Sales tax, VAT, Apple, Intel - all life is here

Quibble on the article: "Congress has not passed legislation to allow states to collect sales tax on purchases made over the Internet."

This is inaccurate.

The US Congress has been periodically extending a ban on (1) sales tax on the cost of internet service, and (2) discriminatory taxes on internet purchases. The supreme court has ruled that on-line vendors need not collect the state sales tax unless they have a physical presence in the state in question.

Sales tax is still OWED, however, if you buy (for example) a $11000 raid server from PCNation.com, just like anything else; it's just not collected by PCNation unless you live in Illinois, where their only office is. In theory, the tax is supposed to be declared on your state income tax form, and paid at the same time. And, if you get audited, you can get bit by this; I even know one person who did.

Of course, almost nobody actually DOES pay their sales taxes on their on-line purchases. Which is why states are working on joint legislation to get through a loophole in that supreme court ruling, that will allow them to now collect AT TIME OF PURCHASE sales tax on purchases made over the internet-- as opposed to when-freak-of-nature-decides-to-follow-rules-nobody-else-does or when-the-sucker-gets-audited.

Right now, you only have to pay sales taxes on the purchases on the net if you're ultra-honest or you get caught. So follow the 11th commandment if you don't want to pay. =)

Arthur Byrne

Hello,

regarding your article on taxes well, I'm quite concerned. I'm an end-user who usually buys a lot of Region1 DVDs from the US (Amazon.com and such) , the ones that MPAA would not let me watch after having bought an original btw...

..I also buy hardware from the US because it has been quite cheaper than in Europe, usually at half the price even after having paid custom house duties.

But now, does it mean that sellers and shops from the US will ask me to pay European 20% taxes (it's 20% here in Italy) and then the Italian Custom House will get my package and add another 20-30% of taxes to it ??

If that's the case, and I think it's going to happen to many, especially here in Italy, then the EU should be cancelled from the face of Earth ! I don't agree with these communistic minded steal-from-citizens laws. The EU it's already so much burocratic, slow (let's say retarded ??...) and expensive that it clearly sucks.

I'm quite worried about the fact that the EU will be stealing a 50% of taxes overall from me if I decide to buy a cheaper product from the US and that prices in Europe are generally higher by 100-150% (yep.. the same product price is more than doubled compared to the US and other countries) and that there's no way to escape from this nightmare ??!

Just a frustrated Italian PC end-user.

Thank You,

Luca Pierantozzi

Sheesh! It's just an integrated graphics chipset
Nvidia makes all out attack on Via

I'm curious why such a big deal is being made by nvidia & via over the nForce 2 & vt600a graphics chipsets...

A recent article by the computer magazine "MaximumPC" (maximumpc.com) compares a good nforce2 board against several budget video cards. They used several common benchmarks and games.

Sure, the nforce2 beats the antique geforce2MX video card (us$19-$30), but that's not anything to brag about.

Graphics like that are just barely above being tolerable for web surfing and old games... Both are inadequate for new games.

So when you do articles about them, you might want to point out that these integrated graphics are not exactly the best and that the two companies are fighting for bragging rights over the bottom feeding computer users, rather than even 'typical' computer users.

Sincerely;

CEB

No one pulls a fast one on us, bud
Major wi-fi consortium pulls fast one on Intel

Ouch! #1 “Major wi-fi consortium pulls fast one on Intel” è The Portable Computer and Communications Association is based in the USA and is affiliated to the MCPC. See the details including MOU and membership at this page. Intel is an executive member of the PCCA and works in harmony with the MCPC in Japan through that relationship.

Ouch! #2 “We think we should be told, but don't hold your breath. You might die before we get the answer.” I guess if you wanted to be pedantic most people would die after 1 minute so technically you are correct, but in the absence of a request for the aforementioned data, the kind cuddly folks here at Intel have responded pretty darn quick as usual (I would say!) with factual pertinent data. Thanks to the miracle of Intel® Centrino™ mobile technology notebooks and wireless technology we can respond even faster than ever , even though we are multitasking deep in the warm heart of Intel in the SC9 auditorium….

An Intel spinner

Jack Russell gets Mageek's inbox filled again
No wonder people don't buy Apple Macs

hi Mike. i'm writing in reference to your article, "No wonder people don't buy Apple Macs"

At one point Apple actually did a test-drive program like the one you mentioned. it was called "Test Drive A Mac" and it was launched in 1984. the program failed to attract more Mac customers. what's more, most of the computers came back broken. we're lucky if FedEx (or god forbid, UPS) can get the computer to us the first time without breaking it. and as far as i know, no computer manufacturer will return a computer just because you don't like it. i tried to do that with my Alienware Aurora two weeks after it had arrived (March 2002), and a friend tried to do that with her Dell Inspiron (after deciding that she didn't really want another Windows PC - she saw my PowerBook). the guy from Alienware all but laughed at me, and the Dell rep tried to actually sell my friend more accessories. i think i can safely generalize that every PC manufacturer has a policy preventing the return of opened boxes, just as most other retail outlets do. if there are a couple of PC makers out there who take them back, then i'm not so sure i'd want to be buying from them anyway, because they'd almost certainly be turning around and selling those returned PCs as new. they'll give you your money back if something is really broken, but your use of the ambiguous "unsatisfied" seems to imply that Apple is somehow bad for not wanting to take a computer back just because the customer opens the box and feels like they've made the wrong purchase. it's not Apple's job to hold the hand of a computer buyer, nor is it the responsibility of Dell, etc.

but there is hope - the Apple Stores provide a much more controlled environment for "test driving" a Mac, without all the fuss of shipping costs and cracked housings and long 1-800-MY-APPLE hold times. the people who work at the Apple Stores are more than happy to load any software in the store onto a machine for you to test. an employee at the local Apple Store in Durham, NC did just that for me when i went in last fall, having decided that Windows 2000 just wasn't cutting it anymore. i was a little concerned with some things i'd read about the G4 not having enough kick to really run OS X, so i brought in a CD with some very large image files and asked them to load Photoshop and Macromedia Fireworks. i also brought along a CD-r with the Maya installer (i was using Maya on Win2000 at the time to create a dense 3D model of a city) to see if the PowerBook could handle my 3D needs. the guy seemed to understand what i was doing and left me alone to test things out. after two hours in the store, i walked out with a PowerBook and have since convinced four people to go with the Mac. no complaints from any of them.

i also have to challenge that your statement that a Mac is an unknown quantity and that "a buyer considering an eMac has to accept on faith that this is a better purchase for them when they know almost nothing about the OS or how to use the system" doesn't apply to people who are actually first-time computer buyers (like my parents, who actually did buy an eMac at my suggestion). and though first-time buyers are probably less numerous than repeat buyers, not everyone is so used to the way Windows looks and works that they would require significant retraining to use Mac OS X. i was absolutely astounded at how simple the Mac interface paradigm was and how little help i actually needed. my parents know nothing about computers and i didn't want to get calls every day asking what a Device Manager is. i set them up with the eMac (the low end model you mentioned, with added RAM). they learned it very quickly and barely ask me anything computer-related.

i think every benchmark should be taken with a grain of salt. Apple lies. every company that sells anything lies. no PC manufacturer's benchmarks (and i use PC to refer to Macs as well) are worth the paper they're printed on. i don't even care about benchmarks, because it's not even about speed anymore. i'm not running BLAST. computers these days, even pretty low-end PCs, can run just about anything 90% of computer users are going to install as long as RAM is plentiful. it's now just a big ego contest between semiconductor companies, as far as the consumer is concerned... like some silly nationalistic challenge to get the tallest skyscraper. SPEC this, SPEC that, blah blah - we've come to a point where the average person will not be able to tell a difference between a 2 GHz processor and a 3 GHz processor. benchmarks are nothing more than an extra layer of marketing drivel, and an informed consumer will be able to look past them and start thinking about the computing experience. the machine is no good unless you can get what you want out of it.

the one thing that i can verify independently is the fact that Mac OS X has made using a computer fun and productive again and i wouldn't use Windows XP is Bill Gates himself sent me a copy and a top-of-the-line computer to run it on. therefore, i will continue to buy the latest Apple hardware and i won't worry about their probably exaggeration of benchmarks, since it's pretty much standard practice among every manufacturer of computers and components. let the forum-geeks of the Net battle it out over optimized compilers and frame rates while i get some work done.

Thomas

(former anti-Apple Windows user)

In http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10184 you state that the Apple benchmarks are distorted, so give up the corrected numbers instead of just percentages.

You are obviously not an Apple fan.

The machine does have some nice qualities like 8 GB of memory,

a CPU with vector processing, etc.

And oh yes, their OS's suck a bit less than Windows (I use Win 9x on a CNC Mill).

Steve Jasik

Author of 'The Debugger & MacNosy

In light of the recent editorial ,"No Wonder People Don't Buy Apple", I think most would find humor in this while the chosen few will tremble in their ergonomic chairs.

www.ancientspear.com/mac.wmv

Sincerely,

Blaine R. Shelkey

Dear Sir

Regarding your article:

"No wonder people don't buy Apple Macs"

1) regarding speed: I see the benchmarks showing dell-Intel machines are faster again and again, but in web, graphics, audio and video the mac has always been faster in my experience. I was very impressed with a new dell at one company I worked with until I started working with the adobe and macromedia apps. My boss was looking over my shoulder and the box was so slow he thought it froze.

2) price: macs are the BMW of computers - dell's and PC's in general are cheaply made and buggy. Things never work like they are supposed to on PC. Trying to do everything means they are mediocre in many areas and stellar in none. Macs are solid and stable and much easier to work with in their multimedia niche. You spend time working on a mac, not trying to set it up.

3) unknown quantity: If you go to school to learn multimedia (web, video and so forth) you will be trained on a mac, I know I was. Also macs are the standard in multimedia development, in my first job I worked on a mac. Through experience I found out macs are better.

Also macs are what the pros use. If you are doing video on an nle you'll be using a mac and final cut pro. The unix based osx os is far superior to windows xp. When I use my p4 xp system it crashes constantly just like 95, 98 and 2000 did. Microsoft always promises the next version of win will be stable but I'm always spending time rebooting. Apple started with a clean sheet of paper and now they have a stable foundation on which to build.

In my experience macs are expensive and worth every penny.

regards,

Mark Wilk

What absoloute rot. Please, I didn't subscribe to the Inquirer to read teenage forum rants.

Daniel

Hi,

Regardless of what performance the G5, G4 and G3 systems have or don't have, there is one advantage Apple has - they have the nicest looking computers with the least amount of clutter - especially the eMacs and iMacs.

Yes, I'm aware that there are PCs that are integrated as well, but I haven't seen any that are as nice as what Apple produces, at the price point that Apple sells at.

Dell, IBM, HP and Compaq don't even sell a truly integrated PC. Gateway does, and it looks pretty good - but it doesn't blow away what Apple offers. NEC has the PowerMate Eco - but it comes with a Crusoe processor - highly unlikely to outperform what Apple offers.

And if you're thinking I'm a Mac fanatic, I'm not. I personally have a desktop PC that stays in my computer room and a red iMac that's in the living room.

The nicest thing about the iMac is that there is only one power cable. Occasionally I have to share some files, so I have to occasionally whip out my extra long ethernet cable (yeah, I could get an airport). And aside from the mouse and keyboard cables, that's it.

In contrast, my PC has 4 cables for power alone (monitor, CPU, speakers, subwoofer). And since I also have an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon, that card alone ups the cable count by 3.

Where my PC gives me versatility where I need it, my iMac gives me simplicity where I need it.

Macs are great in environments where keeping things tidy is important.

And where else can you get a 17 inch notebook system? Only from Apple.

What people need to get there heads around is that the computer business is changing. Many are starting to look past raw numbers and are starting to look at things like style, noise and power consumption. Specs are still important, but they aren't everything.

The G5 might not be the fastest, but it's reasonably competitive based on what I've seen - especially if you compare it with a PC with a comparably nice case and comparable level of software (Note that all Macs come with the OS plus application software like Apple Works)

Just my two cents...

Regards,

Peter Stern

A flame to INQUIRER readers about Apple

Oh why oh why did you do this? The minute I saw that you picked holes in the Mac's far-from-perfect ass, I prepared myself for an assault of biased, pointless drivel from people that think Apple is computing heaven. Is there anything more boring than a Mac advocate? I think not. I use Windows, and it's rubbish, I'll be the first to admit it.

But millions of other people use it. The Post Office is rubbish. BT are rubbish. New goddamn Labour are rubbish, but what are you gonna do? But say to a Mac owner "Well, maybe OS X isn't quite the Nirvana you make it out to be" and, oh God, here it comes, like a boring uncle's nature holiday slideshow.

I also ABSOLUTELY HATE the way that PC = Windows to Mac users. To use a PC is not to support Bill Gates, and for Mac owners to suggest so is to incur the wrath of the Open-Source community. Who's got the monopoly here exactly? It's Apple you idiots! So please, next time I want to hear the exciting tales of Mac zealotry in extremis, I'll just ask an iPod owner if £250 is really worth it... ;o)

kind regards,
Dr D Newstead

Mike,

I can only be amazed at the grace you extend in the 'No wonder people don't buy Macs' article. It would be far better if such grace were deserved.

Likely you have heard millions of times about the usability superiority the Fruit-o-Philes allege. Well, I just do not see it. Likewise, any performance edge the company had went away with PIIIs, let alone Hammers. In high-end applications, multiple X86's are not necessary to match the Apple, but can be readily had - and still will result in a lower system cost. No wonder the fruit has a bite out of it.

Add to this their on-again, off-again licensing policy, proprietary hardware, inflated prices - and there is not much to cheer. The company is living on past laurels - and can in no way compete with the big boys on a level playing field - and they know it. Notice also that the top three selling programs on Apples are the same as on Dells - and written by MicroSoft.

For now, I will continue with Wintel and Winhammer platforms for simple reasons of support, performance, scalability, and economy. Apple has NONE of these. It is also important to note that at one time Apple led the world in personal computers - beating industry leader Tandy at that time.

Something went wrong years ago - and the company, like Sun and others, needs to quit whining about MicroSoft and respond with a clearly superior product. Something is awry in the computer world. Only in this market do we defend weak, overpriced, inflexible products - in the name of competition. You do not hear of groundswell support for slower, more expensive, less usable automobiles, cameras, or microwaves.

Don't hold your breath for level comparisons or fair return policies. Oh - I can here the Fruit-o-Philes now …

A great article. Keep it up.

Name supplied

A whole new meaning to potable PCs?
UN and Intel gang up to make the world wireless

Hi Mike, I've been a long time reader, and I really admire your site.

I find it interesting that the world bank considers WiFi internet access for developing nations a priority. Besides the obvious fact that they (developing nations) could use potable water and sustainable food sources before computers, you have to consider who is going to profit from such an initiative.

Intel is of course. So are other U.S. conglomerates... which is why the "World" bank (aka U.S. bank. You can thank the U.S. bank for also devaluing the Indonesian currency, resulting in them acquiring massive loans from U.S. sources...), recommends I.T. expansion in such areas.

It has long been held that China and other developing nations are a gold mine for the I.T. field - they are untapped markets. Let's not kid ourselves where these companies' interests lie, however.

Respectfully submitted,

Joshua

Just reading this piece and thought it might be relevant to point out that while wireless does seem to be the way for Africa to go, there are a shitload of government regulations that make wireless impossible.

In South Africa, for example, wireless cannot be utilised from building to building across a street - this law exists from the old apartheid days and the ANC (which still theoretically owns Telkom doesn't see fit to change this). So as long as African governments make money out of a particular infrastructure, they're not about to change.

But, what the hell, tell that to Cisco, Nortel et al that have been making money hand over fist for years ...

Name supplied