Early-2009 20" iMac 2.66Ghz

I'd check mac2sell.com for a rough idea of what you should be paying.

not bad, seem alike a decent investment. Slap in some more ram 4-8GB maybe toss in a better hard drive or SSD and you're set.
Though i'm not sure if it matters but a refurb 21" iMac is 999$ double that cost but with more power and punch if you want to do longer term productivity.

ThirteenXIII said:

Looking at a preformed early 2009 iMac 20" 2.66Ghz 320GB 2GB ram, AppleCare until January 2013.
They're selling it for $500 - is this a fair price for this generation of iMacs?

I'm probably going to throw in a SSD or 3TB 7200RPM drive depending and 4gb ram.

Well be used for some photoshop, dreams eager, light final cut edits, etc

Any really known issues with these at all?


Thanks

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That is my current machine that I purchased in March of 2009 and I have had no issues except for the hdd failing. That of course was covered by AppleCare and halfway through AppleCare I had a new hard drive. I think $500 is a great deal since I was selling mine for $700 and was offered $600 for it with the same configuration. I do have all of the original accessories and box though, so if that's not the case with the one you're looking at, then I would offer less.I decided not to sell it though and glad that I didn't because it is still a great machine. And instead of installing a new HDD or SSD, just use a firewire external and put in 8GB of RAM. I will keep this Mac until it dies.

EDIT: I am also running the most up-to-date version of OS X Lion and use it as my media hub streaming it to all my other devices.

If you're upgrading ram, you should just max it considering the price difference is negligible. If you are going to run Lion (and soon Mountain Lion), I'd suggest this even more.

By the way, macofalltrades says around $600-650 on a 2008 with similar specs (also core 2 duo, clocked the same, not sure if it's the same cpu model). What I like about this one is the warranty, although I'd verify with a serial before purchasing. That seems pretty high for an '08 to me, but yours sounds pretty good as long as the display is still in good condition, and the backlight is relatively even.