The best box that Apple makes is the Mac Pro.

The best box that Dell makes is the Precision Workstation, commonly abbreviated as PW. Both are business machines first and foremost.

It is very easy to configure either to run you $20,000 for final cost.

How to do it? Simple. Check off every single possible option you can throw in when configuring it.

First, the Mac Pro.

This is an 8-core system (two 2.93GHz Quad Core Intel Xeons) stuffed with 32GB of RAM, 3 1TB hard drives, two optical drives, two 30-inch flat-panel displays, wireless everything, fibre channel, a bunch of preinstalled software and of course the AppleCare Protection plan.

And now, the Big Dell, the Precision Workstation T7500.

The screen shot of this would have been too long, so here are the specs:

• Windows Vista 64-bit Business Edition
• Dual Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processors W5580 3.20GHz, 8M L3, 6.4GT/s,turbo
• 48GB, DDR3 RDIMM Memory, 1333MHz, ECC (12 DIMMS). You read correctly. 48 gigs of RAM. This is an $8,000+ option.
• 4 Year ProSupport for End Users and 4 Year 4HR 7×24 Onsite Service
• 4.0GB NVIDIA® Quadro® FX 5800, DUAL MON, 1DP & 2DVI
• Microsoft™ Office® Professional 2007
• McAfee® Total Protection for Small Business,15 Month Subscription,Eng
• Drive 1 – 1.5TB SATA 3.0Gb/s, 7200 RPM Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst Cache™
• Drive 2 – 1.5TB SATA 3.0Gb/s, 7200 RPM Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst Cache™
• Drive 3 – 1.5TB SATA 3.0Gb/s, 7200 RPM Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst Cache™
• Drive 4 – 1.5TB SATA 3.0Gb/s, 7200 RPM Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst Cache™
• Drive 5 – 1.5TB SATA 3.0Gb/s, 7200 RPM Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst Cache™ Yes, this is 5 1.5TB drives for a total of 7.5 TB space.
• 16X DVD+/-RW w/ Cyberlink PowerDVD™ and Roxio Creator™
• Monitor 1 – Dell 24 inch UltraSharp™2408WFP Widescreen, Adjustable Stand, VGA/DVI
• Monitor 2 – Dell 24 inch UltraSharp™2408WFP Widescreen, Adjustable Stand, VGA/DVI
• Monitor 3 – Dell 24 inch UltraSharp™2408WFP Widescreen, Adjustable Stand, VGA/DVI
• Monitor 4 – Dell 24 inch UltraSharp™2408WFP Widescreen, Adjustable Stand, VGA/DVI
• Chassis Intrusion Switch

There are many, many different ways I could have priced out the Dell.

Instead of the four 24-inch monitors, I could have gone with three Dell 30-inchers (which I probably would). That would be a separate purchase albeit from the same company.

In addition, the Dell costs more mainly due to the extra 16GB of RAM, the four monitors and the extra two hard drives. Mac Pros at present cannot be configured from the OEM to go beyond 3 internal hard drives or 32GB RAM, and that’s by design.

What’s the Super Dell best suited for?

AutoCAD or high resolution medical imaging. With CAD in particular, this is still PC-only world.

And not gaming, you dope.

What’s the Super Mac best suited for?

HD/Film/Video editing suite. In a separate purchase I’d tack on either Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere or Media 100. Whatever had the most local (important) support. And when I say local I mean other shops in the area you live that support what you have. Some places favor Final Cut while others Media 100, etc.

Does anybody actually buy these things?

Yes, and routinely. Neither OEM would build them if there weren’t a market to buy them.

In medical, industrial design and research facilities you will see these Dells.

In pro video houses/animation studios, you will see these Macs.

Of course, neither looks any different from their lower-cost same-model boxes, but it’s what’s on the inside that counts obviously.

Could you build a PC with the above Dell specs for cheaper?

Yes. And in fact you can go higher than 64GB RAM.

How about 256GB RAM? Sound impossible? It isn’t. You have to use a server motherboard instead of desktop, like this one.

Ridiculous for a home PC? Very. And totally unnecessary. Sure, you’ll be the coolest nerd in town, but you’ll be paying a loan off for all that RAM for the next 10 years.

On the desktop side, the most RAM supported if you bought the motherboard thru NewEgg is 24GB. This is a bit crappy because there should be 32GB RAM support options for PC builders. Alas, there isn’t. Yet. Maybe there will be come 2010?

At present you’re best off using a board that supports 8 or 16GB. And you’ll obviously have to use 64-bit Windows (or Linux) to access all of that.

Is there any way to get the cost of the Mac Pro down?

Several ways, actually.

The first rule to buying Mac is to purchase as little as possible from the Apple Store concerning the box itself.

Instead of ordering your Mac with 32GB, order with 1GB. Fill it up with RAM from another vendor. Just remember to specifically order Mac Memory.

Instead of Apple 30-inch Cinema Displays, use 30-inch Dell UltraSharps. Even Mac people know that those are awesome monitors.

Instead of ordering 3 hard drives, take 1. Like with the RAM, buy the others from another vendor and install it yourself.

This is essentially no different than configuring the Dell. You put the money into the processors more than anything else. For the rest, you go with other vendors.

The only drawback to this is that the other-vendor stuff isn’t supported under OEM warranty. This can be said for either OEM.

“Tech Business” as it relates to this article is defined as using the internet as a means to supply income with your business. This can be thru the sales of online e-books and articles, use of eBay and so on.

A common question when it comes to tax time is “What can I ‘write off’ on my taxes?” The answer in simple terms is anything you spend money on used for business purposes.

The lines blur a bit when it comes to figuring out what counts as a write-off and what doesn’t.

Let’s take a look at what you can and can’t write off if you decide to run your own tech business.

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Last week I wrote about Office Accounting Express 2008, Microsoft’s free offering for small business accounting, however if you want to give the industry leader in this category a try take a look at QuickBooks Simple Start Free Edition 2009. The name says it all here.

This offering is designed to get you started (/hooked) using the QuickBooks product. This edition is somewhat limited as, for example, you can only have up to 20 customers and cannot download transactions. On the other hand you can interface with Intuit’s payroll service as well as process credit card orders using this free version. You can view a full comparision chart on their web site.

There is no denying that QuickBooks is the leader in the small business bookkeeping arena and I think it is great they are offering a free “gateway” product. If you like it, once you outgrow the free edition purchasing the pro version will get you all the bells and whistles QuickBooks offers.

On Monday I wrote an article about Office Live and Google Apps. In that article I said:

Neither has any blogging capability whatsoever.

I was corrected on this concerning the Microsoft offering. By whom? The Microsoft Office Live Team themselves (see comments in that article).

Microsoft Office Live does do blogs and rather easily by using Live Spaces.

This is how it’s done:

When you’re using the Web Design Tool inside the admin panel, you click inside an editable area, then click the Module button, then Live Spaces blog. After that you just type in the URL of the Spaces blog (i.e. your-username.spaces.live.com). The blog does have to be active first.

Looks like this:

After you add in your Spaces blog, just save and it’s done and live instantly.

Kudos to Microsoft for putting blogging ability into their Office Live Small Business offering. This is definitely a very cool feature and moreover easy and usable.

Much thanks to the MS team for pointing this out because I consider it essential that businesses – including small ones – should be able to blog easily. Spaces combined with Office Live Small Business takes care of that in short order.

In business, branding is important and this involves a logo. The logo is a visual piece of art representing your product or service.

There are rules to making logos; it isn’t something where you can just whip up any old thing and throw it out there. Why? Because if it’s designed improperly it will inevitably cost you (possibly a lot of money).

If you design your logo right the first time you can achieve maximum coverage for the least cost.

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Talking about using social media for business purposes practically walks on the third rail of the Internet. A lot of people who are using social media sites like Twitter or Facebook are particularly sensitive when it appears they are being marketed to.

In my opinion, the fact that Twitter users get nervous when they see a “internet marketer” use Twitter is testament to the fact that many use it incorrectly. Twitter and any other social media platform is inherently a community. And that community is made up of real people.

And just like when people get annoyed when you walk up and knock on the door to sell you something during dinner time, people are going to resent you if you start marketing to them in their social settings online.

This is not to say that, as a business person, that you should steer clear of using such sites. Absolutely not. These sites are used by a LOT of people. And with a large group of people, it is inevitable that some of your potential clientele are using these social media sites.

The trick (if you want to call it that) is to treat people with respect. You need to actually participate as a person first, and a business second. You need to be a part of the community. Offer things of value. You might even just “shoot the crap” with people about things which have absolutely nothing to do with your business. If you build a reputation on these sites as a PERSON and not as a business, then when you send in the random plug every now and then for your business, people won’t really mind it.

These sites are called social media, and you need to place emphasis on the SOCIAL part of it.

If you find the social part of these sites to be a waste of your time, then do yourself a favor and don’t even start using these sites to begin with. You will do your business more harm than good by joining a site like Twitter for the purposes of building up a big follow list and then spamming them with your links.

When you make money on the Internet, you most definitely need to be aware of how affiliate programs work. They are common and can be a great way to make money online. In fact, I have employed this option myself many times and have made many thousands of dollars.

When you sell a product as an affiliate, you are selling somebody else’s product. The deal is that the seller will pay you a percentage of every sale that you make. The percentage varies from seller to seller. Some are as low as 1-2% (usually found only in low margin areas like computer hardware) up to as high as 80%. I’ve even seen some sellers provide 100% commission to affiliates. They do this when they are willing to give away all proceeds because they know they’ll make much better money by upselling the buyer to better backend products.

To make money as an affiliate, you need to sign up for affiliate programs. You can sign up one-on-one with any company or seller which offers an affiliate program. You can also go to one of the larger clearing houses of affiliate products, such as:

• Clickbank
• Commission Junction
• OneNetwork Direct
• AzoogleAds

You have to pick and choose products which are suitable to your audience (if you have one). For example, you wouldn’t market real estate products to an audience like we have here at PCMECH. It is also sometimes a good idea to buy and try the product yourself.

If you do not have an audience of your own nor a mailing list, you should turn to Google Adwords. Adwords will cost you money, yes, but if you carefully follow the math and the keywords you use, you can set it up where you are all but guaranteed that for every dollar you spend, you’ll make back more money. You use Google to direct people straight to your seller using YOUR affiliate code so that you get all credit for the sales made.

This post is most certainly not an in-depth guide to making money this way. There is a lot to it, and those who master it can make a goldmine selling other people’s products. Silver and gold members of PCMECH will get additional material on this down the road.

In the meantime, there are some blogs you can read on the subject. UberAffilliate is one blog I would recommend, authored by Paul Bourque.

Have you ever wondered how a useless bag of crap like Paris Hilton manages to make a fairly significant income? Or Britney Spears? It isn’t because of their talent (obviously). What is it?

Because they’re interesting. But, how does that translate into dollars? Because they attract ATTENTION.

A club owner in Las Vegas, for example, wants to generate buzz for their new nightclub. What do you think will work better? Paying money to Google to advertise in the search engine? Paying to have a bunch of fliers printed up and handed out along the Vegas strip? Or paying Paris Hilton to show up at your club, make an ass of herself, and attract all the paparazzi? Your club is surely going to be on the next episode of TMZ. With Paris Hilton comes attention. Continued

Making money on the Internet, to many people, conjures up images of the gold rush. You put up a website and out pours money. This was, no doubt, the image conjured up in the 90’s with the dot-com boom.

Today, this attitude has evolved into one of skepticism with a little dose of confusion mixed in. The thought of making money in your pajamas on your computer is enticing. But, when you look into it further, you’re liable to run across an endless parade of long-form sales letters all promising the sun, moon and stars. Everybody makes themselves sound successful as if they alone hold the secrets to online wealth. And they’d be happy to charge you some price ending in 7 to get in on those secrets.

Continued