21.5" 3.06GHz 4GB 500GB for $999 - seems like a lot of machine for the money

[DHart]

I have been thinking about replacing one of my 3 original white intel 20" iMacs with a new iMac and happened to see this refurb. It seems like it's really quite a bit of nice Macintosh for $1k, so I ordered it. It will be running Lightroom 3 driving a 61" theater screen to present images to clients. May do a little CS5 Photoshop editing on it as well.

It seems like this is a great machine for this purpose at a great price... am I wrong? One of my aging white 20" intel iMacs has been doing this job for a number of years and it's feeling pretty sluggy lately with the ever larger files I'm shooting (Canon 5D MkII) and running through Lightroom.

And being a refurb, it's likely all checked out extra closely, so the chance of a problem machine is reduced, right?

Does Apple accept returns of refurbs if I should decide I don't like the performance of the machine?

 

[Hellhammer]

Even Mac Mini should be fine if you're using it for displaying photos. You can return refurbs just like the retail Macs but you may have to pay restocking fee

 

[dantesays]

Similar situation, but upgrading from an imac G5. I need to run CS5 (Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver) for professional web design, as well as Captivate for creating e-learning courseware. I want to get at least 3 years out of the machine. Was thinking of up picking up the base iMac refurb @$999 and adding ram as needed. I figure the 27" i7 would guarantee more life out of the machine, but if the base iMac is sufficient for my needs, I'd rather save the money. I've been playing the waiting game on the refresh, but I'm without a machine right now, so onwards and upwards.

 

[jbyun04]

Similar situation, but upgrading from an imac G5. I need to run CS5 (Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver) for professional web design, as well as Captivate for creating e-learning courseware. I want to get at least 3 years out of the machine. Was thinking of up picking up the base iMac refurb @$999 and adding ram as needed. I figure the 27" i7 would guarantee more life out of the machine, but if the base iMac is sufficient for my needs, I'd rather save the money. I've been playing the waiting game on the refresh, but I'm without a machine right now, so onwards and upwards.

Base model iMac is just fine for what you need. I don't know if they changed the openGL limit in CS5 but I believe with the 9400m the most amount of documents in PS you can have open is 8. Not really a big deal.. sometimes I forget to switch to 9600m on my MacBook Pro. Other than that it's plenty fast and it should do just fine and even a little better.

 

[Vantage Point]

Does Apple accept returns of refurbs if I should decide I don't like the performance of the machine?

I bought my iMac as a refurb from Apple. I did it by phone with a agreement that if I did not like it that I could return and exchange it for something that costs the same or more without a restock fee. In your case you may find you want the a dedicated graphics card and bigger hard drive. So try to work something like that out before ordering. However, you will more than likely be very happy with what you ordered. I run Photoshop and my MBP with 2.4 and integrated GPU is very acceptable and your would be about 25% faster.

 

[DHart]

Even my 2.2GHz MacBook with 4 GB of RAM runs Photoshop and Lightroom quite well, so I'm thinkin' the 3.06 GHz iMac with better display card and 4 GB of RAM should feel quite sprightly indeed. Add a crisp, bright LED-backed IPS display, FW800 connectivity, wireless keyboard, Magic Mouse, 500GB HD.... wow, I think I'm going to absolutely LOVE this 21.5" iMac for only $999! This really seems like quite a bargain. Sweetest Mac deal going, I think. Should be on my desktop tomorrow... yeehaw!

A quality 21.5" IPS display panel alone would easily run $500, Mac wireless keyboard and mouse another $100, making the 3.06 GHz processor, 4 GB of RAM, 500GB HDD, SuperDrive, all the ports, Wi-Fi, Snow Leopard, etc just $400. I really think that's quite a smokin' Macintosh deal. I've been buying new Macs since 1984! Have bought dozens of them over the years. This one has the most bang for the buck of ANY that I've ever bought before.

 

[dantesays]

Base model iMac is just fine for what you need. I don't know if they changed the openGL limit in CS5 but I believe with the 9400m the most amount of documents in PS you can have open is 8. Not really a big deal.. sometimes I forget to switch to 9600m on my MacBook Pro. Other than that it's plenty fast and it should do just fine and even a little better.

That's good to know, but why the restriction? Is it because the 9400 uses system ram rather than dedicated ram? For photoshop, would I be better served with the ATI GPU ($1299 refurb machine). What would be the performance difference?

 

[Gregintosh]

This is a phenomenal deal. I ordered one the other day as well for the wife (along with a 27" i5 refurb for me).

I have been tracking the Apple refurb store for quite a while and I see that the $999 21.5" base units don't last too long at all, where as most other configs have been there for quite a while. The only thing that goes faster on the refurb store is the mac minis (yesterday morning there were 3 configs of those, and by the evening there were none left).

Also, I have not found anything online with a few quick google searches suggesting any limits on how many open files you have in CS5. If you find any documentation please post it.