Technologizer assesses Lauren and the 'Apple Tax'
Prompted by the Microsoft ‘Lauren’ advert, Technologizer’s Harry McCracken compares the 17” Mac Book Pro with equivalent models from Dell, HP, Lenovo & Sony. In short he finds that the ‘Apple Tax’ is the same as the ‘HP Tax’, less than the ‘Dell Tax’ more than the ‘Lenovo Tax’, and that the Sony machine belonged in a different category.
What interested me was a comment that asked “What about all the Laurens out there?”, referring to the much lower specification machine that Lauren apparently selects in the ad, and my immediate reaction was “Why get a shoddy laptop just to get a 17 inch screen?”.
Personally I don’t see the point of a 17” laptop - I have made the mistake in the past of buying an overly large laptop, forgetting that the key element of a laptop is portability! So to compromise all the other features to gain a large screen indicates either misguided buying priorities or specialised requirements (i.e. not travelling frequently with the ‘portable’!). Also, my step-daughter got given a Dell Vostro 1000 - a low-end laptop/Vista combination, and it is frankly horrible with a number of niggling issues, which reminded me exactly what those compromises actually are.
Are there a lot of Laurens in reality? Certainly there are a lot of computer purchasers with a misguided view of their priorities, and there is certainly an increasing demographic who buy laptops purely to use at home while slouching on the sofa (I confidently predict an epidemic of back and other posture-related problems in a few years time!).
Ultimately however, the real point of the ad was to find a pricing angle that ruled Apple out of the game. To require a 17” screen and < $1000 dollars was always going to be the best way for the Microsoft to do that. The Lauren character is a creation of the advertising copywriter and in reality the girl is an actress!
