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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

Only if you compare the sale price of the Mac to the list price of the Windows machine. Which isn't fair, especially since Windows laptops go on sale far more frequently and deeply than Mac laptops do. A lunar lake machine with 16gb RAM and a small SSD should be $200 cheaper than that.

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Resale value is also considerably higher on an Apple laptop though, so it probably nets out long term.

Every time I've sold on my Windows laptop it's basically junk value after 4 years. Even when I buy used initially for half price, I'm consistently amazed that they keep dropping to literally nearly zero.

The only way to win is to be the ultimate last in line buyer of the out of date but previously high end Thinkpads and Inspirons for $246 or wherever the EBay auctions terminate.

Resale value really depends on M1~M4 MacBook laptops. Because if previous user won't sign off, their resale value is effectively between zero and for parts.

It's not true. M2 resale value plummeted as there is now cheap new M4 laptop available.

Looking mine up (m1 air) it was £915 new, they now go on ebay for ~£370 for good, private sale so about 40% of the new price four years later. That is probably better than your average windows thing. I used to buy ~3 year old thinkpads because companies would buy them new and then dump them for very little to replace with new ones.

Looking briefly an X1 carbon thinkpad goes for about £300 four years old but was ~£2000 new so quite a drop.

Macs will never be cheaper than Windows machines over anything longer than a flash sale by Apple.

Especially if you need any upgrades to get there. It's 2025, and Apple still wants you to think that upgrading from a 500gb SSD to a 1TB one costs $200.

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