Rumour of an apple Mac under $499

[Keith]

http://thinksecret.com/news/0412expo2.html

For those who always wanted to try an apple but couldnt justify the money, it looks as though you may be in luck in a couple of months:-

"With iPod-savvy Windows users clearly in its sights, Apple is expected to announce a bare bones, G4-based iMac without a display at Macworld Expo on January 11 that will retail for $499, highly reliable sources have confirmed"

[Bambi]

Wow, thanks keith!
I will let my mom know. I think she wants to get my brother a computer but didn't want to fork up alot of $$$. He spends so much time at college working in their computer labs so he really needs one for home.

[foreverducky]

That's a PC and not a laptop right?

[Keith]

yep desktop not laptop (although its rumoured to be very thin)

[foreverducky]

unfortunatley, I don't need one of those. I need a laptop for grad school (starting next fall).

[Keith]

Well an ibook may be worth looking at instead then

[foreverducky]

I do want an apple, but they always seem so much more expensive compared to say, dell. I have a dell pc and it's a great. No problems, even after having it for three years. I'm not actually sure what i should get as a minimum for the laptop. I will need to store pictures, be able to use the Internet and of course write tons and tons of papers.

[Keith]

I do want an apple, but they always seem so much more expensive compared to say, dell. I have a dell pc and it's a great. No problems, even after having it for three years. I'm not actually sure what i should get as a minimum for the laptop. I will need to store pictures, be able to use the Internet and of course write tons and tons of papers.

Well the ibooks seem *reasonably* comparible to me and at the high end, apple and pcs are about the same (once you try and spec up a dual cpu pc with equivalent memory etc you'd see what I mean) but it's always been cheaper to buy a low end off the shelf pc than a mac.... that's why this rumour of a sub $499 desktop is so interesting.

minimum for a laptop... well anything you get these days, low end ibook, cheapy dell laptop etc is going to let you use the internet and write papers so you won't have a problem. You need to think about battery life for classes, size for carrying around campus etc.

[foreverducky]

How about memory, what would be reasonable for amount?

[JuniorMickey]

Be careful with buying an Apple for Post-Grad work. My BF was looking at an iBook for law school but couldn't buy an Apple because the school's testing software was not apple compatible.

[Keith]

Be careful with buying an Apple for Post-Grad work. My BF was looking at an iBook for law school but couldn't buy an Apple because the school's testing software was not apple compatible.

Although that's true at first sight.. in fact with a piece of software called "virtual PC" you can run everything a pc does in a window on the mac so just because one piece of software doesn't run natively needn't stop you altogether.

Memory.. no less than 512M (despite apple telling you 256)

[JuniorMickey]

Keith, whatever it is that they take their tests on cannot be loaded on an Apple. It will crash the machine :shrug: He ended up getting a Dell and loves it

[Keith]

Keith, whatever it is that they take their tests on cannot be loaded on an Apple. It will crash the machine :shrug: He ended up getting a Dell and loves it

It can't be natively JM, but virtual PC emulates a full pc in a window.. you can run normal windows xp in it... install linux onto it etc... It's perhaps not well known but it works wonderfully and people can't believe it when they see a pc running on a mac

[JuniorMickey]

I don't know... I just remember when he got some paper work about requirements it said NOT to get an Apple

[Keith]

I don't know... I just remember when he got some paper work about requirements it said NOT to get an Apple

yeah it will do because the program will say "only works on a pc" you see but what they don't realise is that virtual pc makes windows work on a mac so the issue goes away. It's just easier for places to say "get a pc".