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Help me become sane again--please.

P

pcpacker

macrumors member
Original poster
This forum is awesome by the way.

I have exhausted every avenue I can think of to get the best deal on my soon to own Imac g5 20".

I cannot feel good about the edu. discount even though I "almost" qualify. I have decided that I should buy through someone other than apple directly. My problem is, I would really like to get 2 matching 512 dimms of ram (probably from Crucial), and the 250 gig HD. The ram is easy, but what about the hard drive if I order from somewhere like amazon? As far as I can tell, I can only get the regular out of the box system without the larger HD, and without bluetooth, etc.

Please advise. I will order tomorrow.
 
dav said:
PCP Packer,

Tell us about your EDU discount situation...
Click to expand...

Isn't it obvious? He's not eligible.

Don't take this great thing away from those of us who are, pal. Be fair.
 
I am a fairly recent grad. The apple site mentions that people who homeschool, or work for a "profit or nonprofit" preschool qualify. My sister in law owns a profit preschool, and my wife helps often. The fact is, the preschool is not in my home, I don't officially homeschool, and although I will use the Mac for educating my three young children, I don't think that this situation is what Apple has in mind for the discount. Besides, the current rebate at Amazon is close to the same discount. I just don't think you can build to order at Amazon.
 
If you're looking to trim the fat on your purchase, you can always buy a fairly bare-bones 20" system then add on later. That is, if you're not going to be filling up the 250GB hard drive, get the standard one and add an external firewire later, which will likely give you something just as fast, and more flexible. And you can always add RAM from crucial or somewhere else anytime.

That way you can buy the standard from Amazon with the rebate, then upgrade as the wallet permits.

Really, the only things you can't add on (easily) later are the hard drive and a bluetooth module. Everything else is pretty simple. I may even be incorrect about installing a larger hard drive, since I don't have the newer iMac...
 
emw said:
If you're looking to trim the fat on your purchase, you can always buy a fairly bare-bones 20" system then add on later. That is, if you're not going to be filling up the 250GB hard drive, get the standard one and add an external firewire later, which will likely give you something just as fast, and more flexible. And you can always add RAM from crucial or somewhere else anytime.

That way you can buy the standard from Amazon with the rebate, then upgrade as the wallet permits.

Really, the only things you can't add on (easily) later are the hard drive and a bluetooth module. Everything else is pretty simple. I may even be incorrect about installing a larger hard drive, since I don't have the newer iMac...
Click to expand...

Thank you for your advice. That was very helpful. Is the firewire 400 fast enough for an exterior hard drive? That sounds like a great idea if it is.
 
Fast

Firewire 400 is plenty fast for an external.

I have one I use to edit videos with and have had no problems.
 
I wouldn't do the edu thing, because they can call to check. Amazon is ok, but I like PowerMax. No rebates that I know of, but they'll often throw in some extras and no tax because they are in OR. Not sure about their shipping, the iPod I bought from them was cheap to ship, but it's small. But the best part is they will do a build to order. Most good resellers would.

If you want to go through Amazon, that could work too. Then buy Crucial RAM and a 250GB serial drive from Newgg and add them yourself. The drive is just as easy to add as RAM is, and that's pretty easy. Then sell the hd and 256MB on eBay.
 
Thanks again everyone.

I will probably not go with Amazon. I couldn't even find a phone number to call, so that I could talk to a real person. I will check out Powermax right now.
 
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