With the ailing global economy, I am looking at ways I get better value for my money. One way I can do this if I need to replace a computer is by avoiding the “Apple Tax.”

Microsoft sponsored a new whitepaper (PDF) from Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies Associates which takes a look at the tax from a tech analyst’s viewpoint. His paper shows the “Apple Tax” is the combination of what people pay up front when purchasing a Mac and what people pay over the life of their computer – the hidden tax.

Roger looked into both aspects in his whitepaper, and has discovered some interesting findings around the “hidden tax” of owning a Mac – using the scenario of a hypothetical family of 4 and their costs over a five year period. Knowing that Tax Day is just around the corner here in the US (April 15), I decided to have a little fun with his findings by building a mock up tax form using Roger’s numbers that show the whopping difference this family would get purchasing Windows PCs over Macs: $3,367.

I know taxes are calculated annually but I thought it would be more interesting to look in terms of total savings Roger outlined in choosing 2 Windows PCs over 2 Macs in that 5 year period.

So what could you do with that $3,367 savings by avoiding the Apple Tax?

If you want to get some exercise you could get bikes for the whole family, and still have money left over (All via Performance Bicycles)!

• Schwinn Sid Coasting Bike ($499.99)
• Schwinn Nancy Ladies Coasting Bike ($499.99)
• Performance Girls 24” Kids Mountain Bike ($299.99)
• 2008 Mongoose Amasa Comp Mountain Bike ($679.99)
• 4 helmets: 2 Bell Ukon Sport Helmets @ $34.99, 1 Giro Women’s Kaya Helmet @ $39.99, and 1 Ascent Cruise Youth Helmet @ $29.99)

Take the family out for a night at the movies - 117 times (4 tickets @ $7.18 = $28.72)!

Make your home green, and save even more money!

• Generate your own free power with an all-included 260 Watt Solar home kit ($2,319)
• New energy efficient Andersen Windows (6 @ $140) that will help you save up to 35 percent on energy bills.

It is human nature to focus on the up-front price. The coverage around our Laptop Hunters ads jumps right to that (“PCs are cheaper”). The harder thing to capture is the overall cost and the VALUE. Roger’s paper does a great job illustrating this. Cost is getting something cheaper. Value is a function of getting more of what you want, regardless of what you spend. And you’re a lot more likely to find that with a Windows PC.

Shoppers rarely do a lifetime cost of ownership calculation for a new computer (even though that’s the real cost and makes the PC advantage even greater) but they intrinsically calculate the value for a new computer. That’s what we see in the market every day and what we see in the choices made by Lauren and Giampaolo as they each selected a PC that met their own unique criteria (features and budget). They wanted the right value for them. And that’s the beauty of Windows PCs – the diversity of choice and options that exist so that people can find what’s right for their own needs, not someone else’s. You’re never forced to buy more than you need or give up features you want like Blu-ray, Mobile Broadband, Firewire, and more. And, Windows PCs offer this across a broadest range of price points and performance from low-end netbook PCs to high-end gaming rigs.

But let’s limit ourselves to the narrow scenario where Apple does have offerings. We get questions about this all the time so we asked Roger to take a look at the comparison chart that we’ve used before to outline features, specs and price points across Macs and PCs. Part of his conclusion is, “Holding the price constant and examining specifications only serves to exaggerate the better deals on the Windows side.”

Note: The chart splits the Mac and PC laptops in to 3 categories: Value for basic models, Mainstream for average models, and Performance for high end models to illustrate options where Apple has machines. Of course the full spectrum of PC laptops is much broader.

What do you think about the concept of value? And what would you do with a $3,367 “Apple Tax Return”? Sound off in comments. In a few weeks I’ll showcase what people say they would do with their “Apple Tax Return” in a follow-up blog post.

UPDATED 4/13

Apple announced the launch of its latest beta version Safari 4 browser, claiming it to be faster with improved navigation and searching.

According to the company, Safari 4 loads JavaScript “up to 30 times faster than IE7 and more than three times faster than Firefox 3.” As for HTML pages, Safari, “loads [them] three times faster than IE 7 and almost three times faster than Firefox 3.” Safari 4 is also the first browser to pass Web Standards Project’s Acid3 test.

Other new features in Safari 4 include Top Sites, giving users a visual preview of frequently visited pages; Full History Search, to search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages; Cover Flow, to easily flip through web history or bookmarks; and Tabs on Top, to make tabbed browsing easier.

The new version of Safari also includes a Smart Address field and Smart Search. Smart Address will automatically show a drop down menu when a user begin typing a URL into the address field. It shows the top hit, suggestions from the user’s Bookmarks and suggestions from his history. Smart search gives the user suggestions from Google and previous searches that he has made using Safari.

The new beta version is available for download at Apple’s Safari Web page with both Windows and Mac OS versions ready for testing.

Source

A while ago, I noticed a handle leak in Apple's "Bonjour Service" (yeah, that sounds like something I want running on my system...) - mDNSResponder.exe. I knew right away that that was the executable for the "Bonjour Service" because the name is so helpful. (Joking. Even if it was named after the service, how the heck would I even guess what the "Bonjour Service" did. But I digress...)

The service description is:

Bonjour allows applications like iTunes and Safari to advertise and discover services on the local network. Having Bonjour running enables you to connect to hardware devices like Apple TV and software services like iTunes sharing and AirTunes. If you disable Bonjour, any network service that explicitly depends on it will fail to start.

I put up with the leak for a while, from time to time stopping the service when I thought of it after booting. Most of the time I didn't think of it and the leak did not appear to be having any kind of performance impact on my system (I never saw it get above 80,000 handles). An update (or two?) later, I thought it would be fixed. So I was surprised to find mDNSResponder.exe had more than 55,000 handles when I checked recently with Sysinternals' Process Explorer.

I tried to use Process Explorer's handle pane to see the handles in mDNSResponder.exe, but with that many handles to display, and with Process Explorer running with its default High priority and refreshing every second, the system became rather sluggish. I dropped the priority of Process Explorer with Task Manager, hid the lower-pane view, and gave Handle.exe a shot with handle.exe -a -p mdnsresponder.exe.

I found that the handles being leaked are handles to registry keys - specifically, HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\Tcpip\Parameters. (ControlSet001 is the current control set on my system.)

Since there's not much I can do about the handle leak, I'll disable the service, and hope the next update fixes the problem as surely the next update will set the service to Automatic start. Wonder why the installer doesn't at least set a service such as this as "Delayed Start" in Vista...

Earlier this week, Apple released iTunes 8 which included some headaches for Windows Vista users (including myself) in the way of blue screens of death. My good friend Ed Bott dug into the situation and discovered what might be causing the issue - it appears to be a problem with a driver that is installed when users also install iTunes 8. Unfortunately iTunes is known for pushing out components that Windows users don't necessarily want.

Fortunately, not all is lost. Due to the uproar from unsatisfied customers, Apple issued an updated version of iTunes 8 that fixes the problem (sort of).  You'll need to uninstall the broken version of ITunes 8 and Apple Mobile Devices support, and then use your Apple Software Updater to reinstall iTunes 8 and get it working the right way. 

Anyways you might be asking why I even installed iTunes in the first place and it's because I am a software fiend and love playing with new software regardless of who it's by. But just so you know - I'm a diehard Zune user myself ;-)

Adobe made comments today that they will be delivering a Flash client for the iPhone. According to Adobe’s Chief Executive Shantanu Narayen, Adobe has downloaded the iPhone SDK and is planning on building a Flash Player for the iPhone and distributing it via Apple’s iTunes App store.
“We believe Flash is synonymous with the Internet experience, and we are committed to bringing Flash to the iPhone,” Narayen said. “We have evaluated (the software developer tools) and we think we can develop an iPhone Flash player ourselves.”

The news comes a few weeks after Apple’s Steve Jobs stated his reasons why Flash is not available for the iPhone. Jobs claimed that Flash Lite for mobile was not full featured enough, while the full version of Flash would not run well on the iPhone. Other reports have claimed the core issue preventing the release of Flash for iPhone is a licensing negotiation between Adobe and Apple over the iPhone’s PDF renderer.

It’s not clear how exactly Adobe would bring Flash to the iPhone, as there are several restrictions in the iPhone SDK that could prevent its release.

Read more here

The iPhone, that extremely popular gadget built by the Cupertino company Apple, is one of the latest devices threatened by some malicious packages, as Orla Cox of Symantec today warned. What’s interesting is that this threat, if we can name it so, is not as dangerous as it may sound, because the only thing it does is to harm some of the applications deployed on the affected iPhone. The malicious file comes as a firmware update and is named “iPhone firmware 1.1.3 prep”. Its creators described the package “an important system update; install this before updating to the new 1.1.3 firmware”, according to the Symantec official. (more…)