Pfeiffer Consulting just released a 200-page report detailing Total Cost of Ownership, Productivity & Return on Investment differences between the two operating systems.

The report is based on extensive international market research covering companies from the United States and 5 European countries, as well as extensive productivity and efficiency measures.

A sample page from the $2,400 (1,999 euros) report shows that the Mac compares favorably with Windows. Some salient points revealed in the sample page:

• It almost takes twice as long and twice as much to deploy a new Windows machine vs. a new Mac
• Replacing a dsyfunctional Windows machine costs 45 percent more than replacing a dsyfunctional Mac
• Macs are 22 percent more productive in a sample Photoshop workflow even though the the Windows machine was 2.3 times faster in the core loading performance of a 100 mb image. The discrepancy was explained by the high "user interface friction" of Windows in executing the workflow.
• Mouse precision benchmarks show Windows users are prone to make six times more errors given the same task.

Source: Pfeiffer Consulting

UPDATE: The report was conducted using PowerPC Macs. One can only surmise that the 2x to 4x performance boost of the new MacTels will further tip the scales to Apple's favor.

It's great to see the comparison. However, the cost of the study is too steep to purchase.

The Mac Misconceptions are slowly eroding and people are beginning to realize that Macs do offer several advantages over Windows based systems.

I'm sure it will cost a pretty penny, but it will be good publicity. Yes, I know. its not as if Apple needs more buzz. Its just that the buzz its getting now is consumer-focused and this study is good reading for management.

And unlike the MS-commissioned studies that Microsoft keeps talking about (lookie here, this company we paid mucho bucks to says we kick ass!!! Duh!!!), this one was conducted by Pfeiffer without Apple paying them to do it.

A journalist with his own site has full access to the report and wrote an elaborate article on the conclusions which are not at all as straightforward as the short version represented here, would suggest.

You'll find the article here:
http://www.it-enquirer.com/main/ite/...t_mac_windows/

Interesting read!

Good find mambo!!!

Still, its interesting that Pfeiffer's sample page is clearly tilted to the Mac. Going by the table of contents, I'm really keen to see Pfeiffer's "Analysis and Recommendations" that even it-enquirer.com didn't disclose.

Sometimes, I wish Apple made up its mind about enterprise IT. I've been a long-time IT fanboy and been a strong advocate for Apple in big business. But Apple's incursions into the space has been a mixed bag.

I just don't have any ammo to advocate for Apple at work. At one time, when the "Big Mac" supercomputer came out, I was working on a big bioinformatics project using Linux Clusters at a major pharma.

I sent out a feeler to Apple and I got a very tepid, half-hearted response from the salesguy.

Also, the built-in Xgrid/MPI distributed computing support in OS X is not getting a lot of press at all! In the pharma I was working in, they had big clusters doing BLAST precomputes every night and it was dog slow. They were even kicking around using United Devices' stuff to have their Windows machines do heavy-duty computes at night.

Apple should come out with a killer app that brings practical Xgrid functionality to business, maybe, even consumers too.

On the consumer front, I have a lot of friends who are Apple fanboys too who have multiple Macs at home. What about doing automatic distributed rendering in iMovie and iDVD? If you ever tried doing even a minor production in these iLife apps, you know they take far too long. They would make awesome practical demonstrations!!!

On the biz front, what about coming up with something like distributed Spotlight, or maybe even an iMath or iStats type application that has built-in Xgrid support?

What Apple needs, IMHO, is a "Get the Facts" site similar to what MS put up specifically targeted to senior IT management with studies like the Pfeiffer report and other hard numbers.

Hopefully, with the anticipated release of Windows virtualization on the Mac, Apple comes up with a migration kit as well to further ease enterprise switchers.

Oh... one can dream...