Thinking of buying a new Mac! With my educational discount I can buy a Imac for around $1750 or I can buy a G4 1.25 with a 17" apple flat screen for around $1800. I use iphoto, play games once in a while, wordprocessing, itunes, and would like to get a video camera at some point. What would be the better buy?
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17 Imac or G4 Tower 1.25
- Thread starter mlwx
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For the extra $50 I'd go with the PowerMac. It is more expandable and will therefore be a better machine in the long run.
Unless, of course, you like the design of the iMac. If this is true I really can't blame you.
Unless, of course, you like the design of the iMac. If this is true I really can't blame you.
Did you say games? The Flat Panel iMac 17" 2003 model is limited to 64 MB of VRAM, the 15" is 32 MB of VRAM, and the 17" 2002 model is only 32 MB of VRAM. And that's not upgradable on the iMac. It is on the PowerMac. If you are into heavy graphics games, you may want more. I know some people who are. The only disadvantage to the PowerMac is that it does not include Appleworks, which is an extra $80 and possibly cheaper for students. Look at the prices here to see what bundles you can get:
http://www.macprices.com/
http://www.macprices.com/
the imac also has a superdrive too. I prefer the widescreen over the 17" studio display.. but I would prolly go with the powermac.
I too prefer the the 17" widescreen over the standard screen. It seems that there is more "usable" space with the widescreen. I went through a similar dilema with the 1GHz powermac last february. I decided to get the iMac 17" 1GHz fully loaded. This gave me more features than I could have afforded with the powermac at the time. I was able to have bluetooth and airport extreme. Also, the superdrive is very handy. Don't forget about the apple pro speakers. Those are quite nice as well. Like iJon said...the iMac has a certain "wow" factor to it. I am happy with it.
I agree, I love my 15" with Superdrive model, and have played with the 17" model before. There is a certain friendliness to those machines that never wears off.
Get iMac. It has wide screen, takes up less room, and just as capable as Power Mac. If you are worried about expandability or upgrading graphics card, don't worry. By the time you need to update the graphics card, you'll probably need a new computer anyway.