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The $899 Educational iMac
Valthan writes "Macsimum news has just released news about a new version of the iMac that is being touted as an educational machine. It seems to be a nice setup, and has the cheapness that us university students strive on, I think they just may have a winner here to get people on the Mac. Now if only JCreator worked on it ..."
From the article "Featuring a 17-inch widescreen LCD display, the iMac for education includes a Combo drive for burning CDs and reading DVDs, 512MB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory expandable up to 2GB and hard drive storage capacity up to 160GB. Every iMac also includes a built-in iSight video camera, built-in 10/100/1000 BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet for high-speed networking, built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11g WiFi for up to 54Mbps wireless networking, a total of five USB ports (three USB 2.0) and two FireWire 400 ports."
It uses an Intel chip. FP?
I'm very happy to hear that college kids strive on cheapness.
It'd be nice if Apple would release a cheap version with a bigger screen. I know it isn't really Apple's way, but it'd be nice to have the option. There are a lot of us out there that wouldn't mind having a slightly slower processor, a smaller HD, and no bluetooth, but would still appreciate the larger monitor for movies, etc.
Description on Apple's website
Technical specifications & available configurations
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Cheap for a uni student? I certainly didn't have that sort of money laying about when I was at university.
/got my computer for 50 bucks
//i didn't ask where it came from...
that's a bit misleading. it's at most 4, considering that two of them are on the keyboard that must be plugged in via USB, and really 3, if you consider that you need the mighty mouse plugged in to use the machine (since it doesnt have bluetooth), and so that takes up another (probably one on your keyboard). so you're left with one 1.1 port on your keyboard, and two 2.0 ports on your imac unless you get a hub.
granted, i have an imac g5 that has the same USB setup, but i just don't like misleading advertising. (although its not really advertising, but i digress.)
Why should I spend $899 when I can buy a SCO Linux machine for $699?
We recently bought a bunch of Dells - P4 2.8Ghz, 512 MB ram, 80 GB hard drives, DVD-CD burner, with a 19" LCD monitor for $450.00. I could buy two of those for the price of the iMac. Yeah, I know....windows....Mac OS X, windows blah blah blah.
OK, so the Dell has a separate tower VS the all in one design of the iMac....but the Dell costs HALF what the Mac costs.
-ted
Dang. Just bought an education discount Mac mini myself. Looks like this includes a 17 inch LCD, combo CD+R/W and DVD, 512MB DDR2 SDRAM (expand to 2GB) and HD expand to 160GB. But the cool part is the built-in iSight vcam, Gigapop Ethernet, 802.11g WiFi (54Mbps wireless), 5 USB ports and 2 FireWire 400 ports.
And the usual extra software thrown in.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Whoa there, if a $899 computer is what a student strives on, then what about student loans, rent, utilities, and groceries?
Get a prev-gen iMac for less than half the price and spend the rest on beer and hookers or callboys.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
But I've switched to Ubuntu.
You never know who will get one.
it's cheap compared to most of the other machines at the bookstore.
but I agree, a $500 remanufactured laptop is all you really need.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If Leopard has the Windows support that I think it will, this iMac could easily become the next must-have next to the iPod.
College students want a cheap but stylish machine, yet they don't want to lose their "gaming" functionality. It could be a perfect marriage.
Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/ -- Exercise for the rest of us.
does it run a Lin... I mean, imagine a Beowulf clust... ah, crap, I choked.
17-inch widescreen LCD
1440x900 resolution
1.83GHz Intel Core Duo processor (1)
512MB memory (2x256MB SO-DIMMs)
80GB Serial ATA hard drive
24x Combo drive (DVD-ROM, CD-RW)
Intel GMA 950 graphics with 64MB of shared memory
($899)
The regular entry level iMac comes with
17-inch widescreen LCD
1440x900 resolution
1.83GHz Intel Core Duo processor (1)
512MB memory (single SO-DIMM)
160GB Serial ATA hard drive
8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±RW, CD-RW)
ATI Radeon X1600 graphics with 128MB GDDR3 memory
Bluetooth 2.0
Apple Remote
($1199)
You save $300, but give up Apple Remote, bluetooth, ATI Radeon, 80GB of drive space, and the SuperDrive.
A Beowulf cluster of those, of course! In Soviet Russia, iMacs educate YOU!
the cheapness that us university students strive on
/Get off my lawn
$900 for a computer, for students, er yeah I guess some of them have that kind of cash. But I don't think they fit the stretched to the max, loans up the wazoo students that you'll encounter in today's universities. Those students still get by on the computer resources made available by the school.
In fact for $400 you could get a laptop from a couple of PC makers.
Saying that any price point is cheap and affordable only makes you look like an ass and makes other people feel bad.
-- taking over the world, we are.
Unfortunately it's not available in Canada apparently. I called the Apple Store and they couldn't tell me if it would be eventually either. It's a shame.
Well this sort of tactic has been working for Microsoft for a while - make their machines more accessible during the learning and perfecting stages of the education/training process then you have a market share that is likely to support you product well into professional life.
Come to think of it where's the free Machintosh to encourage my business to support and help market their product?
There are a few options: 1) Beg parents 2) Get job, or...
3) That's why God gave you blood plasma and spoo. Sell it.
4) Failing that, find some lubriderm, a rubber glove, and a busy intersection.
It's almost what you want, but not really. Its still on the expensive side too.
Hello? Eclipse?
Maybe I just don't get it, but since when is 900 freakin dollars "cheap"? I can get a much more powerful commodity Intel box (which is all Macs are now) and load up FreeBSD for around $300. Apple really should just get over themselves and release a system that's in line with today's computer prices.
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
Cheap for a uni student? I certainly didn't have that sort of money laying about when I was at university.
/got my computer for 50 bucks
//i didn't ask where it came from...
It seems like a rather good deal to me, that offer is actually cheaper than the computer I bought when I went to university. I spent almost every cent I had on that thing including the money meant for buying books. The school books I checked out of the library or borrowed off my friends then I photocopied them for a fraction of what they would have cost to buy and had the resultant stack of A4 paper bound in a spiral binding. The Software was uhummm... well borrowed.... I could never have afforded to buy it back then, even with student discounts, and yet it was more or less a requirement to have expensive word processing software and even massively expensive software like Autocad since the teachers didn't just place importance on content and academic achievement but also the way the reports and assignments were finished and laid-out and they lowered the grade automatically for what they judged to be clumsy and unprofiessionally laid-out reports or assignments. The school claimed that they had enough computers in their labs to cover all the student's needs but that was of course complete crap. At the end of the term the labs were packed and having your own computer could make the difference between finishing your big end-of-term assignments/reports or flunking out. What sort of machine you have to buy depends very much on what you are studying. I suppose you could get away with buying some older-than-your-granny Pentium II laptop at scrap value if you are a philosophy major and only need to run Office 95 or Windows ME but If you are an engineering student something of the caliber of this machine is pretty much an entry level requirement these days.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Seems they could have dropped the price a bit if they didn't include the built in iSight, which doesn't strike me as much added value.
For the extra $300, I'd much rather have a functional video card and the superdrive. I think most college kids would be disappointed the minute they tried to play any game and had the machine slow to a crawl or simply be unable to play the game at all.
As a (kinda but not really) poor college student, the intel macs are wonderful. All my rich friends, young and old, are buying them and financing it by selling their old ones. I'll be picking up a 12-month old, very-well-cared-for Powerbook for about 500 USD in the next couple weeks. I'm also lining up a couple "old" iMacs.
The Lenovo N100s (notebooks) have some mods that come in at $900; dual core, 1GB RAM, CDDVD. 15.4" screen. They come in around $900 give or take.
Where can I buy some cheap student credentials to buy one at that price? I might actually spring for one at $899 and have a Mac again. It has been many years....
Our University has over 700 Macs and upgrades varying labs every few years. We were looking at replacing some old labs with Core Duo Minis, but this is actually cheaper as we don't have to buy LCD displays for them and get more and better features. No need to buy a new keyboard and mouse, too.
1. This article is an add,
2. An x86 system can be built for 30% the cost,
3. I bought a Alpha before I bought a Apple computer of any kind.
4. Apple is migrating from the Power architecture, joining the mainstream sluggards.
5. Ignore Apple, buy a trendy and efficient PowerPC computer from an honest company
6. If you realy want a PowerPC system, just go buy a Nintendo Gamecube (for less than USD 50) and hack away with a 100% open-source prospectable system toting 450 MHz PPC processor with 40MB RAM and a Radeon 7000 graphics. It boots Linux at the moment, but needs help elsewhere in terms of extending data storage from the compact DVDROM with help of a network interface.
7. If you realy want to wander beyond the Gamecube, get a 128-bit processor system that boots Linux and supported 100%: Sega Dreamcast.
8. I hear there are affordable Sun Sparcs...in dumpsters. Scott Mcnealy made sure the bright people at Sun would never *ever* need to get arm-to-arm with the gothic Apple mimes.
without prejudice
Apple has introduced a US$899 configuration of the 17-inch iMac designed specifically for education customers featuring a 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo processor. It's available immediately and will replace the eMac, Apple's last CRT based computer.
Featuring a 17-inch widescreen LCD display, the iMac for education includes a Combo drive for burning CDs and reading DVDs, 512MB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory expandable up to 2GB and hard drive storage capacity up to 160GB. Every iMac also includes a built-in iSight video camera, built-in 10/100/1000 BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet for high-speed networking, built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11g WiFi for up to 54Mbps wireless networking, a total of five USB ports (three USB 2.0) and two FireWire 400 ports.
Like all the models in the iMac line, it comes with Mac OS X 10.4.6, iLife '06, Safari, Mail, iCal, iChat AV, Front Row and Photo Booth. The 17-inch iMac for education is available immediately for education customers through the Apple Store for Education or by calling an Apple education sales representative at 800-800-APPL. The eMac will no longer be in production and is available for purchase while supplies last through the Apple Store for Education or by calling an Apple education sales representative at 800-800-APPL.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
... but for a student I'd go with a laptop. Not much more expensive, if you insist on Apple, and less from most x86 vendors.
... because if they had actually ASKED a few students, the students would probably have said:
a) "What ? No DVD burner ? How the hell am I supposed to earn beer money by pirating things I've downloaded on school internet ?!"
b) "No remote ? GTF out of here, now how am I supposed to cycle through my slideshow of err.. botany pictures from bed with one hand ?!"
Good on them for trying, but I think this machine is basically a decoy so that they can say the iMac line-up "starts at $899", because taking out something like a dvd writer is just going to make everyone want the next model up. This machine is more likely to find a home with housewives who want to browse the web without all the spyware and virii.
I can tell you that the life-blood of current college students is 3-4 year old PCs with Maxed out ram and paying a geek in pizza and Mt Dew to come delete the trial/spy/crap ware, configure email and install Office, and whatever special apps they have in their major...pizza and MT Dew is good pay for a college geek...
$899 = 1.83MHz Core Duo iMac with 17" screen and not enough RAM.
$899 = 12-pack bottled Guinness Draught x at least 50.
So, an iMac or 600 bottles of Guinness. College student unimpressed.
And don't anybody say "B-B-B-BUT THE GUINNESS DOESN'T COME WITH ILIFE" or I will rip your fucking head off and shove it up your ass.
I do agree it's a bad gaming machine.
But that doesn't mean it can't expand beyond the eMac niche.
There are plenty of non-gamers in this world.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I've been poking around the apple site(s) and have yet to see it anywhere outside the US. Personally, I'm tempted to get two of them for my elder kids (5 kids == expensive schooling) but can't find local details for Australia.
Anyone know more on this?
Robert Anton Wilson
Sure, if you need a sorta-cheap Mac... well, this is it.
However, if you're a student like me, you'd build your own Ubuntu-based box (or if you must, get a copy of XP home) for sub-$600. Being a gaming whore, I have generally kept specs on my system pimped, but if anyone here is actually looking for something to take to college, you should realize better solutions exist.
Do these low-end iMacs still support screen spanning? (I know the other Intel iMac models do)
For a $20 mini-dvi adapter, grab a CRT, double your screen space for cheap. (assuming your university has loads of old CRTs sitting around (I know mine does...))
This is primarily a replacement for the eMac, aimed at the educational insitutions. We've been running a dozen iMac G5 iSights for the past year, and what they've left out to get th prioce down are largely not going to be missed.
- this will drop the HD capacity (schools don't generally load up boxes with the photos and songs that end users do)
- drop the remote (you can drive FrontRow from the keyboard)
- 20" (for students in a lab up close, 17" is plenty big)
- bluetooth (not a big deal in a classroom)
- graphics for gamers
- DVD burner (as long as you have one or two of these per lab, you'll do fine)
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The only educational experience you'll get is figuring out how to use one
Ubuntu, here we come! :-)
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Your lying, Apple can't succumb to a Slashdot effect.
*sips koolaid*
-Mac fan boi
Now, if they come out with a black one, people will flock to this for sure. I'll be first in line!
Here's my intel-based mini.
Until the price of mac's go down to $250 or the price of a mac laptop goes down to $550 i can't afford one;
My old G3/500 iMac seems to be on its last days, so I checked the prices for a new Mac. You know that cute 1.66GHz Mac mini that costs just U$ 799 in the USA? Wanna know how much it costs here in Brazil? The equivalent to U$ 1572. And that badass 2GHz iMac with a 20'' screen, that goes for U$ 1699... around here, that'll be U$ 3840. How I fuckin' HATE this country and its absurd taxes and insane import tariffs!
Circumcision is child abuse.
Eh, these aren't as cheap as they look, a memory upgrade to 1GB is pretty much manditory if you plan on actually running any of that bundled software.
I read the internet for the articles.
Misleading? WTF?
There are a total of 5 USB ports so that is what they advertise. EVERYONE does this. My aunt and uncle's pc (Dell?) has 6 USB ports and was advertised as such even though the keyboard and wireless mouse/remote receiver were USB (so by what you are bitching about they should advertise 4). Misleading "advertising," though? No. They are telling you EXACTLY what you are getting. It's not like they are advertising, "5 free USB ports after everything is set up." Personally, I would find it even more misleading if they advertised 3 or 4 USB ports when it ships with 5 regardless of whether the default accessories use them.
The popularity of the LTSP is showing that Apples high priced eMac machines, even with high discounts aren't really the best solution. Why doesn't Apple really make an advance in the world and release a $299 17" thin client Emac ($399 19", $549 20") and appropriate upgrades to Mac OS X server to support a significantly more cost efficient and easier to manage configuration for schools and groups.
Why is it that Apple seems determined to continue to ship systems with too little RAM? Dell is notorious for pulling the same crap. A new system should not be shipping with anything less than 1 Gig. It's disingenuous to price systems this way.
I'm gonna burn some karma here to complain..
/.), but this special discounts are really pi**n' me off...
./
Come on.. this is puRe advertisement about Mac, could you stop it!
No news here, just advertisement, and I don't want advertisement covered as a story (yeah, yeah, somebody is going to say, then don't read
If these are news, I would like to read the news about the special discount from Dell for grannies. I'm sure it rocks!
Please, don't get me wrong, I own several PowerBooks/iBooks (in fact I'm writing this posts in one!), so I don't have anything against macs, I'm against lame stories on the FrontPage of
Hating SCO isn't really hating UNIX, it's really more like hating multi-user DOS.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
If I had spent twice as much to get half the ram and harddrive space of the computer I have now. Glad I missed that one
Perhapse it's just the market in my city, but you can get a nice computer for 399 - 499 CDN. These type of deals are usually factory refurbished from the manufacturer, but are today's technology. if you watch the papers for a deal, you can easily get something good (with xp, dvd burner, and what not) for under 500 CDN.
Cheap is relitive to today's prices and goods. You can get a workable desktop for $350, monitor included. Will it be a good one? No. However it'll get your e-mail and do word processing. That is a cheap computer. $900 is a deceant computer. Nothing wrong with going for a deceant computer, but trying to bill it as "cheap" is misleading. For the same money from Dell you can get a Pentium D 2.8GHz with twice the disk capacity, twice the RAM, and a Radeon. You can argue till your blue in the face if that is "better" or not but clearly it's in the same realm.
There's nothing exceptional at all about this deal. Basically it looks like the main selling point over a PC would be the form factor, as PC makers are't big on the all-in-ones. MacOS would also be a potential selling point, if that's your thing. However it's no price demon in any capacity. It does not offer more bang for the buck than competition and you can get one for damn near 1/3rd of the price if money is a real concern.
You can bill it as a good computer of rhte money, but don't try to bill it as cheap, that's false. "Cheap as compared to when I was in university" has no bearing on anything.
If the objective is "cheap computer for university work" dual core is just about meaningless. I have a nice dual core machine at home, the one I'm typing on right now. I love it. Wonderfully fast system. Lets me do silly things like run two copies of World of Warcraft at full speed, or encode MP3s while I play a game with no slowdown. However for nearly everything, one core is effectively wasted silicon. Almost anything processor intensive is single threaded (like games). However even that doesn't matter since the Mac is not a gaming system (the GMA 950 doesn't cut it). When you are talking university work, you are talking very unintensive apps. A dual core computer will not help you write your term paper faster. A P3 is plenty for that, hell it's plenty to do that, have web browsers open, listen to MP3s, and still have 98% of it's cycles free.
At this point, dual core is really a novelty for most uses. There's just not much that supports it, and most users don't have apps that need even a fraction of their system's power, other than games.
I suppose if you were an EE major and were doing somthing like Matlab simulations then maybe the power is needed but things like that are largely academic since licensing requires it be run on lab systems anyhow.
Really, people need to get over the excitment of dual cores. If you've the money, get one, as it won't hurt, but don't pretend like you are getting a system that's twice as fast. We actually buy many single core systems since you can get faster single cores and wer have a number of apps that are not multi-threaded. Dual core might make your ePenis feel big, but it isn't a big deal for 99.9% of things you could be asked to do in university.
The orignal point was: "College students want a cheap but stylish machine, yet they don't want to lose their "gaming" functionality. It could be a perfect marriage."
That is just a flat out incorrect statement. The GMA 950 is a lousy game chip. I'd be supprised if it was even as fast as a GeForce MX4, though it does support more features. You can get some games to RUN on it (WoW will), but painfully slow in low detail. If you want a machine that you aren't going to lose your gaming functionality on you need to look at something with a Radeon or a GeForce in it and not a low end on. Something like a 6600 or better GeForce.
Billing that iMac as a game machine is extremely disengenious. That's the point. It's ability at things other than gmaing wasn't the question.
You say I didn't address the original point, I say I addressed the point "it won't expand beyond the eMac niche".
Perhaps I misunderstand the eMac nice, but I think it appeals to more people than that monstrosity does, even if it doesn't sweep in the gamers.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
"Now if only JCreator worked on it...""
JCreator is a pathetic IDE!!! Eclipse and Netbeans are lightyears ahead. And yes they do run on Mac
There's a clause in the financial aid law that allows for a one time "need adjustment" of $1500 (or the published allotment for your college).
A lot of students count financial aid as "free". And as an example, here at Kansas State as a Computer Science student I fell under the $1500 category, but friends in the College of Architecture and Design were in the $2500 category. Also, for "studio" in Architecture you *must* buy a fully capable computer and provide it for the duration of the coursework in a locked up studio lab.
You're not allowed to "get by", you're given the minimum requirements (which are the recommended requirements for software like AutoCAD) and told to head to financial aid if you can't afford it. No cutting edge computer means no degree.
B-b-b-but the Guinness doesn't come with iLife!
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
does 2 wrong karmas make 1 right karma ?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
"has the cheapness that us university students strive on"
WTF does this mean?
£639 Not bad for UK prices I guess, and As usual us Brits are getting charged just over £150 (or ~$250) more than our US counterparts for exactly the same item, rather unamusing! I was going to get an Apple sometime soon, but I might as well get a MacBook for that. For me it's a choice between being able to game (i.e. paying more for the higher end model with an ATI card in) and portability, this new educational iMac doesn't do gaming and sure as hell isn't portable so it's definetely the MacBook for me (£643 w/student discount). My other choice is to just spend more and get the higher end iMac or get a higher end MacBook. Again though as has been said above, if you're not getting a high end Mac what's the point in getting a Mac at all when all you'll be doing is using Office or whatever a PC that does the same job is like half the price. There are reasons of course, personally for me I want to be able to make sure my apps are cross platform, but I'm sure those of us with special reasons for Macs specifically are an absolute minority.
And you get the bonus of having moderately interesting PPC based systems rather than overpriced commodity intel hardware like the replacement machines your friends are buying.
Software Freedom Day!.
http://listings.ebay.com/_W0QQsocmdZListingItemLis t?sofocus=pf&sbrftog=1&from=R2&catref=C3&socmd=Lis tingItemList&sbrbin=t&satitle=&sacat=3736%26catref %3DC6&fsop=3%26fsoo%3D1&coaction=compare&copagenum =1&coentrypage=search&fgtp=&a14=-24&a26444=26556&a 12=26564&a25710=-24&a10244=-24&gcs=1504&pfid=1810& reqtype=2&pfmode=1&alist=a14%2Ca26444%2Ca12%2Ca257 10%2Ca10244&pf_query=&pf=Show+Items&sargn=-1%26sas lc%3D2&sadis=200&fpos=ZIP%2FPostal&sascs=2&ftrt=1& ftrv=1&saprclo=&saprchi=
You spend 150 to 200 bucks on the machine and 50 on the crt or 150 on the lcd. If you use Ubuntu you can even save the 50 bucks for XP.
You get a total of 200 to 350 bucks minus the printer. I would use something that you can refill. Old sturdy inkjets or laser printers that now have cheap cartridges come to mind. You should really be able to stay below 400 in total and installing ubuntu is easier than to install windows nowdays. Especially because a computer illiterate would have problems installing all the anti spyware tools.
Does Slashdot get money for advertisements for Apple machines? Seeing how much they charge for a machine I suppose they have the spare money.
When I was in school there was nothing better than a laptop. I bought a Compaq x1200 about 2 years ago for $1200 in one of those post christmas sales and it was one of my best computer purchases. The imac might be a nice desktop computer, but nothing beats going outside and using the campus wifi network to listen to music and do your homework. I also liked being able to whip out a draft to show a prof in his or her office, and taking my work home with me during breaks or study sessions. Invariably students as a whole need a decent laptop with a bright screen and long battery life, and maybe a decent graphics chip for some forgiving games like civ 3 or WoW. I bought mine and still to this day find it much more useful than my desktop for office work (and the occasional game of civ 3).
Are the other two USB 1.0 for backwards compatibility or something?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Because he beat me to it :P
Is that Apple's anwser to the $100 laptop?
And, yes, Mac hardware can run certain versions of Linux. That wouldn't have been at all difficult to find out for yourself.
A comparable Dell/Emachines/HP box is under $600. You can upgrade to Windows XP Pro for less than $100. Of course you could always upgrade to linux for free. I love the Mac as a commercial product. If anyone has a chance to create real competition for Microsoft, it's the Mac folks. I'm not one of those people who thinks that Macs are outrageously priced, but at the same time I don't think they should be making such a big deal out of their price point. They tend to lose that battle.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I manage education labs and would love to see apple do just that.
The Mac mini was a step in the right direction and this new iMac is good too.
The reason we may not see it happen is because it probably isn't as profitable to sell thin Macs as it is to sell fat Macs.
I hope Apple sees that thin clients done right could also open up the doors to enterprise customers.
Apple Remote Desktop 3 was a quantum leap and I am hoping that Leopard Server will be the same.
Education Store iMac image: http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/imac_ed/i m_ib_isight_ed_060705.jpg
i ght_060110.jpg
Public Apple Store iMac image: http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/im_ib_is
Looks like one of those was Photoshopped pretty heavily around the remote, but I honestly can't tell if it was to put the remote in or to take it out. I suppose it could be both! Reminds me of the thinking behind the $899 -- Take something you've already done, hack it as little as possible to make it functional in another niche, and release, assuming those who notice the difference won't really care.
And I really don't think anyone will [notice]. It's not like Macs are for gamers, especially not iMacs which, even if they game relatively well when released, are about as useful with their Radeon X1600 in a year or two as the integrate (overstated, but not by much, and written by a three-time iMac owner). Unless you're a programmer or gamer, this iMac is next to perfect, missing only the Superdrive if you're into iDVD.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
I've seen a lot of people complain that this new iMac is "too expensive for college students." Except that it's targeted at schools to buy en masse for computer labs and whatnot.
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
This is primarily a replacement for the eMac, aimed at the educational insitutions.
Absolutely. Apple's own page for this product has a "Learn More" sidebar about how "(t)o learn about how schools and universities are using iMac computers in their classrooms."
This is what it is -- the latest eMac, basically.
Whenever Apple releases a new system, it gets a certain amount of flak because it's not everything to everyone. BMW makes a go cart, calls it the Mini, and people don't jump on it because it doesn't carry what a Ford F-150 will... Apple makes their own Mini and a certain set of people say it won't cut it in the graphic designer market.
Personally I'm strongly considering a Mac Book, and yeah, I know it won't play games on the graphics card.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Although I don't agree with the idea that Apple needs to support thin clients, I do definately agree that they never should have cut the eMac. Schools need that $600 or so price range - $900 is a lot for cash strapped schools. When 90% of the kids using them aren't doing anything other than browsing, word processing, etc, there's no need for a core duo and LCD. The eMacs stood up to abuse, and while not fast, were plenty for most solid school workstations.
Maybe it's possible that software matters more than hardware.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
Well, you might call iLife bloatware, but since my son seems to like it, I don't.
Not everyone is you. They have different needs, different expectations, different ways of doing things. Some seem to like the Mac approach - some seem to like the Linux or BSD approaches - and some even like the Windows approach.
I don't presume to judge why my son prefers the software bundles he gets, even after his hacker friends download a few extra things for him, but then I didn't hack Wikipedia when I was 10 like he did either. I used oscilliscopes when I was that age - and S100 bus computers. We lived off tape and paper back then. And we had real sliderules.
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Sorry, I went to the linked site and posted my impression, comparing it to a recent Mac mini bundle I had purchased with my son and a hacker friend of his at the U Bookstore just a few weeks ago, which had a final total price with tax etc of around $1270 all told. I guess what I was trying to say was the Education iMac they're offering is pretty close to what I ended up buying from other parts, so it's not a bad bundle for a high school kid (my son just finished 9th grade and the Mac mini setup I got him with similar stats is for grades 10-12), but doesn't really work for most kids in a college/university setting, who really need a mobile wireless laptop more than anything else, IMHO. Based on what I've seen on campus (I work at the UW as professional staff, as a Data Manager) and in seminars and discussions with students and grad students.
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"With loans and money down I only pay $20 for my laptop. Not bad"
you only paid 20 dollars for your laptop? I find that hard...nay, impossible to believe.
What you pay for your laptop is Down+(payment*number of payments)
So, how mush are you paying for that laptop?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Expensive, Overpriced, Inexpensive..." I mean, really, what happened here? Is the /. Hivemind under Protoss attack, or something?
I'm glad you digged my "honest company approach." That's what Genesi sells the G4 products at, just to turn a prophet and have good record. Genesi is selling Freescale PowerPC systems and they are much smaller power-consumption and form-factor to the type of PowerPC systems Apple was selling. If you are dependent on Apple software on an independent architecture, then you should read into the software available; Genesi offers a custom Operating System, MorphOS, with the hardware. How can Apple do the same and sell for much less? Do you realy want to support the cynical people at Apple, or do you want to support a company that is open for help from its customers? We all know how difficult it is to offer solutions in an environment less than the capacity of Transmeta.
without prejudice
Ubuntu-Apple 3-2
What is "expensive," really?
When I went to college in 1997, a full name-brand computer with a printer and 15" monitor was around $1500. My computer I bought for college was around $2000, a Pentium 233 MMX w/32MB ram and 17" monitor, and it wasn't even top-of-the-line. I could have spent a couple thousand more on a Pentium II 300 monster with a SCSI disk and larger monitor, but I thought it was too expensive.
Nowadays, you'd cringe at paying more than $1000 for a "mid-range" PC, and no more than $500 for an entry-level PC. However, you can still find plenty of places that will be happy to charge you thousands of dollars for a top-of-the-line performance PC. In other words, only one thing has changed: the minimum price of entry has gone down...but the sky is still the limit so far as top-of-the-line prices go (PCs included).
See my point? The perspective of what is "expensive" changes with time, because prices continue to fall. $899 is a good chunk of change, and is not necessarily competitive with PC offerings...but it is a mighty good deal if all you want is a fairly powerful mid-range Macintosh.
Would I buy it? Hell no, but that's mostly because I don't want an all-in-one computer.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Sure, it's nice to have a laptop instead of hauling a desktop, but back when I was an undergrad, even a low-end stereo system was bigger than most current desktop machines, but after first semester, books outweighed any electronics I might have owned.
The computer, of course, was a mainframe that lived off-campus and you negotiated with it with punchcards, or in later years paper terminals; instead of laptops we had programmable calculators (or non-programmable ones, or sliderules) and either portable or not-really-portable typewriters. I did have one housemate senior year who had a KIM-1 microcomputer. And some grad students or researchy undergrads, mainly physicists or chemists, had access to labs with PDP-11s in them, so they could do real work themselves.
So year, that laptop with the built-in CD player and the wireless access that lets you work anywhere on or near campus that has coffee or beer is a definite luxury. (Of course, we were allowed to have beer on campus, unlike kids these days...) [geezer-mode] You punk kids, get off my LAN.... [/geezer-mode]
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Slowness is a different problem than non-responsiveness; if you're trying to do more work than you've got horsepower for, then throwing more horsepower at it should help. And that dual-core processor may be more cost-effective than buying the equivalent horsepower as a faster single-thread CPU, or may use less electricity (which is especially useful for laptops.) And of course your laptop or desktop was already a multi-processor machine, with a separate CPU for graphics (though PDAs mostly ran everything on the main CPU the last time I checked) - graphics is sufficiently specialized that it's a lot cheaper to buy horsepower tuned specifically for that than to use general-purpose CPUs.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Is this a lot cuter and more compact than a 17" LCD plus a $200 desktop? Sure, but for a school on a budget I'd probably still go with the desktop version, and maybe see about putting multiple graphics cards in it to support multiple users, and definitely evaluate using CRTs instead of LCDs just for the price difference.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The really sad thing is that even on the $300 Dell, adding a DVD burner is a quick and easy upgrade for $40 or so. Not so on the $900 iMac. And as you also mention, it would be nice to have a headless version, as most schools I know already have piles of working 17" CRTs that they don't know what to do with (that is, unless they were suckered into buying Apple's previous all-in-one options).
Wow. That's an insane APR. When I was in college, I used Apple Financing and got a 6% APR (it was a Wells Fargo program at the time, but I heard they changed banks). My payments were about $20/mo for the $3000 G4 I purchased. If the APR is really that high for Apple Financing now, I'd look into traditional financial aid. You can get low interest rates, you can usually use them to buy computers, and you don't need to start paying until you graduate.
I still have that G4-- the video card, hard drives, and processor have been upgraded and stuffed into a bigger case, but it's still serving me quite well seven years later.
While the schedular has a lot to do with how responsive a system feels, a dual-processor machine is more tolerant to a bad schedular than a single-processor machine. This can be demonstrated by simulating the same task load on both using Shortest Job First and Longest Job First scheduling--the latter is bad, the former is optimal given perfect information. The dual processor machine covers a multitude of sins in a poorly written scheduler.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
There are a wide range of problems for which Shortest Job First is optimal. This is not one of them. (There are also a wide range of problems for which Longest Whatever First is optimal, e.g. bin-packing, stock-cutting, etc.) If all the jobs have equal importance, and none of them have deadlines, and the jobs are independent of each other, then Shortest Job First is generally optimal for most objective functions.
- But if Job J depends on Job H, then even if Job J is much shorter, you can't do it first.
- Or if Job J is *more important* than Job K, depending on how you weight importance, it might make sense to do Job J first even if it's longer - or it might not.
- Or if Job J *has* to be done by a certain deadline, and Job L has a later deadline, it might make sense to do Job J earlier even if it's longer, or it might not, and you might even need to bump Job B to make room for Job J, and sometimes this depends on whether your objective function measures only whether a job is late or also *how* late it is. Mechanical systems often have hard deadlines; economic ones usually don't.
- If jobs are *preemptible*, then there's another whole raft of solutions like "Shortest remaining time left", and issues about what preemption costs, how granular it is, etc.
- And of course, if there are multiple resources required (e.g. CPU time, disk I/O quantity, rotation and seek latency, etc., it gets a lot more complicated - Shortest Job for the CPU might not be Shortest Job for the disk, and there are different ways to balance such things.
In this case, "responsiveness" is a user-perception issue, and depends on some sets of tasks that the user cares about, like mouse motion and cursor jumping and pixels getting tweaked on the screen, and it tends to be more important than many other tasks like crunching numbers or looking up data in databases, though other external activities may require certain response times, e.g. network protocol timeouts.I agree with you that a dual-core processor can often make up for a Bad Scheduler Algorithm (though it complicates the math significantly...) - but the right thing to do with bad schedulers is Don't Use Them - get a better scheduler (even if it means dumping Windows :-). I haven't tested the Preemptive Kernel mods that came in between 2.4.x and 2.6.x, but the general comments have been that responsiveness improved substantially, because interactive tasks can get done without having long waits for kernel activities to finish.
Back when I last needed it (mid-late 80s working on air-traffic control and NASA projects), it would have been really nice to have a Hard Real-time Unix version that was POSIX version N+1 compatible, POSIX real-time compatible, B1 or B2 secure, commercial-off-the-shelf, and ran Ada - even the parts that weren't pipe-dreams if you wanted them individually were definitely bogus if you wanted them all at once on the same platform. We're getting a lot closer, partly because if Moore's Law makes the computer 2-3 orders of magnitude faster with 1-2 orders of magnitude more RAM, even a bad scheduler gets a lot closer to the performance you need. But some things are still slow, like mechanical disk drives. Sure, they're a lot bigger, and the throughput rate is much faster, but even a 15000rpm drive still takes ~3ms to rotate once, and if you've only got 1ms to respond, that means you still can't use a disk except to fill and backup a memory cache.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks