Ready to buy an iMac...a moment of your time?

[Hello.there]

May I ask in which Apple store you got this Euro price? In my country, that model (with the basic options) starts at 2219

Hi again GoodWatch,

Sorry, I completely misled you - the price I quoted didn't include VAT, that brings it to a much chunkier E2,474! Sorry again.

These were the specs for the price:

iMac, 24-inch, 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme
Part Number: Z0FC
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) 065-6972
Country kit 065-6981
2GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 2x1GB 065-6963
Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse 065-7552
750GB Serial ATA Drive 065-6971
Apple USB Modem 065-6974
2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme 065-7045
Wireless keyboard (English) + Mac OS X (English) 065-6979


Microsoft Office for Mac Student & Teacher Edition would cost me an extra E123.

 

[queshy]

You may have already heard, but the Apple wireless keyboard has no numeric pad. It's a "compact" keyboard. To some people that is a deal breaker- just letting you know before you bite the bullet.

Your new machine will be a screamer and you will love it.

I would say wait for Leopard since it's only 2 weeks away. Leopard will be a superior OS compared to the already fantastic tiger.

Also, don't buy MS Office for Mac now. It's pretty crumby I must say. I much prefer iWork 08. It's pretty compatible with office stuff. If you must have office, just wait til office 08 comes out (January) - it will run a billion times better on intel hardware - and in the meantime, check out Neo Office (free office suite).

Oh, and a final note - if you really want to make a good decision, I think you should ship the machine to my address PM me for details if you decide to!

Good luck!

 

[GSMiller]

To you all: THANK YOU!

Really, that's fantastic advice and great reassurance that this is a plunge worth taking. It's so good to hear, too, from people who were in my position a while ago and have no regrets about making the switch, in fact it sounds like you feel it's the best computing decision you ever made!

Also really appreciate the advice about the software, I wouldn't have a clue about any of this so it's endlessly helpful to hear from people who know what they're talking out. Will take careful note of all your recommendations.

My only problem now is a lack of patience - I thought Leopards were supposed to be fast, why is this fella taking so long to arrive?!

Huge thanks again, you're all legends!

No problem! It was most definately my best computing purchase, ever. Almost immediately after I purchased my iMac I wanted a MacBook so I could have Mac OS X with me at all times

Within the first day, and the first 20 minutes really, I learned the layout of Mac OS X and how everything worked, and by day 2 I had mastered installing programs (the Apple drag-and-drop way ).

Just curious, have you ever used Mac OS X? If you mentioned it in an earlier post forgive me for missing it. If not, and you go in thinking it's not like Windows, you'll do fine. That's where most of the negative comments come from is that those new users expect everything to work just like it does in Windows and then they write these bogus bash stories.

Oh, and you can totally right click with the MightyMouse, you just have to turn it on under System Preferences, 10 second job.

 

[Hello.there]

You may have already heard, but the Apple wireless keyboard has no numeric pad. It's a "compact" keyboard. To some people that is a deal breaker- just letting you know before you bite the bullet.

Your new machine will be a screamer and you will love it.

I would say wait for Leopard since it's only 2 weeks away. Leopard will be a superior OS compared to the already fantastic tiger.

Also, don't buy MS Office for Mac now. It's pretty crumby I must say. I much prefer iWork 08. It's pretty compatible with office stuff. If you must have office, just wait til office 08 comes out (January) - it will run a billion times better on intel hardware - and in the meantime, check out Neo Office (free office suite).

Oh, and a final note - if you really want to make a good decision, I think you should ship the machine to my address PM me for details if you decide to!

Good luck!

Great advice queshy, thank you! I didn't know anything about the wireless keyboard so will have a rethink about that - is there a particular keyboard you'd recommend?

Have also been put off MS Office by the comments here, Neo Office seems excellent (had a look at it on its site), but so does iWork.....decisions, decisions.

This wait is killin' me - I want this machine NOW!

Hey, knowing my luck and history with computer companies screwing up with deliveries, my iMac WILL probably be delivered to you!!

 

[Hello.there]

Just curious, have you ever used Mac OS X? If you mentioned it in an earlier post forgive me for missing it. If not, and you go in thinking it's not like Windows, you'll do fine. That's where most of the negative comments come from is that those new users expect everything to work just like it does in Windows and then they write these bogus bash stories.

Thanks again GSMiller. I've very limited experience of using Mac OS X, just had a brief trial run on a friend's machine, but I loved it - and I'm so tired of Windows now I'm desperate for a change!

 

[jepjepjep]

Just thought I'd chime in on the office suite. Both iWork and Microsoft Office have a demo period for the software. Try them both out before you buy: Office test drive (http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default.aspx?pid=office2004td) and iWork (www.apple.com/iwork/trial/). And of course, NeoOffice is free.

 

[teiresias]

I haven't used iWork yet, though I've been looking at the videos concerning it on the apple site, but I have used OpenOffice then StarOffice and various versions of MS Office throughout school and work on windows machines and linux boxes, and I think Leo Laporte probably put it best on MacBreak weekly two(?) weeks ago.

He basically said Open/Neo/MS Office are all aimed more at business oriented applications, whereas iWork is aimed more to meld with the entire Apple "digital lifestyle" mantra. iWork melds with your iLife applications in ways the other office apps will not do.

I think that's a good way of looking at it, so if you do alot of word processing or spreadsheet work at home that frequently gets taken back work, then one of the Open/New/MS Office products is better for you. However, if you never do that, which is really the way it works for me, then you may just want something like iWork, which is cheaper than MS Office, but not free like Neo/OpenOffice, but you're basically paying for the great integration with the iLife stuff.

Also, it looks like Pages has a much more flexible and easier to use layout system than something like Office. It reminds of circa '97 Pagemaker, which I was somewhat familiar with at the time, so that's appealing. I always struggle with doing layouts in Word and margins moving in weird ways and images being bumped around where I don't want them.

 

[vasoftball5]

Video Memory recommendation

Good day to all you Apple eaters.

I'm looking into converting to iMac. I'm fed up with viruses, adware, malware, and the phishing that goes on in the PC world. So I'm tossing in my hat.

Now - here's my quesion:

I'm looking to do some more creative type work with my new iMac. Graphic work for the web, video, and audio. All the iLife tools will suffice: iPhoto, iMovie, and Garage Band.

My question is this: I'm flip-flopping between the iMac 20 with 128MB video and the one with 256MB video. My video editing will be rather basic - taking a video apart and slapping some audio clips to track segments.

What is everyone's recommendation? Would 128MB still be sufficient, or will I run into some performance issues with using only that much video memory?

The reason for my question is that the cost differential is $400. I don't really need the larger hard-drive. But, I want to make sure I get the right video size because that's NOT upgradeable, so it seems.

Help me convert!