Some questions about buying an iMac

[ant7783]

I am currently looking to purchase an iMac for my Mom and Dad to use along with the rest of the family. I will be purchasing a Macbook Pro when the new ones finally come out for myself. Anyway I have some questions about making the Mac switch.

1. Can you have multiple user accounts on one Mac just like you do in Windows. This way each person can have there own Mail, Desktop Items, and Bookmarks?
2. Which model do you recommend? I am leaning toward the base model for 1199
3. How easy is it to upgrade the RAM yourself?

If you have any other input please let me know


Thanks,
Anthony

 

[WillJS]

I am currently looking to purchase an iMac for my Mom and Dad to use along with the rest of the family. I will be purchasing a Macbook Pro when the new ones finally come out for myself. Anyway I have some questions about making the Mac switch.

1. Can you have multiple user accounts on one Mac just like you do in Windows. This way each person can have there own Mail, Desktop Items, and Bookmarks? Yes
2. Which model do you recommend? I am leaning toward the base model for 1199 For the purposes of a family computer, this will perform excellently.
3. How easy is it to upgrade the RAM yourself? Very easy.

If you have any other input please let me know


Thanks,
Anthony

I'm actually purchasing the same model on Sunday, good buy.

 

[ant7783]

Thanks for the info. Where are you purchasing it from?

Also as far as Time Machine goes a separate external hard drive is required right?

Thanks,
Anthony

 

[GimmeSlack12]

1. Can you have multiple user accounts on one Mac just like you do in Windows. This way each person can have there own Mail, Desktop Items, and Bookmarks?
2. Which model do you recommend? I am leaning toward the base model for 1199
3. How easy is it to upgrade the RAM yourself?

1. Yes. Works exactly the same way as Windows.
2. For parents, I'd agree a 20" is a safe bet.
3. Upgrading RAM requires a screwdriver and about 10 minutes (if even). On a scale of 1-10, 10 being easiest, its a 7.5.

Yes, Time machine requires and external hard drive.
For your parents sake of easy troubleshooting and support buy the iMac from an Apple store or online Applestore.

 

[WillJS]

Thanks for the info. Where are you purchasing it from?

Also as far as Time Machine goes a separate external hard drive is required right?

Thanks,
Anthony

Bridge Street Apple Store in AL.

And yes, it requires an external HD. It's very easy to set up and can backup automatically so your parents (or anyone for that matter) won't ever have to touch it unless something goes wrong.

 

[Dmac77]

I would not recommend getting the base model. The graphics card on that model (2400xt) is horrid. It's pretty much like having integrated graphics. At least get the model with the 2600 Pro, or if you can, get the 24 inch 2.8 with the 8800GS BTO upgrade. Remember, Open GL is coming with snow leopard next year and the better your graphics card the more processing power Open GL will be able to harness from it.

Don

 

[kaiwai]

I would not recommend getting the base model. The graphics card on that model (2400xt) is horrid. It's pretty much like having integrated graphics. At least get the model with the 2600 Pro, or if you can, get the 24 inch 2.8 with the 8800GS BTO upgrade. Remember, Open GL is coming with snow leopard next year and the better your graphics card the more processing power Open GL will be able to harness from it.

Don

You mean OpenCL is coming with Snow Leopard - MacOS X has had OpenGL since year dot.

Hopefully Quicktime X will use OpenCL so that compression of video/audio will be alot faster than it is today. Compressing h264 so far has been pretty slow, even on my 20inch 2.6Ghz Mac.

btw, the 2600 Pro isn't too bad; even playing games. One should expect Crysis to work wonderfully, but almost any mainstream title thrown at it will work ok.

 

[Dmac77]

You mean OpenCL is coming with Snow Leopard - MacOS X has had OpenGL since year dot.

Thank You! I'm an idiot.

Don

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

I would not recommend getting the base model. The graphics card on that model (2400xt) is horrid. It's pretty much like having integrated graphics. At least get the model with the 2600 Pro, or if you can, get the 24 inch 2.8 with the 8800GS BTO upgrade. Remember, Open GL is coming with snow leopard next year and the better your graphics card the more processing power Open GL will be able to harness from it.

Don

well since it's going to be a family computer I doubt he's going to need much graphics processing power. The base model from a year ago is going to be more than enough computer.

Heck, my family uses a six year old PC as our basic browsing, email, calendar computer and no one cares that the graphics card is crap.

**Note my family is extremely computer savvy.

 

[kaiwai]

Thank You! I'm an idiot.

Don

Aww, don't be hard on yourself, there is an alphabet soup of new things these days, OpenGL, OpenAL, OpenML, OpenCL - heck, there is an attempt I think for OpenAI. It gets all rather confusing after a while.

 

[kaiwai]

well since it's going to be a family computer I doubt he's going to need much graphics processing power. The base model from a year ago is going to be more than enough computer.

Heck, my family uses a six year old PC as our basic browsing, email, calendar computer and no one cares that the graphics card is crap.

**Note my family is extremely computer savvy.

True, but for a few extra bucks the one up will provide the ability to upgrade to Snow Leopard and not suffer from 'buyer regret'. I too was going to go down the 'low end 20inch is good enough for me' until I realised that I'll prefer to run it into the ground than find that in 2-3 years it is useless.

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

True, but for a few extra bucks the one up will provide the ability to upgrade to Snow Leopard and not suffer from 'buyer regret'. I too was going to go down the 'low end 20inch is good enough for me' until I realised that I'll prefer to run it into the ground than find that in 2-3 years it is useless.

My old PC is far from useless even though it can't take advantage of the latest technologies. Second this Mac will 100% definitely be able to upgrade to snow leopard and probably the next two OS's after. Third apple will most likely drop support for the low end machine at the same time they drop your high end machine.

 

[Dmac77]

My old PC is far from useless even though it can't take advantage of the latest technologies. Second this Mac will 100% definitely be able to upgrade to snow leopard and probably the next two OS's after. Third apple will most likely drop support for the low end machine at the same time they drop your high end machine.

Yes, it will still be able to run SL, but t won't be able to full advantage of Open CL. It's best to buy the best that you can get, and it will be useful much longer.

KaiWai- Your right, there are to many Open ..., Apple should just call the next Open technology "Open you insert two letters"

Don

 

[TheIntruder]

If you're considering the current low-end 2.4, you should also take a look at the previous 2.4 that occupied the mid-range. It does have the 2600/256 video card and a larger 320GB drive. The new 2.4 has a larger processor cache, SSE4.1, faster bus speed, and Bluetooth 2.1, but those are the only improvements. Pretty mush a wash, depending on your tasks. To me, a larger drive and better video card will be far more noticeable and useful to the typical user than a few seconds shaved off a processing task here and there.

The old 2.4 is still available for a little over $1200 online from a place like Amazon or other reseller, which won't charge sales tax like the Apple stores will.

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

Yes, it will still be able to run SL, but t won't be able to full advantage of Open CL. It's best to buy the best that you can get, and it will be useful much longer.

KaiWai- Your right, there are to many Open ..., Apple should just call the next Open technology "Open you insert two letters"

Don

but my point is the OP probably has absolutely no use for OpenCL, or really any of the new techs in Snow Leopard. Not that it matters, because his Computer will be fully supported, just not as fast as the other iMacs. There is absolutely no reason for him to spend more if he doesn't want to.

 

[The Hammer]

I am currently looking to purchase an iMac for my Mom and Dad to use along with the rest of the family. I will be purchasing a Macbook Pro when the new ones finally come out for myself. Anyway I have some questions about making the Mac switch.

1. Can you have multiple user accounts on one Mac just like you do in Windows. This way each person can have there own Mail, Desktop Items, and Bookmarks?
2. Which model do you recommend? I am leaning toward the base model for 1199
3. How easy is it to upgrade the RAM yourself?

If you have any other input please let me know


Thanks,
Anthony

Key words are "mom and Dad along with the rest of the family." Different users will make different demands on the machine so I wouldn't get the base model.