Very good points from everyone here. I've always considered the Mac community of a higher caliber than the masses (i.e. PC users) lol...Such is my first impression anyway. <pinch> Yes, I was an avid Windows 7 user.
As far as waiting for a new model of the iMac to come around, that is usually never a good idea, because you will likely find yourself waiting for new technology all the time. The exception here is how Apple treats its iPhone/iPad product lines, which always have a specific date attached to them, so you can definitely plan for those.
Your issue as to which video card to go for, I would recommend that you definitely not take a store employee's opinion as to what you should buy. They will almost always point you to a higher, pricier model. Do you need a full 1TB of storage? You can always get more storage externally when the need arises, which in my case will be necessary very shortly, as my 1TB drive only has 200GB left. Again, the price difference will be $250, as you only get a $50 discount for the base model and $100 for all other flavors.
As far as the source for your iMac is concerned, I would definitely not eliminate either ebay or Craigslist as possibilities, as you can save a ton of money that way. Having said that, it's not for everyone, but the student discount as well as the free printer and free iPod touch is as good as it gets with Apple discounts. Remember, Apple does not, and has never competed on price for any of its Mac products. Apple's idea of a significant reduction in price means that the 17" MacBook Pro, for example, was reduced by a whopping $300 in 2009. It won't cost you $2,799 anymore, oh no! You, too, can have that baby for a measly $2,499, and keep in mind that you're also getting a 500GB drive instead of a 320GB to boot.
That was part of the sales pitch at WWDC '09.
This leaves one very basic, yet quite significant variable, which you can tweak after you buy your machine. The least expensive, easiest to install, and best bang-for-your-buck ratio as far as how you can increase your system's responsiveness is to simply add RAM. I definitely need more than the 4GB that it comes with, but you should never buy RAM from any computer manufacturer. Be forewarned, by the way, while the iMac is certainly not a portable computer, it does take laptop memory! In fact, the NVIDIA 9400M graphics card is also found in tons of MacBook Pro's, so that appears to be a theme with iMac's. The likely reason for that is that Apple uses the comparatively much smaller laptop components as a space-saving technique, so as to keep the iMac as thin as possible, which makes total sense to me.
Whichever model you end up getting, I think you will be impressed and then some. I work in IT and happen to love operating systems, so I'm in heaven with OS X's Boot Camp, which allows you to dual-boot into Windows 7. You can also run it in a virtual machine within OS X, and that's incidentally where my 4GB of RAM quickly ran out. I will install at least another 4GB, possibly more.
I think you have a lot of bases upon which you can make an informed decision as to which iMac will ultimately make it onto your desk. Let us know how you like it once you finally get it.
Good luck to you.
Crunch
