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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."
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.)
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
Granted that this is primarily intended for students, it's probably a good thing that they have an Intel chip inside. Using Boot Camp or Parallels or another VM, a student could run two operating systems concurrently (for most any CS major, it is essential to be able to develop for Windows -- other operating systems are a huge plus).
But I've switched to Ubuntu.
You never know who will get one.
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.
What school are you going to?
My Uni is one of the biggest MS sellouts there is and they still expect CS students to program on, and submit assignments on UNIX. Mac is much more compatible with UNIX than Windows is, so this would make sense for us.
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.
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.
Wouldn't an SCO box be $666?
Hello? Eclipse?
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
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.
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.
I graduated with an engineering degree in 2002, but took a few CS courses. All of the work was done on the CS lab UNIX boxes (Suns at the time, upgraded to commodity BSD machines right about the time I finished). Remember that CS is about teaching *concepts* rather than putting out functional code-monkeys - that's what "IT" programs are for.
-b.
... 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.
$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.
If that were true, then Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and DragonFlyBSD would have to, when running on a regular PC, crash as much as Windows, too. If they don't, then perhaps PowerPC isn't as magical as you appear to think it is.
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
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."
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;
Given the fact that the vast majority of computers in schools are Macs, and Windows is the dominant home desktop environment, I don't see how your "capture them early" theory holds water.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
much more powerful commodity Intel box (which is all Macs are now) and load up FreeBSD for around $300.
Bored again, so feeding the trolls...
You can't get a "much more powerful" commodity Intel (or other x86) box. The only "much more powerful" Intel boxes use very expensive high-end CPUs. No one here seems to realize that the cute cuddly little iMac has a 1.83GHz dual-core CPU; you're all comparing it with 2004 products.
For $300 your box will be significantly less powerful than the iMac *and* have no monitor. If you think otherwise, list the specific parts you're going to use, and the specific sources where you found your prices.
Not to say you couldn't get significanty more power (esp. graphics) than the iMac for *$900*, albeit in much uglier form, but come on.
The point behind a good CS major is that you can program in any language - MS, Linux or whatever. Personally, my alma mater, UMASS Amherst had pretty much all Linux machines and all software was writeen in Java. MS has very little to do with my day to day other than a little desktop support for my end users and is completely unessential for a CS major.
If religous zealots don't believe in Evolution, then why are they so worried about bird flu?
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.
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
Remember that CS is about teaching *concepts*
Agreed.
Also, I think it's important to note that at the school I go to, our main CS lab is all-Mac. In fact, they just replaced the iLamps with Intel iMacs.
Apple is a hardware company after all... But I don't think it was to 'sell some extra hardware' exactly. But more on the lines of making it easier for people to 'switch'.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
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.
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
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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).