I just bought an imac for my parents and here are some things to think about:
1. If you buy them in the store they DO NOT come with leopard installed yet (they still have the leopard drop-in disk as of 11/17/07). However, the apple store employee told me they did have leopard installed - boy were they surprised. I don't know how comfortable they are with installing a new OS, but my apple store did it for them for free. This is also important because all the apple classes are taught on leopard machines and if they don't have leopard on their imac they will be confused I imagine.
2. I bought them the One-to-One training ($100) thinking they would never use it and they LOVE IT! They go every tuesday night at 8-9PM with the same person. My mother has very poor computer skills and she finds it very useful and the classes are making her much less afraid of technology and computers.
3. If you buy Pro Care (also $100) they will transfer your music, photos, email, etc. from the old computer to the new one and put them in front of the line if they have to bring it in for support or have a question answered (which I'm sure they will). It's pricey, but if you don't have the time to transfer the data yourself it's nice. I didn't get it for them, but just wanted to give you the heads up.
4. Buy applecare if you can afford it (get it on ebay - it seems strange but is legitimate if bought from a reputable dealer). My father put a mini-cd into the slot loader (in fairness to him the mini-CD did say it could be put into an imac) and that bought him a trip to the genius bar and although was self-inflicted, they still didn't charge him. He bought pro-care on his own and had the computer back in 2 days (vs. 10 for regular non-pro-care users).
5. I got them an external HD for time machine so now I don't have to worry about my mother losing her iphoto database (which might give her a heart attack). Of course, I put the photos on DVD as well for extra security when I did the transfer.
6. I set them up with an ichat account so that I could remotely fix their computer from my house using screen sharing. Haven't needed to use it yet as my dad just brings in the computer to the genius bar at the local apple store (now that he's a pro-care member) and they fix him up within a half hour, but I'm sure I'll be happy that I did this in the future.
7. I got them an imac with the upgraded graphics card (the 2600pro vs. the 2400) and those are known to have freezing issues. However, when the apple store installed leopard on it, they also did all the updates, including the one that fixes the freezing issue. But this won't be a problem if you buy the base 20" model as it has the non-freezing 2400 graphics card.
8. I bought them the wireless keyboard and mouse upgrade for $50. It makes the machine VERY sleek and my parents don't use that other half of the keyboard anyway. Once you see it in use without ANY cables it is a truly beautiful sight.
9. The most common problems (at least on these forums) are dead pixels and yellow screens. I suspect my parents' imac (after having stared at it in all lighting conditions for 20 minutes straight) MAY have a slight irregularity of the screen but definitely NOT noticeable to anyone but me (and only noticeable by me because I'm looking for it and may even be imagining it). They use the imac primarily to view pictures in the kitchen and it is serving this purpose beautifully. No one can tell that anything is wrong and everyone who sees it is in love with it so don't believe these forums about the evil screens of the imacs, they are truly beautiful!
10. If the price of all the "extras" is too much, might I suggest having other siblings purchase them as other gifts for them?
My parents LOVE their new iMac and I think you will make them very happy. Congratulations!
EDIT: One more thing I forgot - Get them an extra gigabyte of RAM either online from ebay or just from apple themselves. You need DDR2 PC-5300 Memory SO-DIMMs (you can see the exact specifications from
www.crucial.com) - the best companies are crucial, kingston, mushkin, and corsair. Apple memory is good stuff from Samsung. It is $150 but will really extend the life of the machine and is the easiest way to go. If you buy it in the apple store they will install it for free right there (probably when you ask them to install leopard would be the most useful time).
store, you can also give them the gift of One-to-One training, one hour a week for a year, for $99. Thinking of doing the same for my in-laws as well, although I'll probably go with the MacBook.
