24" iMac 2.8ghz for $850 a good deal?

[xheathen]

Just curious as I'm in the midst of switching to Mac from being a PC guy, I'm trying to get a bead on what would be a good deal. I was considering grabbing a 27" refurb that they have for $1299, or one of the 21.5" refurbs for $1099.

But I know a someone who is looking at selling their 24" iMac 2.8ghz with 4mb Ram / 500gig HD for $850. Does that sound like a good deal? Or should I keep my sights set on one the first option?

 

[UltimaLink]

What are the specs on your PC?

Also, post what you do on the computer, that could help too.

 

[mgridgaway]

Go for the 27" if you really want the extra real estate.

Go for the refurb 21" if you want something that'll be slightly faster than the 24" and has a 1 year warranty, expandable to 3 years.

Go for the 24" if you're ok with saving some money and having no warranty.

 

[xheathen]

I currently have a 2.6 quad AMD with 4mb of ddr 800 ram and a nvidia 9800 card.

What I'm doing is mainly photoshop, illustrator and normal stuff like documents, browsing, etc. I freelance web and graphics so it'll mainly be like web layouts with dreamweaver or coda, or somewhat large graphic files. Not really big into gaming - at most I might run something like Starcraft 2, but no big time FPSes.

I was kind of also considering buying one of the late 2009 mac mini's (2.53ghz model) and just hooking it up to my current monitor (it's a dell 24"). But I'm slightly worried about that system not being able to handle the applications I mentioned above. But the upside is that many of them have a year left to get applecard.

Is the warranty something that is absolutely essential?

 

[UltimaLink]

I currently have a 2.6 quad AMD with 4mb of ddr 800 ram and a nvidia 9800 card.

What I'm doing is mainly photoshop, illustrator and normal stuff like documents, browsing, etc. I freelance web and graphics so it'll mainly be like web layouts with dreamweaver or coda, or somewhat large graphic files. Not really big into gaming - at most I might run something like Starcraft 2, but no big time FPSes.

I was kind of also considering buying one of the late 2009 mac mini's (2.53ghz model) and just hooking it up to my current monitor (it's a dell 24"). But I'm slightly worried about that system not being able to handle the applications I mentioned above. But the upside is that many of them have a year left to get applecard.

Is the warranty something that is absolutely essential?

You have a Quad Core, don't downgrade. OS X may be faster, but if I were you I would go for a 27 inch with either an i5 quad core or the i7 if you can. It may be extra but you will feel some serious remorse if you get something that has lower power than your original computer.

 

[xheathen]

Well, I can say that the pc 2.8 core 2 duos out perform my processor by quite a margin. The amd processors are significantly slower so I'm not totally sure that I'll see a huge cut in power. But I think your point is taken where I shouldn't try and pick up anything with a lower performance than the 2.8s.