Potential deal on used IMACG4 - Advice, anyone?

[cluelessila]

I am new to buying computers. I found a deal on a used G4 Imac
Price: $1000.
17 inch monitor
Only 1 ghz. Apple doesn't even sell these anymore.
250 mb ram
80gb hard drive
DVD and CD burner.
5 months left on the warranty.

I am an amateur digital photographer and I would be buying this computer to store my photos and make dvds to send to my family.
Other than word, I can't see myself using it for anything else.

I can wait three months. Should I? I have a hard time thinking I'll get anything in this price range even in three months but what do I know?

Anyone?

 

[gopher]

I am new to buying computers. I found a deal on a used G4 Imac
Price: $1000.
17 inch monitor
Only 1 ghz. Apple doesn't even sell these anymore.
250 mb ram
80gb hard drive
DVD and CD burner.
5 months left on the warranty.

I am an amateur digital photographer and I would be buying this computer to store my photos and make dvds to send to my family.
Other than word, I can't see myself using it for anything else.

I can wait three months. Should I? I have a hard time thinking I'll get anything in this price range even in three months but what do I know?

Anyone?

Any deal which is too good to be true should be avoided. There have been many fraudulant auctions for Macs on eBay as Macintouch found out:

http://www.macintouch.com/fraudreports9.html

Go with one of these dealers if you want a used/refurbished Mac:

http://www.macmaps.com/usedrefurbished.html

And yes the Superdrive models of the iMac are great for the purpose you want.

When making DVDs to send to your family, find out if any of them are using PCs. For them you might find it better to burn an ISO-9660 CD-ROM than using the direct method of burning data from iPhoto. The software called Toast gives you that ability.

 

[cluelessila]

Thanks. Follow-up questions.

Thanks so much for the advice.

Let me follow up. He said I could check it out personally. Is there any way I could test it to see if it works? Some tricks of the trade to confirm the machine is okay?
Plus, if it is under warranty, won't I still be protected if there is anything wrong with it.

 

[cluelessila]

Burning DVDs

Wait, I though I could just burn DVDs from the Imac. Why would I burn it on to CDs if I can burn it on to a DVD?

Thanks.

 

[cubist]

He means you could write data CD-Rs with the image files on them (JPEG files) so they can look at them on the PC in higher resolution.
You don't need Toast for that.

I recently did a slide show of stills onto a DVD. I used "Ken Burns effect" on each one of them, in iMovie. It came out very good. I also did a Video CD (which plays in DVD players) using Toast, but it was very grainy-looking. Neither process was very fast - in fact, the process took hours - but the DVD was very nice.