Mac users, is this a good deal?

[Floyd R Turbo]

I stopped into my local computer recycler company where I get all my PCs for work (replaced all PCs in my office earlier this year with quad core HP's for $200/ea) and found that they have about a dozen iMacs like this

http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...o-2.66-20-inch-aluminum-early-2009-specs.html

most 2.0 GHz and a few 2.4 with one 2.6, all Core 2 Duo, 4GB ram, 250 GB HDD, DVD, Wifi, latest OS X Mavericks, etc.

Priced at $275 each.

Been a long term PC user and never owned a Mac but for $275 I might just try this out.

 

[Ernest L. Defoe]

For $275 that's not a bad deal but for $599 you could get a Mac Mini if you already have a display and you will get alot better of a computer.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Ok then, stupid question here, but do I need a Mac specific-display or can I use any monitor?

 

[Ernest L. Defoe]

It has to have HDMI or an VGA/HDMI converter as the Mac Mini only has HDMI out. Here are the specs and even has a pic of the back of it. http://www.apple.com/mac-mini/specs.html You can ask @Tracy Perry about the Mac Mini as he has one. I myself have a MacBook Pro.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Yep I should have just googled it...when I did I answered my own question

Not sure if I want to pop for $550+ for new/first Mac, to me < $300 to try out something new seems pretty hard to beat. I also like the idea of not having separate monitor/CPU taking up space, with the Wifi built in this machine could easily be put anywhere in the house.

We have 2 desktop PCs and a laptop (all windows), and nearly a dozen apple devices in our house, but no Mac...

 

[Ernest L. Defoe]

If you try a Mac and actually attempt to learn it you will love it and will never want to use Windows again. $599 is a small price to pay for a computer that will last considerably longer than a Windows computer as far as specs go. If you are hesitant on the price try the $275 iMac and when you fall in love you can always get a new iMac later.

 

[TPerry]

It has to have HDMI or an VGA/HDMI converter as the Mac Mini only has HDMI out. Here are the specs and even has a pic of the back of it. http://www.apple.com/mac-mini/specs.html You can ask @Tracy Perry about the Mac Mini as he has one. I myself have a MacBook Pro.

Yep... I'm running a 32" HDTV as a monitor and it works great over HDMI. When this version of the Mac Mini came out, they were having some problems, but the came out with a fix pretty quickly.

Yep I should have just googled it...when I did I answered my own question

Not sure if I want to pop for $550+ for new/first Mac, to me < $300 to try out something new seems pretty hard to beat. I also like the idea of not having separate monitor/CPU taking up space, with the Wifi built in this machine could easily be put anywhere in the house.

The only other thing I'd run other than the Mac would be a Linux desktop. No way would I go back to a Windows environment unless I absolutely have to (and that's why I have the Surface Pro 2 that was given to me by a client).

If you try a Mac and actually attempt to learn it you will love it and will never want to use Windows again. $599 is a small price to pay for a computer that will last considerably longer than a Windows computer as far as specs go. If you are hesitant on the price try the $275 iMac and when you fall in love you can always get a new iMac later.

I can' agree with this enough. I knew that I would like it because of what it was built upon.. but the more I use it the more I love it.

 

[RickM]

If you try a Mac and actually attempt to learn it you will love it and will never want to use Windows again. $599 is a small price to pay for a computer that will last considerably longer than a Windows computer as far as specs go.

This can't be stated enough. The life (and use) of a Mac will FAR outlive any Windows machine you pick up

 

[Ernest L. Defoe]

I had an old iMac with the old Motorola processor in it (last one before they switched to Intel chips) and it would run circles around my wife's brand new Windows computer and at the time my iMac was like 4+ years old. It amazed me how much older my computer was than hers but ran circles around it. The bad part was I couldn't get newer programs for it cause everything was going Intel based Macs. This early 2013 MacBook Pro is by far one of the fastest computers I have ever used.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

If it helps, this iMac would be really for family use. To me it's kind of a cross between a laptop and a desktop because it would seem to have relatively easy portability.

Also it would help in situations like last night where our daughter and her friend are camped out on my PC and the laptop playing Minecraft and I have to kick her off to do some work for like 10 minutes. Oh, the complaining that ensued....

It would likely not be a main tool for my heavy-duty use. If I were to eventually go that route, that's when I would pop for a more current model. And that would be mine, all mine.

 

[Ernest L. Defoe]

To me it's kind of a cross between a laptop and a desktop because it would seem to have relatively easy portability.

I don't know about portability. Yeah it's all in one but that joker is pretty heavy.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Relatively being the active term pretty easy for an adult to move, not so much for a 12 yr old girl but she could probably pull it off with enough motivation

 

[Anthony Parsons]

most 2.0 GHz and a few 2.4 with one 2.6, all Core 2 Duo, 4GB ram, 250 GB HDD, DVD, Wifi, latest OS X Mavericks, etc.

The problem is... how viable they will really be today is another thing. You're talking about buying a computer with 5 year old hardware, going on 6, or parts of that era. In computer terms, that is ancient. Take a look at the CPU benchmark between what you're looking at versus the bottom range i5 2 core used in the cheapest iMac today:

Honestly... you would be sitting there watching the wonder wheel of colours turn between clicks just browsing the web nowadays, let alone if you had an office type program open, or image program.

I think you would be wasting your money for them, other than buying one to play around with a mac if you've never really had time to do so. I would toss it in the bin afterwards and buy one more powerful.

Factor into this... these are mac, not PC's, and the boards are all one. If one thing goes wrong, chances are you're replacing the entire board, not just a part... and that would likely cost you more than you're paying for them.

 

[rainmotorsports]

Factor into this... these are mac, not PC's, and the boards are all one. If one thing goes wrong, chances are you're replacing the entire board, not just a part... and that would likely cost you more than you're paying for them.

That would be less true buying an older Mac all in one than buying new though. I pulled a 44watt TDP core 2 duo from an iMac to put in my laptop. They used to use some standard non soldered parts

The i5 in laptop form has hyperthreading and in benchmarks is expected to score 50% higher though real world gains can be much less. Yes the truth is Sandy Bridge and newer absolutely rape core 2 duo clock for clock. Core 2 Duo will still out perform most Mobile chipsets and for web browsing it can't be THAT bad.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

@Anthony Parsons based on the discussion here I would imagine that this older iMac would probably still run circles around a PC that was 1-2 year newer, and to answer your question, yes it is really just for playing around with.

I used to subscribe to getting the latest-and-greatest PC or something like that, meaning I would walk into my local DIY PC store and buy all the parts and assemble myself to use for general use for things like MS office, email, web surfing, as well as AutoCAD and lately some SQL. The heaviest uses I have are AutoCAD and DigDB for Excel. The thing that actually spins up the cooling fan on the processor more than anything else (including AutoCAD, even though it's just LT) is actually Minecraft. Man that program makes the CPU dump out some serious heat.

But lately I just go to this particular refurb store and wait until they get a batch of higher end PCs in, and specific when we went to Windows 7 I got my hands on about a dozen of these with 8GB ram & quad core for < $200/ea, with Win 7 Pro installed. That was the 2nd round of PCs I got from this store.

Considering that I paid > $500 for my past build-it-yourself PC a few years back, I'll never do that again unless I need to run something like Revit, but even these second-hand PCs run really demanding programs like RISA very efficiently.

The iMac would be used for nothing like this. Minecraft would probably be the most demanding, and that wouldn't be me running it!

Now with all that being said, I used to have a IBM Thinkpad running a Core 2 duo and that thing is a paperweight now, there's no way I would sink anything into it, I just went and got a refurb HP laptop that comparatively screams for ~$250.

So my question is now, if this iMac has a 2.6G Core 2 Duo and 4G RAM, which is 5 year old tech, if this is now loaded up with Mavericks 10.9 (current OS) is that going to compare to what it would be like running that old Thinkpad on Windows 7? Or will this really not be that drastic of a difference on this iMac?

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Looks like it's good: http://blog.chron.com/techblog/2013...ning-mavericks-on-the-oldest-compatible-imac/

 

[DRE]

I've seen old macbooks that advertise it's running mavericks just fine for around 200 to 300 dollars on ebay.