Should apple make a 15" (wide) iMac for edu

[EJBasile]

Hi everyone.
I was thinking about this today. Shouldn't apple make a 15" LCD widescreen iMac for education. 15" wide is a reasonable viewing area. Have it come with maybe a CD or DVD drive. You might be saying all the hardware wouldn't fit in the computer so I would suggest having it maybe a little thicker and and maybe a wider bezel. If you can get the 17" w/o a CD drive for $1099 they should make the 15" with CD for maybe $850-$1200ish. I think it would be more popular than the 17". Cheaper, more space saving design than emac. If teachers had no CD drive like in the $1099 iMac i think they would dislike that beacuse say if they wanted to get files from a student- cd is pretty much the most popular form of large data transfer for the average person. Also say if you had a computer lab full of computers with no CD drive how would people get data disks say word files except going to a computer with CD.

So i think apple should have..

1)
15" iMac
1.6ghz g5
256mb ram
40gb hard drive
CD drive
$850
ideal use: word processing, internet

2)
15" iMac
1.6ghz
256mb ram
40gb hd
Combo Drive
$900-$950
ideal use: uses above + powerpoints and spreadsheets

3)
15" iMac
1.6ghz-1.8ghz
256mb Ram
60gb
SuperDrive
$1050-$1200
ideal use: uses above+ multimedia (tech classes), the whole iLife


Option 1 or 2 would be good in school computer labs or libraries
Option 2 or 3 would be good to have in tech labs and maybe 1 or 2 in a library



What do you think?

 

[Mudbug]

I think you're probably describing the natural evolution of the eMac, however I think you're probably a year or so ahead of the actual move to it. But I doubt you'll see another 15" screen from Apple - even though it's only 2" bigger, 17" monitors offer a lot more usable screen real estate and better the usability of the machine quite a bit.

 

[musicpyrite]

Do you really need a 1.6 GHz 64 bit processor to do internet, word processing, spread sheet and iLife? No. In the next town over, the school system just bought 3.0 GHz Pentium IV Dell computers and the most they are ever going to be used for is spread sheet when the office ladies want to work with numbers.

Too bad my school system doesn't have money to buy 3.0 GHz computers (even if they are Dells). At our school we use PII W/ MMX for word processing, G3 233-600 MHz iMacs for the internet, and Pentium IV 1.7 GHz (with 19" flat screen CTR monitors) for graphic design.

 

[EJBasile]

I think you're probably describing the natural evolution of the eMac, however I think you're probably a year or so ahead of the actual move to it. But I doubt you'll see another 15" screen from Apple - even though it's only 2" bigger, 17" monitors offer a lot more usable screen real estate and better the usability of the machine quite a bit.

I suggest that they use the 15" from the powerbook. This would be students were talking about, not full time users.

 

[stoid]

I don't know if it's a matter of market, I think that the problem would lie in the design of the thing. They are already having enough trouble fitting the G5 guts into the 17 inch chassis, as evident by the extra space below the actual screen. I don't think that they could even fit all the computer stuff into an enclosure 15 inches.

 

[Dr. Dastardly]

They already have a $1099 iMac for schools.

Linky Poo

 

[Abstract]

Hi everyone.
I was thinking about this today. Shouldn't apple make a 15" LCD widescreen iMac for education. 15" wide is a reasonable viewing area. Have it come with maybe a CD or DVD drive. You might be saying all the hardware wouldn't fit in the computer so I would suggest having it maybe a little thicker and and maybe a wider bezel. If you can get the 17" w/o a CD drive for $1099 they should make the 15" with CD for maybe $850-$1200ish. I think it would be more popular than the 17". Cheaper, more space saving design than emac. If teachers had no CD drive like in the $1099 iMac i think they would dislike that beacuse say if they wanted to get files from a student- cd is pretty much the most popular form of large data transfer for the average person. Also say if you had a computer lab full of computers with no CD drive how would people get data disks say word files except going to a computer with CD.

So i think apple should have..

1)
15" iMac
1.6ghz g5
256mb ram
40gb hard drive
CD drive
$850
ideal use: word processing, internet

2)
15" iMac
1.6ghz
256mb ram
40gb hd
Combo Drive
$900-$950
ideal use: uses above + powerpoints and spreadsheets

3)
15" iMac
1.6ghz-1.8ghz
256mb Ram
60gb
SuperDrive
$1050-$1200
ideal use: uses above+ multimedia (tech classes), the whole iLife


Option 1 or 2 would be good in school computer labs or libraries
Option 2 or 3 would be good to have in tech labs and maybe 1 or 2 in a library



What do you think?

Firstly, why was this posted in this forum?

Secondly, why would Apple go and manufacture a 3rd frame size? Another manufacturing line for the new 15" frame, and the fact that the 17" frame isn't used as often, would raise costs for every consumer. Although the 15" LCD's won't cost more than it should due to bulk buying for the 15" PB, they need to be shipped to the factory where the iMacs are made, assuming they're made in a different factory. It's probably cheaper to just use the 17" frame and LCD.

The size of the 15" frame may also prevent them from fitting everything in there. You suggested making the frame thicker, but that's quite unacceptable. Why would they go through the engineering of rearranging all the innards of an iMac to fit in a frame with a smaller face/area, but made thicker to compensate? It may take different parts to hold the components in place along the width of the frame instead of along the length of the 17" monitor, and the motherboard is probably made a certain size specific to the 17" iMacs, while the 20" gets some extra space.