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20" imac 5,1 worth buying?

H

heliocentric

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Original poster
Nov 26, 2008
385
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This model - http://support.apple.com/kb/SP28

Are these c2d models still worth buying? or is worth trying to save up for a later c2d model? I am on a very tight budget...

I have been looking on ebay and these seem to be in my price range.

Going to use it mainly for music production, web surfing, watching videos.

Is it worth looking for one with 256vram (not the typical 128vram) or would that not be noticeable?

Read reports of them running Lion with no problems, also like the idea of a matte screen.

Thanks
 
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logic doesnt run on a pc though :( plus i cant stand windows!

im not sure im confident enough to build a hackintosh... :confused:
 
heliocentric said:
logic doesnt run on a pc though :( plus i cant stand windows!

im not sure im confident enough to build a hackintosh... :confused:
Click to expand...

If you have any friends who have the know-how, I'm sure they'd be willing to help (building stuff is fun, especially when you aren't footing the bill :p).
 
It depends on the price. I just bought the model you're talking about for $200. For that price, it's a perfectly good Lion-capable machine. I wouldn't pay $400 for one, though. (Which seems to be the more common going price.)
 
I disagree. We have tons of 1.83GHz C2D white iMacs with GMA950 and 2GB RAM at our school that run just fine. Make sure you are running 10.6.8 - believe it or not, that update made a big difference in our white iMacs. My regular, every day Mac is a 2.26GHz 20" education model aluminum iMac. At home, I used to have a 2.0GHz 17" white one with 3GB RAM and 128MB X1600. It was perfectly fine for everything except video rendering.

If you can get a deal, those white iMacs are still very serviceable. I wouldn't pay over $450 or so, though, and that would be for a fully upgraded model.

Anonymous Freak said:
It depends on the price. I just bought the model you're talking about for $200. For that price, it's a perfectly good Lion-capable machine. I wouldn't pay $400 for one, though. (Which seems to be the more common going price.)
Click to expand...

Where'd you get one for $200? I'd buy one for myself in a heartbeat for that price; I don't have a Mac desktop right now and have been thinking of building a hackintosh myself...
 
thanks for your input :)

im in the UK so im not sure how the dollar prices transfer over to pounds?

things generally seem to cost a bit more in the uk...

all the models i have looked at on ebay are going for around £300-£350 which is in the $500 dollar area
 
I still use one of these on a daily basis, mostly for web surfing and running a virtual machine. It's plenty fast for that stuff. Plus the screen is still as good as pretty much anything else out there.

If it's your only computer it probably won't feel slow, but if you spend much time at fast computers you'll notice it's old. Still, for not a lot of money you're getting a nice screen and a perfectly adequate computer.
 
at the moment im using a windows 7 laptop with a intel celeron m 900 cpu so it would probably feel like a massive step up...
 
Do yourself a favour and don't upgrade to Lion. It needs a lot or RAM to run well, and the max of 3GB running lion and doing your logic stuff isn't going to be a nice experience. use snow leopard, you can still buy it from the apple online store.
Otherwise they are still great machines
 
The-Pro said:
Do yourself a favour and don't upgrade to Lion. It needs a lot or RAM to run well, and the max of 3GB running lion and doing your logic stuff isn't going to be a nice experience. use snow leopard, you can still buy it from the apple online store.
Otherwise they are still great machines
Click to expand...

ok thanks for the advice!

just need tro find one for the right price...their are lots on ebay

Although i am still tempted by a hackintosh...not sure i could build one as quiet or as pretty as a real mac
 
heliocentric said:
Although i am still tempted by a hackintosh...not sure i could build one as quiet or as pretty as a real mac
Click to expand...

Yeh thats impossible :D and from what I hear hackintoshes are a pain in the ass to maintain. An OS update and the whole thing can stop working etc.
Question: will this be a machine you earn money with? or just for fun?
I dont advise any one on getting a hackintosh for business purposes. Think if you have a deadline and then it just stops working, you might not be able to get it working again in time. It would really suck!
 
its not to earn money no...

just searching through ebay now to find a decently priced one! It's hard, people over pay for apple it seems. Good for the seller, not so good for the buyer :p
 
heliocentric said:
its not to earn money no...

just searching through ebay now to find a decently priced one! It's hard, people over pay for apple it seems. Good for the seller, not so good for the buyer :p
Click to expand...

ah ok, then its fine if you want the hassle :D

Yeh macs have a high resale value, its hard to even find a G4 iMac for a hundred. Patience laddy, keep an eye out for them over the next 2 weeks, also check craigslist, stuff seems to sell a lot cheaper there
 
heliocentric said:
Although i am still tempted by a hackintosh...not sure i could build one as quiet or as pretty as a real mac
Click to expand...

I am currently trying the hackintosh route for the THIRD time. I've yet to have success (though every time I've tried it, I've used old hardware I had lying around, rather than build from a list of known working hardware). I'm currently trying my best to get a Dell Optiplex GX620 up and running with Snow Leopard - I haven't even made it to the installer yet, lol.

Point of it all is that I'm a very techy person and have had some issues with the hackintosh route - only go there if you plan to meticulously maintain it. :)
 
js81 said:
Where'd you get one for $200? I'd buy one for myself in a heartbeat for that price; I don't have a Mac desktop right now and have been thinking of building a hackintosh myself...
Click to expand...

Almost got one of those edu-models you mention for $200, but that fell through. Thankfully, this one appeared on Craigslist just a week later. It was a business selling off their older systems, and this one has some vertical lines in the LCD. Not a big deal to me, as I had been planning on using it with an external display - which works just fine. I'm glad I got the X1600 model as opposed to the GMA 950 model, though. Some things are just too painfully slow on GMA. (I also have a MacBook and a MacBook Pro, each with 2.0 GHz Core Duo and 2 GB RAM. So aside from the hard drives (MB has been upgraded, MBP hasn't,) the only real difference is GPU. It is a big difference.)
 
Anonymous Freak said:
the only real difference is GPU. It is a big difference.)
Click to expand...

ABSOLUTELY! My two "Macs" are an early '09 MBP with the Geforce 9400m and my Hackin-Dell (yes, I got it working!) with the GMA950...........................................................................

I am currently in the market for a cheap but hack-compatible graphics card. :D
 
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