Twenty years later, you still don’t have to panic.

IBM has reported Macintosh computers are still less expensive over the long run than Windows computers.

Previn continued the Mac@IBM conversation by saying the the upfront cost of PCs is lower, but the residual value of Mac is higher. “A Mac still has value three or four years down the road,” he added. With the provisioning and automation practies used to manage Mac, IBM does not need to create images for all of their machines—saving their IT staff significant time.

“Every Mac that we buy is making and saving IBM money,” Previn said.

I’m honestly surprised that this is still true twenty years after I wrote Save Me Time, Save Yourself Trouble: Buy Macintosh. I continue to use a Macintosh, but that’s for things that aren’t work-related, such as the ease of managing iPhones and iPads and the availability of must-have apps such as Nisus Writer Pro; or that aren’t ease-of-use related, such as having Unix under the hood. I appreciate that they continue to be easy to use, but had assumed that Windows would be easy to use by now, too.

This was what really struck me, in reference to my twenty-year-old rant back when I was part of the help desk:

One stat that particularly stood out was that 5% of Mac users call the help desk, compared to 40% of PC users.

Remember that this is during a transition. Those Mac users are new Mac users, at least in the work environment—interacting with other work-related resources, getting on the company network—and still called the help desk an eighth of the time that Windows users did.

It also struck me that they still call them PCs and not Windows computers. The term “PC” for those computers hearkens back to an ancient time when IBM made a brand of computers called the IBM PC. But IBM doesn’t make them anymore; it’d be sort of like if we called Kleenex tissues “tissues” and only referred to other tissues by their brand name. PC on its own is a generic abbreviation for personal computer!