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iMac for £500 good value?

D

DaveLicky

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 9, 2012
11
0
Hello all.

I have been offered a friend's 2008 24" iMac for £500. The specs are: 2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR2 RAM, ATi Radeon 2600, brand new 500GB hard drive.

Knowing the chap well, I know it will have been taken good care of.

Is this a reasonable price?

All I really want it for is to run logic pro, final cut and some photo editing. Would this spec be sufficient?

Cheers
 
I'd say that's a good deal. I've got a 2008 20" iMac, 2.66 Ghz 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD and these generally go for around £500 I believe, so 500GB HDD, 2.8Ghz and 24" screen, I'd go for it.
 
Ps. If you're going to run those programs I'd upgrade the RAM. This can be done cheaply and on these '08 models you can put in up to 6GB (although Apple only says 4GB, 6 is possible). I upped mine from 2 to 4 last year from Crucial.com. It's really easy, all you have to do is unscrew the panel at the bottom, pop out the old memory and slip in the new. 2 minute job.
 
DaveLicky said:
Hello all.

I have been offered a friend's 2008 24" iMac for £500. The specs are: 2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR2 RAM, ATi Radeon 2600, brand new 500GB hard drive.

Knowing the chap well, I know it will have been taken good care of.

Is this a reasonable price?

All I really want it for is to run logic pro, final cut and some photo editing. Would this spec be sufficient?

Cheers
Click to expand...

I don't know why anyone would pay 500 pounds for a 4 year old computer.

If you are doing any heavy final cut or photo editing the computer will be quite pathetic compared to a modern computer. Like 30-40% the speed. I bet a macbook air would run circles around it.
 
Just to reiterate. If mac2sell is quoting 470, I would not even buy it at that price. If you can get it down to 420 or even 400 flat, then maybe.
 
I've got an early 2008 with a similar spec but have 4 GB Ram and a 1 TB drive. I've got 'dust' on the screen that cannot be removed and the colours are starting to yellow. It's very slow video editing using Premiere Pro CS6. ( PPCS6 says a minimum of 8 GB RAM).I've been waiting to buy a new iMac with a better video card and hopefully USB3.0 for months now. When I do, I'll not even try to sell this one, just mothball it or leave it for visitors to use.
I'd suggest you look at any other modern Mac if you can afford it.
 
msg362 said:
I've got an early 2008 with a similar spec but have 4 GB Ram and a 1 TB drive. I've got 'dust' on the screen that cannot be removed and the colours are starting to yellow. It's very slow video editing using Premiere Pro CS6. ( PPCS6 says a minimum of 8 GB RAM).I've been waiting to buy a new iMac with a better video card and hopefully USB3.0 for months now. When I do, I'll not even try to sell this one, just mothball it or leave it for visitors to use.
I'd suggest you look at any other modern Mac if you can afford it.
Click to expand...

You'll always be able to get *something* for it. There may be parts people need. If you don't need the extra $2-300, then yeah, leave it. (or donate it somewhere that might be able to use it). But don't think that they're not worth at least a bit.
 
There isn't a good way to determine how much life the thing has left. The 24" imac display isn't that great. Like all displays, it will discolor with age. Four years on a display is nearing typical retirement age. It's possible to use them much longer, but you're much better off with something that doesn't have a ton of hours on it. The 24" imacs commonly had the purple splotchy edges and image persistence issues later in their life cycles. You'd want to ensure this one doesn't use one of them. The cpu would be slower than anything newer. You'd be better off with a newer mini + any decent display on the market than an older imac. A 2012 mini would be even better once they hit. This would cost a little more, but you're looking at picking up a computer today that is close to retirement age. If you were the original owner and it still performed okay, I'd say keep using it. I just don't think it's a good buy today for the next several years. Overall it won't run the current versions of these programs much longer, assuming it does today.
 
So, it's sounding like not such a brilliant deal after all. Thanks for all the feedback.
 
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