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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.
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.
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.
Except that, as even a modest gaming rig, it's entirely uninspiring, largely thanks to the graphics chip. As the GMA 950 lacks support for things like T&L and vertex shaders, it's not going to cut it for most modern games. And since it draws from main system memory, the fact that the system is shipping with only 512MB (even granted the fact that it's expanadable to 2GB) is going to be a problem, as well. It seems extremely unlikely to me that this is going to set anyone's world on fire. It certainly won't bomb, but I don't really think it's going to expand much beyond the original eMac niche.
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."
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?
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.
$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!
I spend so much time in MATLAB that if my use of it had to be comfined to the lab, I would go out of mind. It's not just one part of the year. It's constant. Nearly day in and day out.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
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
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.