Some Buying Tips and Advice Needed

[gaelan]

In the market for my first mac in ~13 years. Mainly will be used for surfing, email, word processing and managing photos and music. The budget is $1000 give or take $100-$200. Currently I have a LCD that is fairly up to date. The rest of my gear is 20th century, so a m&kb upgrade will occur with any mac purchase...external speakers will also be added at some point. Here are my thoughts:

Imac:
PRO: solid desktop. good for the kiddies since it has no moving parts, although it might be mistaken for a dry erase board I can see much fun being had with photobooth. Currently good bang for the buck.

CON: not upgradeable except for RAM which is a huge change from what i'm used to. 2 LCDs? Lots of deskspace will be lost for the gain in screen real estate which is somewhat unnecessary for my intents and purposes. Are 2 LCDs in this situation redundant?

Macbook:
PRO: Looks cool. Never know when you might need the mobility. Pretty good bang for buck considering. Can operate in clamshell with my current LCD. Can surf from the couch. Like the idea of having a laptop.

CON: Don't really need mobility at this point. I have little kids, and macbook looks fragile (read: movable/hinged parts). Is it feasible to use macbook as desktop replacement? Feel like I might be paying a premium for a mobile platform that isn't really needed. Will not be able to conentrate on work at the office knowing that the macbook is alone with the kids during the day. Will want to buy m&kb for the kids use.

Mac Mini:
PRO: Small footprint. Nice form factor. Somewhat upgradeable. PRICE...kinda (see cons). Can use the money saved to buy speakers and upgrade RAM and buy new m&kb.

CON: Not much bang for all the buck...too close to the Imac and Macbook in price but nowhere near in specs. Will probably need an external HDD and dvd burner.

Well looking back over what I've written, it sounds like Imac is the way to go. If the Mac Mini would catch up in specs and go down in price a little, I'd like to go that route but right now it isn't a good deal.

Please throw out any important points I may have missed and thanks for the input.

 

[phungy]

I use my MB with an external display but I needed the portability for classes else I would have gone with an iMac. If you feel the dual display is redundant then I'd sell the external and use it towards a better processor/graphics card for the iMac. I'm going to say get the iMac since you stated portability isn't an issue here. I suggest waiting another month for the new iMacs unless you need it ASAP.

My parents are actually going through this same decision now. I've convinced them to sell the desktop PC and LCD display for a 20" iMac but told them to wait another month since the iMacs are suppose to receive an update.

 

[Igantius]

From what you've said your needs are, the MacBook would be an excellent desktop replacement. However, I would wait for the next iMac update and decide then.

 

[Dynamyk]

For your needs the Macbook is more than enough, and you may not think you need portability but it really comes in handy sometimes .

 

[richard4339]

It may not be as "cost effective", but I don't think you'd be bad off with a Mini. You're not wanting to do anything that's going to be overly taxing, and you already said you have a monitor and stuff.

 

[gaelan]

I think the inclusion of m&kb, faster HDD, dedicated graphics (although weak) and the fact that portability isn't a big deal make the Imac more suitable for my needs. Although if they adjust the Mac Mini line in a positive direction, I may be posting more questions in here. Now just gotta wait for mid june announcements.

 

[Squonk]

Now just gotta wait for mid june announcements.

Yep, that's the hard part. I'm in the waiting game too...