... to another Mac lover's open arms.
Wow, it's been a week of welcomes for Katie and I. First, we welcomed Jen to our family (and so have a couple other people in the comments to that post). Now, we are welcoming a new computer to our household.
I teased you a bit yesterday saying that I would have more information about our trip to The Apple Store in Chicago, remember? Well, that "more information" is our new purchase... a shiny, "refreshed" G5 iMac. It is soooooo pretty.
Katie and I have been wanting to get a new computer for some time now. My computer at work has been bogged down with personal files that I've been really anxious to remove from the harddrive, but have had no place to which I could move them. My pBook only has a 6GB harddrive and I have nearly that amount in just digicam photos. Forget the fact that I have 35GB of MP3s. So, yes, we've been talking about it for some time, but were unsure when, or if, we could actually do it.
But, yesterday, we did it. We took the plunge. We found our iMac.
I said it's a "refreshed" one, which was terminology I was not accustomed to when dealing with purchasing computers. According to the Apple sales guy who helped us, here's the classification structure:
- "new" - duh;
- "refurbished" - returned with a problem but rebuilt from scratch and good as new;
- "refreshed" - opened, but returned without a problem.
Apparently, our computer was the victim of "buyer's remorse" or so the tag says on the side of it. How anybody could have buyer's remorse with such a beautiful little piece of machinery is beyond me. But, the Apple techs rebuilt it anyway so it worked like a brand-new computer and it's still subject to all of Apple's warranties and we purchased the three-year AppleCare extended service plan on top of that.
Because it was "refreshed," the price was cut from $1,500 to $1,150. However, they marked it down even more before we got there and we walked out with a $1.5 K computer for only $900. Of course, the warranty did up the price a bit. But that's not so bad.
Here are some of the specs:
- 17" display
- 2 gig processor
- 160GB harddrive
- OS X.4 Tiger
- iLife installed
- Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
- 512MB RAM
Honestly, all we saw when looking at the thing upon purchase was the 17" display, 2 gig processor, and the harddrive. I didn't even know how much RAM was on it or that it was Tiger as the operating system. You would think I would look into this. However, considering the price we were being offered, I knew that upgrading the RAM and the OS would be minimal.
Anything we had priced through Apple's online store in the refurbished area was a minimum of $1,150 and, while they were all 20" jobbers, they only had 1.4-1.8 gig processors. Having a 2 gig processor was a big selling point for me. And, seeing how big the 17" display is makes me fear that a 20" display would be far too big and impractical.
No, this is not the new generation of iMacs with the iSight camera built in or the remote control with the Apple media center software. Honestly, I could care less about either of those.
However, when we opened the box and Katie pulled out a mouse and keyboard that had no wires, well, that was just icing on the cake. I've never played with these types of keyboards and mice before, but it's soooo nice. And then, before we fired it up, I found the CDs that said OS 10.4 and I just knew we made a great purchase.
We turned it on and had some fun.
Now, I'm sitting on my work computer typing this as I back up my MP3s to Katie's iPod and to DVD-R so I can transfer them off this computer and onto our new one.
And thanks to my parents for helping us with this purchase. They agreed to boot a majority chunk of the bill and count it as our Christmas and birthday gifts for the year. And, no, no matter what you say, I'm not using mom's picture as wallpaper on the computer as a way of showing my appreciation. No.
We just need a name for the new 'puter, now. Any ideas?
