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Kinda wierd to be releasing a product in 2012 that won't play 1080 video. I certainly wouldn't like a desktop on a 1280x720 display.

Some sites say the chip can do 1080, others only claim 720p. And if they are putting it on a *-ITX form factor would a SATA port have killed em to add? Any existing case will have this little guy rattling around in it, might as well have the option to put a small drive in. Sure Android probably won't use it but how many hours does anyone think it will take to get a more normal Linux distro on it?

This is the chip they are supposedly using: WONDERMEDIA PRIZM WM8750

1080p is in the specs on that page. It doesn't have SATA but it does have USB 2.0 and a USB-to-SATA adapter is $6.99 on Newegg.

512GB SSD for $500

Why would THAT be attractive? You can already do that for less than $300 with X86 and have it any way you want, $340 for a complete system just add the OS of your choice. These units take less than 18w under full load, no noise, and you can run any software you want. Just use the VESA mount on the back of any monitor and voila! No muss no fuss.

BTW these also make excellent HTPCs with either Windows or if you don't want to spend the money there is OpenELEC which has a build just for these units and has XBMC with the 10 foot UI built in, a really cheap and easy way to have a truly kick ass HTPC.

So I could see the appeal in mobile but on the desktop? Not really seeing a point. I have changed out a few office buildings with units like these and the nice thing is unlike an ARM unit they can run the software required to do their business. When it comes to the desktop there are just too many X86 only programs people depend on so unless someone comes out with hardware accelerated X86 emulation (which you probably couldn't do without getting sued by intel) then I just don't see it gaining any real ground.

Why would THAT be attractive? You can already do that for less than $300 with X86 and have it any way you want, $340 for a complete system just add the OS of your choice. These units take less than 18w under full load, no noise, and you can run any software you want. Just use the VESA mount on the back of any monitor and voila! No muss no fuss.

BTW these also make excellent HTPCs with either Windows or if you don't want to spend the money there is OpenELEC which has a build just for these units and has XBMC with the 10 foot UI built in, a really cheap and easy way to have a truly kick ass HTPC.

So I could see the appeal in mobile but on the desktop? Not really seeing a point. I have changed out a few office buildings with units like these and the nice thing is unlike an ARM unit they can run the software required to do their business. When it comes to the desktop there are just too many X86 only programs people depend on so unless someone comes out with hardware accelerated X86 emulation (which you probably couldn't do without getting sued by intel) then I just don't see it gaining any real ground.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215174

Paid $350 for my wife's new laptop.. She loves it.. 4GB of ram, 500G hard drive.. Awesome little light, and very cool running laptop. No, it would not play many games.. she is not a gamer..

No Problem, there are plenty of good options.

AMD has always been solid on price/performance.

No Problem, there are plenty of good options.

AMD has always been solid on price/performance.

No Problem, there are plenty of good options.

AMD has always been solid on price/performance.

Buy a nice USB 10-key pad.

Here's one from Lenovo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834995516
..and one from Adesso with mechanical keyswitches: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823166110

I can't bear the thought of limiting the whole of the machine by whether it has a (nearly) usable 10-key pad.

Buy a nice USB 10-key pad.

Here's one from Lenovo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834995516
..and one from Adesso with mechanical keyswitches: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823166110

I can't bear the thought of limiting the whole of the machine by whether it has a (nearly) usable 10-key pad.

I use this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823109189 The keyboard and keypad are seen as separate bluetooth devices and can work independently of each other. I'd recommend it.

I guess it depends on what you look at. How many Dell, HP, Sony, etc. Laptops are there with a 17" 1920x1080 screen with 2.4GHz i7? I haven't seen too many. And the ones that they did have were in the $2k range, just like the 17" MacBook Pro.

The 17" Macbook Pro is $2400 off of NewEgg ($2500 if you go through Apple) 2.4GHz i7, 4GB DDR3, 1GB GDDR5, 750GB HD, 17" 1920x1200

A 17.3" MSI G-Series is $1200 off of NewEgg 2.3GHz i7, 8GB DDR3, 2GB GDDR5, 750GB HD, 17.3" 1920x1080

While the specs are not exactly the same, come on.. The Macbook is *double* the fucking price... $1200 more!

I guess it depends on what you look at. How many Dell, HP, Sony, etc. Laptops are there with a 17" 1920x1080 screen with 2.4GHz i7? I haven't seen too many. And the ones that they did have were in the $2k range, just like the 17" MacBook Pro.

The 17" Macbook Pro is $2400 off of NewEgg ($2500 if you go through Apple) 2.4GHz i7, 4GB DDR3, 1GB GDDR5, 750GB HD, 17" 1920x1200

A 17.3" MSI G-Series is $1200 off of NewEgg 2.3GHz i7, 8GB DDR3, 2GB GDDR5, 750GB HD, 17.3" 1920x1080

While the specs are not exactly the same, come on.. The Macbook is *double* the fucking price... $1200 more!

Sorry, i lied a bit.. its an 11.6" screen and it has a C-60 CPU, not an e-350.. looking at the specs, it looks like its half the power, and a bit slower than the "E" class. but still perfect for what she does.

  there are several models of the Acer Aspire One that carry them, think the one I picked up was this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215172
I picked hers up at costco for $350..

Did you just seriously insinuate that Intels GPU's are better than AMD's?

So Intel has a better GPU than this?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161399

I think you might have meant that Intels best GPU's are starting to compete with AMD's bottom rung GPU's

That's funny, because Newegg shows all of their Geforce 680 and 690 stock as being sold out. It seems that they are selling pretty well for something that nobody wants.

I picked up two similar to these at a thrift store for . . . let's just say less than the cost of a new video game and leave it. The ancient 10baseT hubs that were with them were marked as IRS, so government closeout probably. The top makes an excellent work surface, and the one that doesn't house working rack gear has some shelves in it to store containers full of electronic parts and pieces for future projects. University surplus auctions are another great place to get racks dirt cheap, the last I was at rarely had them going for 5$ per U height for non-enclosed, and a little more than that if you wanted wheels and doors attached.

So make this another vote for "Buy your own, and get them with wheels." The only reason I can see to put one in permanently to the basement wall is if you were going to use the equipment on it as a selling point for the house in the future; and chances are you wouldn't be leaving all the gear in the house anyways so the next buyer wouldn't know what to do with it. If you must wire the whole house, and really want that wiring to a rack and not a wall mounted Telco-style box, then get the smallest rack and just use it for a patch panel. That you will feel comfortable leaving for the next owner, and they won't necessarily feel like they need an IT guy just to manage their house.

What the OP is doing sounds like what I'm doing. I already bought the rack and found a nice spot to put it: Under the basement stairs. It comes ready to assemble and I just didn't install the wheels. The rack is 3 feet deep and the stairs are 3 feet wide. It's the perfect place. All I have to do is re-frame the area under my stairs (there is already a roughed in wall of 2x4s) to add in a mounting location for the 12U rack. It just so happens that the stairs are in a centralized location in the house so wiring is going to be much easier. I got a 25 port switch (probably overkill) and a 25 port patch panel to accept all the wire I'll be pulling to it (and a few to spare.)

I realize that not everyone has a basement stairway with both exposed sides, but maybe the OP didn't think about it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133347

$3998 for a card. The 690 is just the first non-workstation kilobuck card.

Let's say I want to buy a copy of Windows, because it doesn't come with my Mac. I'm not even going to splurge for Ultimate, and settle for Windows 7 Home Premium. Newegg has it for "$189.99 was: $199.99". Yes, you can get OEM versions for half that, but saying $200 for a Windows license is certainly not out of thin air.

Philips AmberLEDs i bought for $20 each from home depot.

I'm not finding those... are you referring to the "Philips AmbientLED"?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824254052

i've got three of them side by side. mind = blown.

i don't think hanns-g is a well known brand, but i've been using their monitors exclusively for about 5-6 years and i've never had a problem with them.

Did you look up the specs on that 27" LCD monitor and compare them to similar models before proclaiming the price "crazy"? Hint: it's not a 1920x1080 monitor for consumers. The Apple Display is not meant for consumers; it's meant for professionals and thus will cost more. A search on newegg shows the cheapest price is $680 with $850-1000 being the largest range. The NEC model is $1600.

If you can find a Windows 7 x64 driver for my Chaintech AV-710 sound card that actually works I would be most grateful and would immediately pirate a copy of Windows 7 Embedded so that your employer could gain even more market share. Working drivers exist for Linux and XP x64, but not for Windows 7 x64.

Getting all of your content on one box is absolutly available. Get a low power quite PC:

$330 Acer Revo
$300 Lenovo

Both of these have HDMI out, so the audio and video will connect natively to your TV with a single cable.

Buy a MCE remote:
$25 With learning capabilities

Install:
Hulu Desktop app that can be controlled with the above remote
iTunes. It is the one piece that likely won't be totally seamless, but will work, and button mapping should be easy enough.
$20 LM Remote lets you map any button on the remote so you can have one button switching between players
Windows 7 includes Media Center that has a Netflix plugin and can be controlled with the above remote.

If your dedicated to Apple, it looks like the only part that isn't available for use with a MacMini is the LM Remote, and I would be shocked if there isn't an equivalent.

I'm not saying that the situation isn't broken, but you seem to be making it worse than it actually is.

Getting all of your content on one box is absolutly available. Get a low power quite PC:

$330 Acer Revo
$300 Lenovo

Both of these have HDMI out, so the audio and video will connect natively to your TV with a single cable.

Buy a MCE remote:
$25 With learning capabilities

Install:
Hulu Desktop app that can be controlled with the above remote
iTunes. It is the one piece that likely won't be totally seamless, but will work, and button mapping should be easy enough.
$20 LM Remote lets you map any button on the remote so you can have one button switching between players
Windows 7 includes Media Center that has a Netflix plugin and can be controlled with the above remote.

If your dedicated to Apple, it looks like the only part that isn't available for use with a MacMini is the LM Remote, and I would be shocked if there isn't an equivalent.

I'm not saying that the situation isn't broken, but you seem to be making it worse than it actually is.

Getting all of your content on one box is absolutly available. Get a low power quite PC:

$330 Acer Revo
$300 Lenovo

Both of these have HDMI out, so the audio and video will connect natively to your TV with a single cable.

Buy a MCE remote:
$25 With learning capabilities

Install:
Hulu Desktop app that can be controlled with the above remote
iTunes. It is the one piece that likely won't be totally seamless, but will work, and button mapping should be easy enough.
$20 LM Remote lets you map any button on the remote so you can have one button switching between players
Windows 7 includes Media Center that has a Netflix plugin and can be controlled with the above remote.

If your dedicated to Apple, it looks like the only part that isn't available for use with a MacMini is the LM Remote, and I would be shocked if there isn't an equivalent.

I'm not saying that the situation isn't broken, but you seem to be making it worse than it actually is.

I'm going to invalidate mod points for this, but did you try to use Compact Flash memory cards as hard drives?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200175
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313247

It may be cheaper/quieter/cooler/faster than trying to find working 80G disks.

I'm going to invalidate mod points for this, but did you try to use Compact Flash memory cards as hard drives?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200175
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313247

It may be cheaper/quieter/cooler/faster than trying to find working 80G disks.

Interesting, are there any particular or specific setups, model numbers etc that we look into?

http://www.newegg.com/Store/BrandSubCategory.aspx?Brand=1080&SubCategory=521&name=Surveillance-Cameras

First camera I click on... $280 and doesn't list the resolution anywhere.
Must be from their sucker collection.

Lol.

-AI

Interesting, are there any particular or specific setups, model numbers etc that we look into?

http://www.newegg.com/Store/BrandSubCategory.aspx?Brand=1080&SubCategory=521&name=Surveillance-Cameras

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16881102057&
Buy extra licenses on Amazon, and use yawcam too.

-b

get a couple of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16881180042
panasonic makes a bunch of them, they all do motion capture and smtp email. setup a gmail account, set the camera to email motion captured pics to the email address.
only bad thing is the smtp server portion doesn't support gmail smtp protocol, so will have to have a smtp server through your isp
I have set a bunch of these up for several friends/family, they just work...

Tiger Direct

New Egg

I've missed my tape drive! My TR-3 1.6/3.2 circa 1996, was plenty for the hard drives available at time and pretty much a requirement for Windows 95 considering how often it killed itself, but within just a few years the hard drives far exceeded the capacity of tape. Fortunately by then Windows 2000 was out and life has been good since.

I'd love to use tape again, but with 1.5/3.0TB drives selling in the $1,500 range it still doesn't make sense, not when I can buy a dozen 2TB hard drives for the price of one 1.5/3.0TB tape drive

Now we have hipster geeks?!

I'd love to use tape again, but with 1.5/3.0TB drives selling in the $1,500 range it still doesn't make sense, not when I can buy a dozen 2TB hard drives for the price of one 1.5/3.0TB tape drive

Right, and if all you need is a few dozen drives, it's probably not worth it. Let's talk when you need to backup 12 TB every night and you can only recycle the tapes yearly. Two drives and 1800 tapes is cheaper than 1800 drives, and until convinced otherwise I believe the tapes will take the time in storage with a better chance of coming back to life.

Tape isn't for days of storage, it's for archival.

I've missed my tape drive! My TR-3 1.6/3.2 circa 1996, was plenty for the hard drives available at time and pretty much a requirement for Windows 95 considering how often it killed itself, but within just a few years the hard drives far exceeded the capacity of tape. Fortunately by then Windows 2000 was out and life has been good since.

I'd love to use tape again, but with 1.5/3.0TB drives selling in the $1,500 range it still doesn't make sense, not when I can buy a dozen 2TB hard drives for the price of one 1.5/3.0TB tape drive

A few seconds?! I was just testing # of rounds w/ SHA512 for password encryption. The system has a AMD Sempron 140 -- a $30, single core processor. Plus, it runs XenServer... so subtract some % for the virtualization overhead.

Results: 10,000 rounds of SHA512 in 96ms

I use a Sans Digital 5 bay external SATA raid array for all the pics from 2 Canon digital cameras. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111172 It's not backup. It's storage. I've had it for over a year, and it's pretty damn solid. It is NOT cheap, and you'll want a reasonably hefty UPS to handle it and the computer it's on. ( On the other hand, it is not Expensive either, for what you get. ) You MUST go the sans digital website and, pretty much only, buy the drives they recommend. If you do research and get RAID ready drives, you can call them and discuss with them your drive of choice, and then buy, at your own risk of course. I went this route. Bought the whole thing, external enclosure & SATA card, Drives, thru newegg. It does need a slot for the card. It slows your boot down. It is fast. It's RAID 5 w/ a hot spare as configured( i think). For Disaster recovery, you will still need something else. Overall, I love the thing. For backup, you might be able to get away with one of those top-loading sata drive holders. Move stuff off to two cheapy drives and store someplace offsite. Good luck.

This is pretty much my solution, with some slight tweaks. I don't bother with eSATA. I have one machine with this case, which has a SATA X-dock in the top, and the motherboard has support for hot-swapping (enabled in the BIOS for that SATA port). I just have to eject the drive like any other device. I assume it is probably also possible to get these things as add-ons for 3.5" bays, but I haven't checked into them. I also have an external SATA dock that handles both 2.5 and 3.5 inch devices, although that has the disadvantage of being slower through the USB interface. Here are some options. I don't really see the point of eSATA. I don't need any additional cables with these dock solutions, and I just sit the drives on a nice, safe shelf inside the anti-static bags that they came in. A couple of backup drives I store off-site.

RAID sucks as a backup because if you accidentally delete a file off your RAID storage, it gets deleted from all the drives in the RAID. Your file is not safe as it would be on a backup.

RAID is for redundancy. So you don't have any downtime if a HDD fails. Without RAID, a HDD failure would mean downtime until you can get a new drive and restore from a backup. With RAID, your array and your business keeps chugging along as if there were no failure, and you can replace your failed HDD at your leisure.

Rebuilding a RAID array with a failed drive has been simple and automatic in my experience. Pop out the dead drive, plug in the new one, and it'll start rebuilding automatically. Your data is still accessible during the rebuild, although access times and transfer speeds may be degraded. Depending on the amount of data, a rebuild can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. A second failure while rebuilding means all your data is gone. So you want to keep backups of everything on your RAID array.

If you just want to glom a bunch of old drives together to use as a backup drive, you want a multi-bay JBOD/RAID enclosure like this or this. Be forewarned that if you plug these in over eSATA, you need an eSATA port with port multiplication. No laptop eSATA port I've found does, so you'll need to rely on USB or built-in hardware RAID/JBOD to use these with a laptop.

If you want something which will sit on your network acting as a file server, you want a NAS like this or this or this. You can read NAS comparisons at Small Net Builder. But keep in mind what I said above - even if you get a NAS, you will still need to make backups of it.

RAID sucks as a backup because if you accidentally delete a file off your RAID storage, it gets deleted from all the drives in the RAID. Your file is not safe as it would be on a backup.

RAID is for redundancy. So you don't have any downtime if a HDD fails. Without RAID, a HDD failure would mean downtime until you can get a new drive and restore from a backup. With RAID, your array and your business keeps chugging along as if there were no failure, and you can replace your failed HDD at your leisure.

Rebuilding a RAID array with a failed drive has been simple and automatic in my experience. Pop out the dead drive, plug in the new one, and it'll start rebuilding automatically. Your data is still accessible during the rebuild, although access times and transfer speeds may be degraded. Depending on the amount of data, a rebuild can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. A second failure while rebuilding means all your data is gone. So you want to keep backups of everything on your RAID array.

If you just want to glom a bunch of old drives together to use as a backup drive, you want a multi-bay JBOD/RAID enclosure like this or this. Be forewarned that if you plug these in over eSATA, you need an eSATA port with port multiplication. No laptop eSATA port I've found does, so you'll need to rely on USB or built-in hardware RAID/JBOD to use these with a laptop.

If you want something which will sit on your network acting as a file server, you want a NAS like this or this or this. You can read NAS comparisons at Small Net Builder. But keep in mind what I said above - even if you get a NAS, you will still need to make backups of it.

RAID sucks as a backup because if you accidentally delete a file off your RAID storage, it gets deleted from all the drives in the RAID. Your file is not safe as it would be on a backup.

RAID is for redundancy. So you don't have any downtime if a HDD fails. Without RAID, a HDD failure would mean downtime until you can get a new drive and restore from a backup. With RAID, your array and your business keeps chugging along as if there were no failure, and you can replace your failed HDD at your leisure.

Rebuilding a RAID array with a failed drive has been simple and automatic in my experience. Pop out the dead drive, plug in the new one, and it'll start rebuilding automatically. Your data is still accessible during the rebuild, although access times and transfer speeds may be degraded. Depending on the amount of data, a rebuild can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. A second failure while rebuilding means all your data is gone. So you want to keep backups of everything on your RAID array.

If you just want to glom a bunch of old drives together to use as a backup drive, you want a multi-bay JBOD/RAID enclosure like this or this. Be forewarned that if you plug these in over eSATA, you need an eSATA port with port multiplication. No laptop eSATA port I've found does, so you'll need to rely on USB or built-in hardware RAID/JBOD to use these with a laptop.

If you want something which will sit on your network acting as a file server, you want a NAS like this or this or this. You can read NAS comparisons at Small Net Builder. But keep in mind what I said above - even if you get a NAS, you will still need to make backups of it.

RAID sucks as a backup because if you accidentally delete a file off your RAID storage, it gets deleted from all the drives in the RAID. Your file is not safe as it would be on a backup.

RAID is for redundancy. So you don't have any downtime if a HDD fails. Without RAID, a HDD failure would mean downtime until you can get a new drive and restore from a backup. With RAID, your array and your business keeps chugging along as if there were no failure, and you can replace your failed HDD at your leisure.

Rebuilding a RAID array with a failed drive has been simple and automatic in my experience. Pop out the dead drive, plug in the new one, and it'll start rebuilding automatically. Your data is still accessible during the rebuild, although access times and transfer speeds may be degraded. Depending on the amount of data, a rebuild can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. A second failure while rebuilding means all your data is gone. So you want to keep backups of everything on your RAID array.

If you just want to glom a bunch of old drives together to use as a backup drive, you want a multi-bay JBOD/RAID enclosure like this or this. Be forewarned that if you plug these in over eSATA, you need an eSATA port with port multiplication. No laptop eSATA port I've found does, so you'll need to rely on USB or built-in hardware RAID/JBOD to use these with a laptop.

If you want something which will sit on your network acting as a file server, you want a NAS like this or this or this. You can read NAS comparisons at Small Net Builder. But keep in mind what I said above - even if you get a NAS, you will still need to make backups of it.

RAID sucks as a backup because if you accidentally delete a file off your RAID storage, it gets deleted from all the drives in the RAID. Your file is not safe as it would be on a backup.

RAID is for redundancy. So you don't have any downtime if a HDD fails. Without RAID, a HDD failure would mean downtime until you can get a new drive and restore from a backup. With RAID, your array and your business keeps chugging along as if there were no failure, and you can replace your failed HDD at your leisure.

Rebuilding a RAID array with a failed drive has been simple and automatic in my experience. Pop out the dead drive, plug in the new one, and it'll start rebuilding automatically. Your data is still accessible during the rebuild, although access times and transfer speeds may be degraded. Depending on the amount of data, a rebuild can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. A second failure while rebuilding means all your data is gone. So you want to keep backups of everything on your RAID array.

If you just want to glom a bunch of old drives together to use as a backup drive, you want a multi-bay JBOD/RAID enclosure like this or this. Be forewarned that if you plug these in over eSATA, you need an eSATA port with port multiplication. No laptop eSATA port I've found does, so you'll need to rely on USB or built-in hardware RAID/JBOD to use these with a laptop.

If you want something which will sit on your network acting as a file server, you want a NAS like this or this or this. You can read NAS comparisons at Small Net Builder. But keep in mind what I said above - even if you get a NAS, you will still need to make backups of it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817707228

HDDs are kinda cheap. Keep one drive running and from time to time, run off a copy of the storage drive and slap a label with a date on a backup target drive. Do a daily task that checks the health of the HDD... automate it and send anything other than "green/healthy/pass" to yourself in email so you know when it's time to duplicate your main drive to retirement.

I love those HDD duplicators. They don't care about your OS and make perfect copies. They beep at you when they find bad sectors and stuff like that too.

I guess it doesn't really answer the original question, but using a HDD instead of an optical disk for backup just makes a lot of sense to me. Capacity isn't going to be a problem and neither is compatibility. Just keep stacking and rotating your backup hard drives. Use something like:

This -- http://danbeahm.blogspot.com/2010/02/bare-hard-drive-storage.html

or This -- http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/04/cardboard-hard-drive-storage-box/

On my laptop, I have 1680x1050 pixels. I use the resolution 1024x768 stretched on the screen. I've gotten so use to it I'm not sure if I want to change.

I use an NEC MultiSync LCD1760V, which is 17" and supposedly 1280x1024 pixels. I use it on two computers. One I use 1024x768 as the resolution and on the other, which is older, 800x600 as the resolution. I can't wait to read the comments on this paragraph.

I also have a Samsung SynMaster PX2370 monitor which I use for a television. I was using my 17", which apparently is a 5:4 ratio if I'm not mistaken, as a TV. Which is funny because I don't think I noticed any it being stretched. (External analog tuner.)

Oh, by the way: Recommended Resolution[1920 x 1200 ]

If you take a Mac and Price spec for Spec (Every spec even if you don't think it is a big deal such as glowing keyboard with light sensor or weight and thinness) You will find that the Price of the Mac is the same as any other new Commercially built system out there of the same quality.

For the very low-end models, maybe, but when you look at the price of the higher models and upgrades -- literally comparing Apples to Apples -- it's readily apparent that their prices are way off, and egregiously so.

Let's compare two "base" iMacs, the only noted difference being the processor and HD:
21.5" Core i5 2.5GHz & 500GB -> 21.5" Core i5 2.7GHz & 1TB [$300 difference]
Core i5-2400S 2.5GHz $184 & Seagate Barracuda 500GB $84 (Total: $268) -> Core i5-2500S 2.7GHz $205 & Segate 1 Barracuda TB $109 (Total: $314)
Actual Difference: $46 Apple's Markup: 552%
Sources: Intel's price list 500GB @ NewEgg 1TB @ NewEgg

Component upgrades for the second iMac:
2.7GHz Core i5 -> 2.8GHz Core i7 [Add $200.00]
Core i5-2500S 2.7GHz $205 -> Core i7-2600S $294 Actual Difference: $89 Apple's Markup: 125%
Source: Same as above

4GB -> 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB [Add $200.00]
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 $25 x2 = $50. Actual Difference: $25 Apple's Markup: 700%
Source: The most expensive laptop 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM @ NewEgg

4GB -> 16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x4GB [Add $600.00]
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 $25 x4 = $100. Actual Difference: $75 Apple's Markup: 700%
Source: Same as above.

1TB -> 2TB 7200RPM Serial ATA Drive [Add $150.00]
Seagate Barracuda 1TB $109 -> Seagate 2TB $130 Actual Difference: $11 Apple's Markup: 1263%
Source: 1TB @ NewEgg 2TB @ NewEgg

And then there's the whole issue of using mobile components in a desktop. Why would they do that? Not to provide value -- mobile components are generally more expensive and lower performing then their desktop components -- but to cram them into a retarded form factor. Sorry, Apple's tax is alive and well, and it's insulting to an informed consumer. You can throw together a *better* system for well less than what Apple charges for its iMac and as a bonus, you don't have to buy a new your monitor when you upgrade your entire system. And for $28 and a little pre-planning, you can even throw Lion on it or run it in a VM. Yes, you have to learn or know how to do it, but as they say, ignorance can be expensive.

If you take a Mac and Price spec for Spec (Every spec even if you don't think it is a big deal such as glowing keyboard with light sensor or weight and thinness) You will find that the Price of the Mac is the same as any other new Commercially built system out there of the same quality.

For the very low-end models, maybe, but when you look at the price of the higher models and upgrades -- literally comparing Apples to Apples -- it's readily apparent that their prices are way off, and egregiously so.

Let's compare two "base" iMacs, the only noted difference being the processor and HD:
21.5" Core i5 2.5GHz & 500GB -> 21.5" Core i5 2.7GHz & 1TB [$300 difference]
Core i5-2400S 2.5GHz $184 & Seagate Barracuda 500GB $84 (Total: $268) -> Core i5-2500S 2.7GHz $205 & Segate 1 Barracuda TB $109 (Total: $314)
Actual Difference: $46 Apple's Markup: 552%
Sources: Intel's price list 500GB @ NewEgg 1TB @ NewEgg

Component upgrades for the second iMac:
2.7GHz Core i5 -> 2.8GHz Core i7 [Add $200.00]
Core i5-2500S 2.7GHz $205 -> Core i7-2600S $294 Actual Difference: $89 Apple's Markup: 125%
Source: Same as above

4GB -> 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB [Add $200.00]
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 $25 x2 = $50. Actual Difference: $25 Apple's Markup: 700%
Source: The most expensive laptop 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM @ NewEgg

4GB -> 16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x4GB [Add $600.00]
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 $25 x4 = $100. Actual Difference: $75 Apple's Markup: 700%
Source: Same as above.

1TB -> 2TB 7200RPM Serial ATA Drive [Add $150.00]
Seagate Barracuda 1TB $109 -> Seagate 2TB $130 Actual Difference: $11 Apple's Markup: 1263%
Source: 1TB @ NewEgg 2TB @ NewEgg

And then there's the whole issue of using mobile components in a desktop. Why would they do that? Not to provide value -- mobile components are generally more expensive and lower performing then their desktop components -- but to cram them into a retarded form factor. Sorry, Apple's tax is alive and well, and it's insulting to an informed consumer. You can throw together a *better* system for well less than what Apple charges for its iMac and as a bonus, you don't have to buy a new your monitor when you upgrade your entire system. And for $28 and a little pre-planning, you can even throw Lion on it or run it in a VM. Yes, you have to learn or know how to do it, but as they say, ignorance can be expensive.

If you take a Mac and Price spec for Spec (Every spec even if you don't think it is a big deal such as glowing keyboard with light sensor or weight and thinness) You will find that the Price of the Mac is the same as any other new Commercially built system out there of the same quality.

For the very low-end models, maybe, but when you look at the price of the higher models and upgrades -- literally comparing Apples to Apples -- it's readily apparent that their prices are way off, and egregiously so.

Let's compare two "base" iMacs, the only noted difference being the processor and HD:
21.5" Core i5 2.5GHz & 500GB -> 21.5" Core i5 2.7GHz & 1TB [$300 difference]
Core i5-2400S 2.5GHz $184 & Seagate Barracuda 500GB $84 (Total: $268) -> Core i5-2500S 2.7GHz $205 & Segate 1 Barracuda TB $109 (Total: $314)
Actual Difference: $46 Apple's Markup: 552%
Sources: Intel's price list 500GB @ NewEgg 1TB @ NewEgg

Component upgrades for the second iMac:
2.7GHz Core i5 -> 2.8GHz Core i7 [Add $200.00]
Core i5-2500S 2.7GHz $205 -> Core i7-2600S $294 Actual Difference: $89 Apple's Markup: 125%
Source: Same as above

4GB -> 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB [Add $200.00]
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 $25 x2 = $50. Actual Difference: $25 Apple's Markup: 700%
Source: The most expensive laptop 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM @ NewEgg

4GB -> 16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x4GB [Add $600.00]
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 $25 x4 = $100. Actual Difference: $75 Apple's Markup: 700%
Source: Same as above.

1TB -> 2TB 7200RPM Serial ATA Drive [Add $150.00]
Seagate Barracuda 1TB $109 -> Seagate 2TB $130 Actual Difference: $11 Apple's Markup: 1263%
Source: 1TB @ NewEgg 2TB @ NewEgg

And then there's the whole issue of using mobile components in a desktop. Why would they do that? Not to provide value -- mobile components are generally more expensive and lower performing then their desktop components -- but to cram them into a retarded form factor. Sorry, Apple's tax is alive and well, and it's insulting to an informed consumer. You can throw together a *better* system for well less than what Apple charges for its iMac and as a bonus, you don't have to buy a new your monitor when you upgrade your entire system. And for $28 and a little pre-planning, you can even throw Lion on it or run it in a VM. Yes, you have to learn or know how to do it, but as they say, ignorance can be expensive.