My iMac is roasted, questions about Refurbs...

[Black Diesel]

My 2008 iMac died tonight so i have a couple questions about refurbs:

1. is this 27" 3.4Ghz i7 iMac refurb a decent deal for $1869?

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FD063LL/A

2. My 2008 was running Leopard (it would always fail to install Snow Leopard, so I only had Leopard on it). If the new iMac refurb comes with Lion, how do I restore my Leopard OSX from time machine on the new Lion machine? Could I just put the Snow Leopard disc in the Lion machine and install Snow Leopard on it and then restore from that?

thanks for your help

 

[fastlanephil]

1. It's better than paying for a new one.

2. You can't install an older OS than the one that ships with the Mac.

How did your iMac die?

 

[cyclotron451]

1. is this 27" 3.4Ghz i7 iMac refurb a decent deal for $1869?

In Europe this FD063 model Refurb iMac is around U$ 2278 (mostly because of sales tax) I'd like to buy one too, but I'm hesitating. I'm actually going to wait until the iPhone/iMac/iPad/AeBS/??? quintuple announcement to see if the new 27" iMac spec is given. The new ivy-bridge CPU/GPU and likely SSD choices might mean that it's better to buy new than refurb. (I have bought many Mac refurbs in the past and been happy) I think a 'new' thinner 27" iMac I can live without, but if the superfast SSD system partition is more affordable/integrated then I'd prefer a new iMac over the 'old' quadcore i5 or i7.

2... how do I restore my Leopard OSX from time machine on the new Lion machine?

With a new or refurb iMac (both will most likely be on ML 10.8.1) after first booting you'll be asked during the setup if you wish to copy account information/user-data/machine setup from a connected USB drive or TC. If you say YES, then it might take some hours, but you'd get a fairly seamless transition. Some apps definitely won't make the upgrade from 10.5 to 10.8, so just concentrate on your user partition. Your old iMac data is probably preserved intact on your old 250GB HDD if it wasn't the HDD that failed. If it was just the HDD that failed then it's quite easy to upgrade - my old iMac has an internal 1.5TB upgrade.

 

[Black Diesel]

Guys,

This is what my iMac does when I boot it up, it makes all these crazy flickering patterns/lines through the display and then eventually freezes up. Is this the graphics card, hard drive, ???

Thanks

 

[fastlanephil]

Guys,

This is what my iMac does when I boot it up, it makes all these crazy flickering patterns/lines through the display and then eventually freezes up. Is this the graphics card, hard drive, ???

Thanks

It sounds like the graphic card went bad.

I think you can replace the video card, which includes the heat sink, on certain iMacs but they are about $300 used if you can find one and it's a difficult repair.

 

[Orange Furball]

If you buy a new machine you can use migration assistant to transfer your stuff over to the new machine

 

[plucky duck]

Guys,

This is what my iMac does when I boot it up, it makes all these crazy flickering patterns/lines through the display and then eventually freezes up. Is this the graphics card, hard drive, ???

Thanks

I doubt a HD issue would affect graphical output, more likely the graphics card. If you're looking for an excuse getting a new iMac now would be a great time, or if using your old iMac doesn't make you puke and the cost of graphics card replacement is within reason I'd look into that instead.

 

[Lancer]

Wait 24 hours, Apple might be announcing a new iMac Wednesday in the US.

 

[Stetrain]

As said above it's probably best to wait until after the announcement tomorrow just in case.

Based on the current prices and refurbs, I actually think this one is the best deal at $1659:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC814LL/A

Sure the processor isn't clocked quite as high as the $1869 model, but it's still going to scream compared to your 2008 model.

The new price on that one is $1999, so $1659 is a pretty good price.

 

[Yebubbleman]

My 2008 iMac died tonight so i have a couple questions about refurbs:

1. is this 27" 3.4Ghz i7 iMac refurb a decent deal for $1869?

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FD063LL/A

2. My 2008 was running Leopard (it would always fail to install Snow Leopard, so I only had Leopard on it). If the new iMac refurb comes with Lion, how do I restore my Leopard OSX from time machine on the new Lion machine? Could I just put the Snow Leopard disc in the Lion machine and install Snow Leopard on it and then restore from that?

thanks for your help

1. It's a decent deal alright; frankly, I think the current iMac design is a little more failure-prone than the iMac that you just had die on you; I'd go with either the 2.8GHz Quad-core Xeon Mac Pro for the same price or a brand new maxed out higher-end Mac mini; though in both cases, you might not have as powerful of a Mac; but you'd definitely have a much more reliable Mac for sure.

2. Lion and Mountain Lion (and I think even Snow Leopard too) will let you migrate from a Time Machine back-up using the Migration Assistant; you're all good in the hood.

 

[Black Diesel]

Thanks everyone for the info it sounds like I'm okay as long as I have everything backed up in time machine. I'm hoping for a new release soon otherwise I'm going to have to buy a refurb.

 

[fastlanephil]

Unless you're running multi-processor aware applications such as Logic Pro 9 the 2.7 i5 is actually faster than the 3.1 i5 processor because when only one processor is working Turbo Boost increases the 2.7 GHZ i5 to 3.7 GHZ and the 3.1 GHZ i5 to just 3.4 GHZ.

Not many applications are MP aware and very few use the i7's Multi-Threading feature so it's worth checking that out so that you don't spend money on hardware features you won't utilize.