# Oh, the Irony! IBM moving From PC's to Macs!



## Cholly (Mar 22, 2004)

Caught thiss ;on Google News - IBM is finding it cheaper to deploy Macs to their employees than Windows PC's! :eek2:

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/238002-ibm-claims-moving-to-mac-drastically-reduced-support-calls-operating-costs


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## tylorert (Sep 7, 2016)

Cholly said:


> Caught thiss ;on Google News - IBM is finding it cheaper to deploy Macs to their employees than Windows PC's! :eek2:
> 
> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/238002-ibm-claims-moving-to-mac-drastically-reduced-support-calls-operating-costs


hmmmmm


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Interesting article. While the author complains that IBM didn't give enough info to say why/how switching to Apple saved them money, I and others like me know the answer. And it is really simple!

Apple doesn't produce machines at the lower end of the scale at all! They are premium machines at premium prices and have been for lots of years. And it doesn't hurt that Apple's OS, now called MacOS again, is a rock solid Unix.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

This isn't new... They started giving you a choice a couple of years ago I believe. I forget when I first read about it. But if you've been paying attention, you would know the real reason why it is now cheaper...

About 10 years ago, give or take, IBM sold their PC division to Lenovo. That meant IBM made no consumer-level PCs anymore. I suspect there was some initial deals in place to give them a preferred customer status or something for a while during the transition.

Then, within the last 2 years, IBM also sold their Server division to Lenovo. There had been some overlap in development between these two divisions when they were part of IBM so it made sense... The only hardware left with IBM now, are their mainframes... which is not what you're going to put on your employee's desks... and I suspect any sweetheart deal they had to get PCs from Lenovo has expired by now... which puts them back on the market.

IBM's loyalty to its own product went away when they stopped making that product... and I bet, ironically, Apple happily gives IBM a good deal on the desktops just to have that little feather in their cap because of the way things used to be.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

Mac's haven't been premium products for quite awhile but they have still been charging premium prices. Look no further than the buyer's guide on macrumors to see all the "don't buy" recommendations. The Mac pro hasn't been updated since 2013, yet the premium price is still being charged. I'm hopefully we will see some premium products at the October event. I've been holding out to upgrade my MBP.



lparsons21 said:


> Interesting article. While the author complains that IBM didn't give enough info to say why/how switching to Apple saved them money, I and others like me know the answer. And it is really simple!
> 
> Apple doesn't produce machines at the lower end of the scale at all! They are premium machines at premium prices and have been for lots of years. And it doesn't hurt that Apple's OS, now called MacOS again, is a rock solid Unix.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Cholly said:


> Caught thiss ;on Google News - IBM is finding it cheaper to deploy Macs to their employees than Windows PC's! :eek2:
> 
> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/238002-ibm-claims-moving-to-mac-drastically-reduced-support-calls-operating-costs


The place I worked switched from PCs to Macs in the late 80s. Nobody wanted the Macs. After a couple years passed we got a money saving deal from IBM and switched back to PCs...nobody wanted the PCs. I can understand why IBM is going thru this, the Macs we had at the time were simply better.

Rich


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

raott said:


> Mac's haven't been premium products for quite awhile but they have still been charging premium prices. Look no further than the buyer's guide on macrumors to see all the "don't buy" recommendations. The Mac pro hasn't been updated since 2013, yet the premium price is still being charged. I'm hopefully we will see some premium products at the October event. I've been holding out to upgrade my MBP.


Yeah, I read at Macrumors too. But I don't find the "don't buy" recommendations to hold much water, with the exception of the Mac Pro, it is long overdue for a big refresh.

The rest of the line is premium IMO. Not because it is the latest and greatest hardware specs, but because they are all so rock solid compared to anything Windows powered. And don't get me started on the ongoing fiasco that is Windows OS upgrades/updates! It is simply amazing that it hasn't improved over the years.

I had the opportunity recently to see the differences between bring up 2 new boxes. One a Mac Mini, the other an HP AIO. Max of 30 minutes to do the Mini including an update to the OS, and Mail had all the accounts in it from the get go. The HP still hasn't gotten all the updates available after a few days, but yet took about 2 hours to get to almost the same state of readiness as the Mac Mini. And going forward, from long experience, the Mac Mini will just sit there and run day after day, without glitching. I'll wait to see how long it takes for the HP to do something irritating!


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

Maybe it doesn't matter.

The computing trend that I've been seeing is SaaS (Software as a Service), and running as many applications through the web browser as possible. This, in turn, reduces software support costs, and, oh yeah, it doesn't matter which platform you are using, just as long as the browser is current. As an example, two years ago, we went from a Remedy-based case tracking system to a web-based case tracking system.

As I said many times, this is interesting as we have gone full circle from the dumb terminals and mainframes of the 1970s, to having everything on a local computer, to file sharing servers, back to a terminal/mainframe model, although now, it's more of a browser/server configuration.... even if that web server is local to the network.

It also fits into the business model of reduce costs/increase revenue. The fewer software packages to maintain on a user's computer, the lower the costs. And, if it's BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), well... guess who maintains that device.


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

lparsons21 said:


> I had the opportunity recently to see the differences between bring up 2 new boxes. One a Mac Mini, the other an HP AIO. Max of 30 minutes to do the Mini including an update to the OS, and Mail had all the accounts in it from the get go. The HP still hasn't gotten all the updates available after a few days, but yet took about 2 hours to get to almost the same state of readiness as the Mac Mini. And going forward, from long experience, the Mac Mini will just sit there and run day after day, without glitching. I'll wait to see how long it takes for the HP to do something irritating!


And, you are missing some information. What version of Windows is that HP All-In-One running? And, why HP? Have you replaced the hard drive with a SSD?

Part of the problem with the Mac ecosystem is the closed hardware environment of the Mac systems. While I can understand locking down the quality of the components, not being able to upgrade the memory or hard drive/SSD unless that component is blessed by Apple if you can replace the component at all just turns me off. Apple products are notorious at iFixIt for being hard to open and repair. And, then, when you have Apple's marketing chief Phil Schiller stating that if you are running a computer more than five years old, you are essentially running an obsolete computer, and Apple obsoletes old products all the time.

Gee.... I just ordered another five-year old refurbished computer with 16GB of memory with a Intel Core i5-2400 3.1GHz processor (Sandy Bridge generation). It will be more than adequate for what I need to do at work. This is to replace a eight-year old computer that was running Windows 10 Fast Ring preview, but the Intel graphics are no longer supported. No biggie.... I'll just throw on Ubuntu 64-bit on that old thing instead.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

The HP runs W8.1. Times given wer for first run after 'virginizing' the machine. The reason was some issues with it running W10 that I never could pin down. Personally for me W8.1 is better than W10.

And yeah, it is a bit irritating that most Apple gear is a sealed unit that is difficult to repair. I guess that its a good thing that they seldom need to be repaired. I've still got the first Mac Mini with an intel processor running with nary a glitch over the years, and the original 1st iPad that shipped is still working fine though battery life is down to about 5 hours these days. My son uses it every day.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

The reason I went with Apple instead of Microsoft for my desktops is because I got tired of all of my desktops crashing. All my PCs suffered the same fate, the blue screen of death. Most times I would reinstall the OS but would loose a lot of files, then I learned from one of my friends to use a software to try to recover most data. For the most part that worked but it was a tedious process. 

I decided to try MacOS with a Mac Mini and was very pleased with its reliability, so much so that after three years I decided to upgrade to a 27 5K iMac. I have had this desktop for about 2 years and never had an issue. 

One of the things I love about MacOS is that if one software hangs, it does not stalls the entire system like Windows does or used to back then. 


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

I used to be a build-your-own-computer guy... I bought into the notion that it was cheaper to build one myself and that I could customize the components. There was even a time when this was true... but then something started happening.

Motherboards started changing the available ports around... and new port types were added semi-frequently... so, I couldn't upgrade my graphics card anymore to the newer one because the newer one no longer fit in my older motherboard! So while I had a computer that was component-level configurable, there were fewer and fewer realistic opportunities to actually be able to take advantage of that feature. Even in scenarios where I could upgrade the graphics card... I couldn't upgrade to a faster CPU, which was then required to fully utilize that graphics card... and I couldn't upgrade to enough RAM to be able to run the latest programs either... gone were the days when a motherboard could last 5 years and you could upgrade other components and make it work faster all that time.

Arguing Mac vs PC is one thing... but you have to compare Apples to Apples (so to speak)... Can't compare Apple iMac to off-the-shelf desktop PCs because desktop PCs didn't come with a monitor and didn't come with the best components optimized to work together. So you can't compare a $1500 iMac to a $500 PC and say how much cheaper that PC was without realizing you were arbitrarily ignoring the cost of your $300+ equivalent monitor and ignoring that the iMac had better components in some places than the standard desktop PC. You have to compare the iMac to the kind of PC you'd put together if you built it yourself... and then, while the PC is still cheaper, you'll find the price is closer than you might think.

Then... the OS for iMac is free (or practically free even when they sometimes would as for $15-$20)... but Windows typically is not. Yeah, you can run free Linux, but not as much software available for you if you go that route. Also... iMac even ships with Windows drivers so you can install Windows on that machine if you want! You can't (without hacking) install OSX on a standard PC even if you wanted to... so, buy an iMac and you have more general software compatibility.

I'm using a 2008 iMac. I'd like to upgrade, really need something with more RAM more than anything else... but the point is, I can still do everything I need to do with this iMac without having had to put any additional money into it in more than 8 years! Had I bought a PC, I would have likely tried to upgrade some components during that time to get marginal performance boosts that really weren't cost-effective if you shook it all down.

I've never had a PC last 8 years. I've had a bunch of PCs too... don't think I ever got more than 5 years out of one... and that was because I upgraded components along the way too. Apples aren't perfect, but they sure seem more stable to me in the beginning and after years of heavy use too. I even used to work for the company who until so recently made PCs... (IBM) and I'm not giving away secrets when I tell you that they gave themselves a purchasing discount, and that was why they used PCs... well, that plus the reputation that it wouldn't have looked good for a company making PCs to be using something else... but once IBM went out of that business, all of that went out the window, and I have no doubt they save money with longer-use times from iMac and also less need to support them as they just work more reliably.


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

Stewart Vernon said:


> I used to be a build-your-own-computer guy... I bought into the notion that it was cheaper to build one myself and that I could customize the components. There was even a time when this was true... but then something started happening.


I don't know about it being _cheaper_ to build your own computer. But, I like the component choice available. However, unless you are building your own gaming rigs, off-the-shelf computers are pretty good.... even if some modification is required.

The last graphics port change was from AGP to PCI-Express, which occurred between 2004 and 2008. In addition, if you don't do gaming, the graphics built into the recent Intel chipset are pretty good for web browsing, video viewing, and such.

BTW: The last computer I build was in 2014, and replaced a computer that I built in 2007.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> Yeah, I read at Macrumors too. But I don't find the "don't buy" recommendations to hold much water, with the exception of the Mac Pro, it is long overdue for a big refresh.
> 
> The rest of the line is premium IMO. Not because it is the latest and greatest hardware specs, but because they are all so rock solid compared to anything Windows powered. And don't get me started on the ongoing fiasco that is Windows OS upgrades/updates! It is simply amazing that it hasn't improved over the years.
> 
> I had the opportunity recently to see the differences between bring up 2 new boxes. One a Mac Mini, the other an HP AIO. Max of 30 minutes to do the Mini including an update to the OS, and Mail had all the accounts in it from the get go. The HP still hasn't gotten all the updates available after a few days, but yet took about 2 hours to get to almost the same state of readiness as the Mac Mini. And going forward, from long experience, the Mac Mini will just sit there and run day after day, without glitching. I'll wait to see how long it takes for the HP to do something irritating!


While I realize my Mac experience was a long time ago, it appears nothing much has changed. I'm saying this while using a Lenovo Ideapad Z710 that has been rock solid since I got it several years ago, kinda feel like a hypocrite. My wife has a much newer HP laptop that kinda sucks compared to the Lenovo. I dunno, I just remember how much everybody liked the Macs way back then. Almost put the IT group out of business when we made the switch from PCs to Macs.

Thing I never liked about Mac computers was the price, still don't like it.

Rich


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## Herdfan (Mar 18, 2006)

lparsons21 said:


> And don't get me started on the ongoing fiasco that is Windows OS upgrades/updates! It is simply amazing that it hasn't improved over the years.


Without a doubt. When I replaced my 5 year old iMac this summer with a new one, all I had to do was tell the new one to look at my Time Machine backup and load it. A couple of hours later (with no intervention on my part) my new iMac was ready to go with all my programs and settings. Let a PC try that.


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## RAD (Aug 5, 2002)

Just from what I've seen since the switch I can believe what IBM's seeing. MAC's come with basically the software that you need to buy from Microsoft to get Office functionality. You don't need to keep springing resources to keep pushing out patches to the software every couple weeks. Plus as mentioned, they just work.


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## Herdfan (Mar 18, 2006)

peds48 said:


> One of the things I love about MacOS is that if one software hangs, it does not stalls the entire system like Windows does or used to back then.


And it is very easy to Force Quit that application.

We are an all Mac household with 2 iMacs and 2 MBP's. The only "issue" we have had is that my daughter needs MS Publisher for school and there is no Mac version. So she has to run Win 7 in a VM to be able to use it.

She has a 6 year old MBP and it is still rock solid. I did replace the original 320g HHD with a 960g SSD for her though..

The one thing I noticed from a different article on the same subject was that IBM only had 30 Mac support staff for 90K machines. That sounds absurdly low. No wonder they are cheaper to operate.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Rich said:


> While I realize my Mac experience was a long time ago, it appears nothing much has changed. I'm saying this while using a Lenovo Ideapad Z710 that has been rock solid since I got it several years ago, kinda feel like a hypocrite. My wife has a much newer HP laptop that kinda sucks compared to the Lenovo. I dunno, I just remember how much everybody liked the Macs way back then. Almost put the IT group out of business when we made the switch from PCs to Macs.
> 
> Thing I never liked about Mac computers was the price, still don't like it.
> 
> Rich


Yeah the upfront cost can be off putting, but the resale value holds up very well, so going forward the total cost of ownership can be less.

One issue I've seen with all Windows laptops is relatively short battery life. Neither my Surface Pro 2 nor the Lenovo laptop can get more than about 4 hours of use between charges. My MacBook gets nearly 7 hours and my Pixel Chromebook nearly 11 hours!

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> Yeah the upfront cost can be off putting, but the resale value holds up very well, so going forward the total cost of ownership can be less.
> 
> _*One issue I've seen with all Windows laptops is relatively short battery life. Neither my Surface Pro 2 nor the Lenovo laptop can get more than about 4 hours of use between charges. My MacBook gets nearly 7 hours and my Pixel Chromebook nearly 11 hours!*_
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk.


Yeah, my Lenovo is the same. That's about the only complaint I have, tho.

Rich


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

Stewart Vernon said:


> Arguing Mac vs PC is one thing... but you have to compare Apples to Apples (so to speak)... Can't compare Apple iMac to off-the-shelf desktop PCs because desktop PCs didn't come with a monitor and didn't come with the best components optimized to work together. So you can't compare a $1500 iMac to a $500 PC and say how much cheaper that PC was without realizing you were arbitrarily ignoring the cost of your $300+ equivalent monitor and ignoring that the iMac had better components in some places than the standard desktop PC. You have to compare the iMac to the kind of PC you'd put together if you built it yourself... and then, while the PC is still cheaper, you'll find the price is closer than you might think.
> 
> .


even tho you are not quoting me, it seems your response relates to mine. So I say a few words. You are assuming I am comparing my iMac with a cheap PC, and that is not the case, in fact my first desktop was a $2700 top of the line Compaq which crashed in 3 weeks! Talk about a good first impression. That was exchanged for an HP model with the same price point. That desktop lasted a few years but suffered the same fate the issue with Windows is that the longer you keep a PC the slower is gets. From there on I have bought top of the line PCs up to buying an e-Machine since it seemed that it did not matter how expensive a PC was it was going to suffer the same fate sooner rather than later.

Is funny that you mentioned the built in monitor on the iMacs. IIRC correctly, apple sells or used to sell the same monitor used by the iMac for about $1500 or there abouts. So that means that I bought a great desktop for only $700. I could not get a desktop that does what the iMac does at that price point

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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

I think I was just generically jumping into the thread and not directly replying to you... I can't remember now 

Apple isn't without its flaws... but people also conveniently forget that Microsoft Windows has been trying to be Apple's GUI for a while now. I'm not a Microsoft hater, and there was a time I quite preferred the PC environment... especially pre-Windows... I liked the command prompt, yeah I'm one of those guys! But once we got to the point of mostly phasing out need/use of the command prompt... comparing the GUIs... Apple mostly did the same GUI better, because they were on it first and keep staying ahead of Microsoft.

There also have been some nagging Microsoft bugs that seem to stick with release after release... not saying Apple doesn't have some of those too... but the Microsoft ones plagued me more often than do the Apple problems, frankly.

Also, VMWare (though I haven't bought or used it in a while now) worked really well on my iMac to allow virtual machines for me to install Windows when I really needed to run a thing I didn't have available on my iMac. VMWare is available for Windows too... but the point was, I didn't lose any ability to run Windows if I wanted.

Also, to be fair... Apple has pretty much always been ahead of the PC/Windows platform for Desktop Publishing. I'm a Technical Writer/Illustrator, now also branching out to cartooning and comic work... and except for a little while there when Apple was in their dog-days of almost bankruptcy, the top notch software works faster and easier on the Macs. The only real knock on Macs vs PC from people like me in the past were that the PC was better for gaming... but in recent years great strides have been happening with games on the Mac.

I feel like IBM giving up the ghost and selling off their PC division, then their server division several years later, was the writing on the wall that should long-term help Apple grow the market at least here in the US. Maybe Lenovo can take hold of Asia and Europe... but I feel like Apple has a chance to take the North American market at least if they made a push for it.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

Stewart Vernon said:


> I feel like IBM giving up the ghost and selling off their PC division, then their server division several years later, was the writing on the wall that should long-term help Apple grow the market at least here in the US. Maybe Lenovo can take hold of Asia and Europe... but I feel like Apple has a chance to take the North American market at least if they made a push for it.


I don't know. The Windows competition is still there.

Right now I'm using the most powerful PC I've ever owned - a Microsoft Surface Pro 4.

And Microsoft is now focusing advertising for the Pro 4 on art applications:

[youtubehd]CefLZl3Zp10[/youtubehd]


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

The Surface Pro line, since the 3, has been very good. IMO, the biggest downside to them is the relatively poor battery life compared to MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and the latest 12" MacBook. The upside is the touch/pen interface on the Surface Pro's is excellent. The artwork ads have been very good though I've seen plenty of original artwork being done on the 12.9" iPad Pros too. Both are very capable boxes for that it seems.

IMO, I'm not fond of W10. In fact I took both my Lenovo ultrabook and HP All-in-One back to W8.1. W10 is better for those that like the more classic Windows desktop, W8.1 is better for touch. All personal opinion of course.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

I think this (the Surface Pro) is where Apple is intending to dig into with their iPad Pro line... I don't have any experience with the Surface... so I can't say. I also don't know that IBM has the same push to the public that it once had... there was a time back in the day that when the PC came out, it was destined to become a standard, pushing other companies out of the way... so their adoption of Macs could have the same effect... but IBM isn't what it once was, so maybe that choice doesn't trickle to other companies or customers in the same way.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

As this reviewer noted, when he first got his Pro 4 things were not so good. He even put it in the closet for awhile. But after a series of firmware and individual device drivers updates from Microsoft, plus the latest W10 updates he notes:



> Those fixes appear to have worked out most of the remaining issues. In fact, thanks to the Surface Dock, I am now using the Surface Pro 4 as my main PC, and it is, for the most part, a delight.


I almost never use mine on the battery, so I don't know. The reviewer noted:



> The biggest shortcoming of the Surface Pro 4, and the one that still has me on the fence about its utility as a mobile PC, is battery life. Over time, this device has consistently delivered between 5 and 6 hours of battery life on each charge. That's not bad for a 38 Wh battery. By comparison, the Dell XPS 13 that I've been using as a laptop has a 57.5 Wh battery. That's 50 percent larger, so it's not surprising that it runs roughly 50 percent longer on battery.


The Pro 4 with typecover weighs 2.37 pounds. The XPS 13 touch enabled version weighs 2.93 pounds. So an additional half pound is the penalty for the 50% longer battery life he describes.

Incidentally, we have people in our family who work for a living doing graphics and they use Apple products exclusively. So I'm not advocating that anyone change.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

My iPad Pro gets somewhere around 8-10 hours on a charge, the little MacBook gets around 7-8 hours.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Also, I can't speak to how the Surface Pro works in conjunction to a standard Desktop PC... but IF you have an iPad (or iPad Pro) and an iMac... you can also use the iPad as an input device to the iMac... so both of those Apple products together make each individual product more useful.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

Stewart Vernon said:


> Also, I can't speak to how the Surface Pro works in conjunction to a standard Desktop PC... but IF you have an iPad (or iPad Pro) and an iMac... you can also use the iPad as an input device to the iMac... so both of those Apple products together make each individual product more useful.


Our Surface Pro 4's are our desktop PC's. As the ZDNet review I linked in my previous post noted "In fact, thanks to the Surface Dock, I am now using the Surface Pro 4 as my main PC...."

We use ours with 23" touch monitors, usb keyboards and mouses, external audio, scanners, printers, drives, etc., just like any PC. But we can take it with us for use as a tablet, which is its physical format, or laptop. It's great for streaming Netflix, etc.

With that said, it isn't a replacement for my smaller Kindle Fire HDX tablet as a reader while I'm waiting at a doctor's office. And Windows 10 suffers from the fun "app gap."


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