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PC user converting to Mac needs advice:

danielpicasso

danielpicasso

macrumors member
Original poster
All:

Your insight is wonderful on this forum and thank you in advance. I have not used a Mac since my Mac SE ( late 90's). I am ready to come back and own a small business that I will be using the Mac 100% of the time for my business. The iMac will be running Fusion with XP on it for my business.

A neighbor has a Mac consulting firm and gave me the quote below using a 3rd party hard drive & 3rd party memory. The alternative quote is from Apple.
My question is: What is your view of apple ram & hard drive versus 3rd party for a bigger hard drive and less money ( $76.21).
Apple quote:
iMac, 20-inch, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Custom 1 $ 1531.00
-2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 065-7618
-Apple Keyboard (English) + User's Guide 065-7638
-250GB Serial ATA Drive 065-7623
-Apple Mighty Mouse 065-7633
-Accessory kit 065-7644
-iWork '08 preinstalled 065-7553
-4GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 2x2GB 065-7622

*Subtotal $1531 with NJ tax = $1638.17

3rd party quote:
2.4ghz iMac + iLife + iwork: 1279.98 * 1.07 nj state tax = $1369.57

500gb Western Digital External Harddrive 94.99 * 1.07 nj state tax = 102.70
i4 GB OCZ Memory: 79.99 * 1.07 nj sales tax = $85.57

1369.57+106.81+85.59= $1561.96
 
If cost is a factor and you're going for the entry level iMac, you can always put in another 1Gb stick sourced through eBay and install this yourself. 2Gb of memory is enough for Fusion to run XP - I have the same set up on my 1.8Ghz Mac mini and it runs very smooth. 4Gb will be overkill. Spend the extra money on an external hard disk for Time Machine, again 250Gb or 320Gb will be enough for backup purposes.
 
Changing out the hard drives and memory do not break warranty because they are user service-able parts.
 
If cost is a factor and you're going for the entry level iMac, you can always put in another 1Gb stick sourced through eBay and install this yourself. 2Gb of memory is enough for Fusion to run XP - I have the same set up on my 1.8Ghz Mac mini and it runs very smooth. 4Gb will be overkill. Spend the extra money on an external hard disk for Time Machine, again 250Gb or 320Gb will be enough for backup purposes.
 
The current version of iMac, the HD is a bit tricky to replace, so you might want to get it from Apple.

Get ram elsewhere. Plenty of threads on that.
 
Get the hard drive upgrade from Apple, but not the RAM upgrade. They did drop the price of the RAM massively, but it's still overpriced IMO.
 
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