Should I even bother ordering an iMac at the moment?

[definitive]

I want the Radeon 4850 model, but haven't decided if I should order it this month or not since it probably won't ship till May. I'll be graduating from my school in May, and from what I hear the Snow Leopard comes out in June, so I'm not sure if I'll still be able to get the student discount on it.

 

[gasport]

I want the Radeon 4850 model, but haven't decided if I should order it this month or not since it probably won't ship till May. I'll be graduating from my school in May, and from what I hear the Snow Leopard comes out in June, so I'm not sure if I'll still be able to get the student discount on it.

It will ship soon and SL is no guarantee for June....

 

[iLog.Genius]

If you need a computer get one now, if not wait until Snow Leopard actually ships. There is very little, if not any benefit in waiting until Snow Leopard ships other than saving retail price for SL. In terms of hardware, sure might be a small spec bump but very minor in terms of what you actually gain,

 

[txnoob]

It will ship soon and SL is no guarantee for June....

Not only that, I'm not sure I'm going to be all that excited about it on first release. 10.6.2 or 10.6.3 should have most issues figured out.

 

[jmpage2]

I want the Radeon 4850 model, but haven't decided if I should order it this month or not since it probably won't ship till May. I'll be graduating from my school in May, and from what I hear the Snow Leopard comes out in June, so I'm not sure if I'll still be able to get the student discount on it.

Snow Leopard coming out in June is highly unlikely. Even if it's announced and released to developers in June, it probably won't be released to the public until Aug/September (rumors currently put September as the likely release date) and as others said, it will probably take a dot release or two to be stable, by which time new hardware will be in the pipeline for release.

If you need the computer today, then buy it today.

 

[Le Big Mac]

Snow Leopard coming out in June is highly unlikely. Even if it's announced and released to developers in June, it probably won't be released to the public until Aug/September (rumors currently put September as the likely release date) and as others said, it will probably take a dot release or two to be stable, by which time new hardware will be in the pipeline for release.

If you need the computer today, then buy it today.

Have any compelling features for snow leopard been announced? Yes, newer is always better, and I'm sure there will be some modest improvements. But from what I've read I don't see some huge need to wait for it.

 

[jmpage2]

Have any compelling features for snow leopard been announced? Yes, newer is always better, and I'm sure there will be some modest improvements. But from what I've read I don't see some huge need to wait for it.

There will be huge improvements, but we won't know all the details till it's out. Grand Central, OpenCL, etc.

 

[MacAndy74]

From the speculation I hear from MacCast and Mac Break Weekly - seems that SL probably won't ship until about - September.