setting the expectation that they will have it in the future, and then Apple returning to premium pricing before the next upgrade cycle.
At least with Windows you have several hardware vendors competing to force market rate pricing.
There are several good reasons to choose Apple, but I question the wisdom of choosing them for price.
Hard to know for sure, I'd be curious the breakdown in cost for enterprise laptops, it's hard for me to understand why the price has increased 50% while Apple has increased 10%.
Lenovo, Dell and HP are pretty much all the same price at this point. It's basically an oligopoly.
The prices have crept up over the past 5 years and they have no reason to lower them. They know they aren't even competing with Apple since most large enterprises are all in on Windows.
My bet is they have basically made their prices the same as Apple, and they plan to keep it that way.
If you have the freedom to buy from Best Buy, Amazon, etc, this is certainly the case.
However, depending on how you procure this hasn’t been the experience for over 20 years. By the time you’re done with CDW or whomever is your VAR, you’re not comparing a $600 basic PC laptop to a $1200 basic Mac Laptop. They know you’re like the GP and going to pay $1500 minimum and are probably game for $2000. They sell the “Business” line with whatever terms added.
When I did this in K12 in the late 00s the price for a truly terrible Dell or IBM/Lenovo was the same as an iMac.
For the corporate world there have been times you couldn’t get Virtualization support, hardware dock ports, and various other bits of support until you moved to buying the “Business” line and after a certain number of units the direct to retail options send you down the VAR path. There’s simply too much money involved for them to make it easier for you.
I have not had to deal with this as a buyer since 2019 but the song seems to be the same as I work for a company that sells through CDW. Per the reps, the same stupid games are being played.
The only times I haven’t had to deal with this is when the companies I’ve worked for just hand you a credit card to walk down to the Apple Store or are using Apple’s program which is basically the same thing but comes with a shared App Store account and some better support for swap outs.
Historically they've been the expensive option, but historically they've been much more niche than windows laptops. So their unit economics might be better nowadays due to volume.
If Apple can keep the price near $1500 for the M5, it will still be a no brainer. They are currently $200 cheaper, granted for less memory. I also am in the camp of you don't need quite as much memory on Apple, our most significant usage is Chrome, Excel and Teams.
My main reason Apple can charge slightly more: Better performance, screen, battery, camera, microphone, and trackpad.
In my last job, I just bought my own laptops for a variety of reasons. Know that may not work for everyone. Also for a variety of reasons. But worked dor me.
Apple is rumored to have long term price controlled contracts for DRAM. That would fit their 20 year MO
I read this recently, made me chuckle:
"Man, I wish Apple ram upgrades were priced like the rest of industry"
<monkey paw curls>
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Been debating about buying a Mac mini to replace my old iMac--which I don't use at this point. Have a newish MacBook Pro but it's not the best ergonomic choice to use with a big monitor.
Had a new mini for 6 months. Was great. Only sold because of lifestyle changing to more of a laptop setup.
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> We had done an initial batch of Dell Pro 16 laptops and with 16gb of ram + the 255h (now 258v) it's over $1100 a laptop. Only problem is... they need 32gb of RAM on Windows 11. We were seeing average 88% memory usage for our G&A team at 16gb.
Is that really much different than macOS? Checking my 32gb Mac Mini now, I'm sitting at 84% memory usage with just browsers, chat apps, some RDP/terminal windows, Mail and Apple Music open.
I'd also note that Dell does sell Qualcomm laptops - I've got a 12-core/32gb Dell Qualcomm as my work PC - every piece of software I use for work is now native ARM64 and I've got no complaints about performance/functionality.
How much is cached files? That is one thing I always note on Apple, typically I sit around 6-8gb of cached files.
For windows specifically cached memory looks very similar to unused memory so when someone is complaining about "windows is using all my memory" it's very unlikely to be caused by caches.
https://softwareg.com.au/cdn/shop/articles/Windows-11-RAM-ty...
4.3GB... which seems roughly similar to my 32GB Windows PC - it's sitting at 89% memory use with 3.5GB cached.
Thing I hare about the Air is no internal fan. The Macbook Pro has them so if you do anything intensive like AI inference you have actual airflow.
Additional point since you are considering Mac Minis. My wifes 2008 and 2010 Macbooks (the 2010 is a Pro) still turn on and run the OS just fine. I swapped the drive on the 2010 but its because she dropped it ages ago. Thats 16 years for the 2010, and 18 years for the 2008. I cant find a single Windows laptop that has lasted me this long EXCEPT the ones I installed Linux on. Something about *NIX literally saves your hardware lifespan.
> Also standby actually works.
That's a Windows issue. The recent active sleep (or whatever it's called) has been buggy across basically all hardware.
omg is this a thing? i thought i was dumb or something.
i bought an expensive 240hz qd oled and i kept coming into my office with the damn thing on without the screensaver, just burning in after having left it asleep.
i’m so paranoid i just turn the whole computer off now.
Yup, it's extremely broken for software reasons. I see this across multiple Dells and ThinkPads. Linux has no problems sleeping on them. Windows just wakes up randomly on its own or never goes to sleep. Sleepstudy debugging doesn't show any reason. You can do some hacks to force it to hibernate instead of sleep to work around some of those problems.
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Modern Standby https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...
Yes it's shit. I have a work laptop that have all sorts of problems. I would leave work and return the next morning to find that the laptop had a bluescreen and rebooted. Many times. So IT disabled modern standby. (Now it takes almost as long to boot as a cold start, but at least I don't lose my work.)
Although I have a personal laptop at home that seems to do fine. Still, that's nowhere as responsive as "instant on" experience as you would find on a Macbook. Of course, Microsoft lied again.
> They are 20% faster, have 2x the battery life, and 8 more gb of RAM.
I thought the minimum spec was 16gb ram as of a while ago?
> Mac mini
If you’re paying for power, it would be interesting to see what effect that change to Mac’s has.
I went from a nuc 9 to a mini and use less than 10% the power on the mini, and it’s more powerful.
Maybe they should just shut the company down and give the money back to shareholders…
When I joined my last company, it would have been politically unpalatable to run Windows which was what I was used to, Linux was sort of frustrating to me at the time (even if I'm sure I could have adapted and it has improved in the last 15 years), and then there were Macs--which I had never used but turned out to be very straightforward.
And I've been mostly in the Mac camp ever since even if I'll use other OSs as needed.
I take the "premium" experience of Apple hardware for granted, and if I wanted to buy a Windows laptop, I'd have no idea which brands make similar quality laptops for Windows. I'm shocked at the Windows laptops I see in the wild.
Is that what Microsoft Surface laptops are? Did Microsoft get in the game themselves to make sure a premium-quality laptop is available for Windows?
Yes about the surface part. They thought all other 2-in-1 touch devices were terrible and needed to do something.
But Microsoft stopped caring about hardware a long time ago. I would never recommend overpriced Surface Pro to anyone unless you have a special need for that form factor. As to Surface Laptop, you have so many better choices.
I’ve worked on a Lenovo Carbon X1 and was impressed with the whole thing. The keyboard is legit superior to Mac.
It you bought anything except RAM, a laptop refusing to use 12% for no obvious reason would be note worthy.
What is G&A?
General and administration staff?
Yup
> Dell needs to admit they're in deep shit.
Yup, since forever and the reason is:
> ... on Windows ...
There's no fixing that.
It doesn't matter how much inconsistent and how much suckage there's in every new MacOS release: it's simply impossible to suck as much as Microsoft products.
You can install Linux on Dell laptops, or Dell will do it for you:
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/scr/laptops/app...
> or Dell will do it for you:
Only in certain countries. Dell refuses to sell laptops with Linux installed in Australia. And they've never given a believable explanation as to why.
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What a weirdly worded post. You could have said something like:
"Dell has priced it's Pro line of laptops in-line with Apple's Air equivalents, however Window 11's high resource utilization means we have to pay for higher spec machines while still ending up with reduced battery performance, and inferior screens, webcams and audio."
But instead you make weird misleading statements like "and 8 more gb of RAM" and "it's over $1100 a laptop" that need to be decoded but are easily misunderstood if the reader lacks certain domain knowledge.
Then you have these unqualified statements like "they also recently swapped to soldered RAM for both Intel and AMD" which implies that it's a bad move but don't articulate why or acknowledge that Apple has been doing this since 2008.
This is HN. I much prefer someone's raw, unfiltered words than ChatGPT generated legalese. I have enough of that nonsense at work.
Bro, this is HN where the are so many obscure acronyms, frameworks, random Saas providers assumed everyone knows. This isn't a site where discussion can break down to the level of detail you seem to want. It just needs to be on the level anyone who knows what an XPS even is can follow.
Thanks for the clarification Bro. I now realize that I've been using this site incorrectly for 15 years.
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