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The $899 Educational iMac

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the cheap-machines dept.

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."

3 of 483 comments (clear)

  1. Re:899 is cheap? by fatdog789 · · Score: 0, Troll

    Agreed. Only an executive could think $900 is cheap when most consumer-level PC laptops can be had for under $900 without the educational discounts that most schools offer.

  2. Re:Cheap, but not cheap enough. by samkass · · Score: 0, Troll

    Yeah, because it really costs $450 to reformat the hard drive and install the OS of your choice.

    I guess you mean linux, because all other OSes are going to cost you quite a bit of money. Unless you're a thief.

    --
    E pluribus unum
  3. Re:Huh? by binary+paladin · · Score: 1, Troll

    "I can get a much more powerful commodity Intel box (which is all Macs are now) and load up FreeBSD for around $300."

    With a monitor? A cheap ass no-name 17" LCD from New Egg is a little under $150 in and of itself. I am sick of hearing this crap every time there is an Apple article. They're really not that much more expensive. If you're dumpster diving, then sure. But what isn't? You can always buy a used Apple machine. (Though I loathe the iMac. Built in monitors piss me off.)

    When PC boards move from BIOS to something modern, like the coolness that is EFI, let me know. Until then, Apple machine are still a cut above commodity parts. The day I can clone my HD to an external firewire drive and then boot my machine from said firewire drive in the even of a failure, let me know.