Thinking About a New iMac

[DVCLiz]

My Apple store dropped the price of the current iMacs today with the release of the newer ones. I've been a PC owner but am thinking about switching to Mac - I have an iPhone and an iPad.

Does it make that much difference between the 500GB and the 1T hard drive if I am a casual internet user and store pictures, audiobooks and ebooks? I'm not a gamer or a movie maker. (well, except for Angry Birds...)

Should I get the $99 one year help package and/or the 3 year extended warranty for $169? Useful or not necessary?

Does Windows for Mac work well if I am used to that product and don't want to change?

Any other advice you can give me? Thanks!!

 

[tvguy]

As much as I hate extended warranties, I'm glad we got one for my daughter's Mac Book Pro. The hard drive died after 18 months. Fortunately she got a Terabyte external drive for Christmas and religiously backs everything up, so no data loss.
So I WOULD consider a warranty.
The last couple of weeks have turned up the first issues my daughter has had with having a Mac and not a PC in the 18 months she has had it. She's in college, and some school websites (this semester only) are not Mac compatible, and she is in the middle of a group project and has had to use a PC for it.
And she was very frustrated with looking for a job, because a number of companies require you to apply online, and an amazing number of them have online sites that are not Mac compatible.

 

[DVCLiz]

As much as I hate extended warranties, I'm glad we got one for my daughter's Mac Book Pro. The hard drive died after 18 months. Fortunately she got a Terabyte external drive for Christmas and religiously backs everything up, so no data loss.
So I WOULD consider a warranty.
The last couple of weeks have turned up the first issues my daughter has had with having a Mac and not a PC in the 18 months she has had it. She's in college, and some school websites (this semester only) are not Mac compatible, and she is in the middle of a group project and has had to use a PC for it.
And she was very frustrated with looking for a job, because a number of companies require you to apply online, and an amazing number of them have online sites that are not Mac compatible.

Those are good things to know, and I will probably get the extended warranty. I am a casual user and well past the college years, so the other issues won't affect me.

Do you think it's worth an extra $300 to get the largest storage? Or would you get the smaller, cheaper one and use the money to buy a larger external hard drive? (This is what the guy at Apple suggested I do.)

What about the $99 help option? I'm thinking it would be worth it to have access to someone at the Apple store if/when I have questions my friends can't answer. Has anyone had experience with actually using this option?

Anything else I should know?

 

[tvguy]

Given my daughter's experience, having an external drive, and backing up data daily saved her. So I'd say, go for the external drive.
I don't know about the $99 option, we've never had a question come up that my daughter couldn't find an answer to by Googling it.

 

[JenSop]

We are strictly Mac people. I would only ever use a PC if someone gave it to me for free. Then I'd still have my Mac on hand for most of the time anyway.

We just got our newest Mac this past fall. We had our eMac for over 7 years and it ran great. Being older, though, we needed to get an external hard drive to hold iTunes. But our printer died and the old eMac didn't always wake up from sleep mode there for a bit.

So we got a new iMac. It's 21.5 inches.

It has a 3/2 BHz Intel Core i3 processor and our memory is 4GB Ram.

Our hard drive is 2T.

(And we ALWAYS get the AppleCare. Always. Just do it.)

It is awesome! No need for the external hard drive, as everything fits on it with plenty of room to spare. We are musicians, so our iTunes file is beyond large and it fits and works great. I use this computer for everything - from personal use to running 3 small businesses on it. I plan to start using movie making features, so the extra space will be good.

DH recommends not going with the smaller hard drive. Even if you just buy a few movies on iTunes, that will eventually start to fill up your memory.

I have only once come across an actual website that wasn't compatible, but otherwise have never had problems.

I prefer using the Mac word processing program, but Microsoft Word and its "family" work just fine on here too. (And it's necessary to have these non-Mac programs, as someone will always invariably send you attachments in Word files.)

Nothing comes close to a Mac when it comes to ease of operation. Everything just works SO well and intuitively. Everything is click and drag. If I like a picture on a website, I just drag it to my desktop. I don't have to do anything else. I've recently been using iWeb to build a website, and it's just so easy. Anytime I go over to my parents' house and happen to use their PC, I want to break it to pieces with a baseball bat!

Anyway, once you get a Mac, you'll never go back to PC. And considering our last one held up GREAT for over 7 years, shows that you'll have it for awhile.

 

[nukephd]

I say to go with Mac and get the AppleCare warranty.

The problems that tvguy mentioned can easily be circumvented by installing windows on a Bootcamp partion or installing windows a virtual machine using either Parallels Desktop or VMWare's product (forget the name at the moment). Macs can do everything that a Windows computer can do and more.

I was a PC guy my whole life and switched to Mac after they switched to the Intel chips (that way I could install Windows if I had any compatibility issues). I don't have a Windows partition on my computer any more because I find that I don't need it anymore.

Hope this helps ...

 

[kateydid]

i bought my first mac last june (a macbook pro) and will never go back to a pc. yes there's a learning curve, but it was nowhere near as steep as i expected. i found the mac to be SO intuitive and EASY to use.

i decided to buy applecare but skip on the one year help package. i haven't needed to use the applecare yet but for me it was worth the money to have the comfort of knowing i have it if i wind up needing it. for me the help package was not worth it because i am not within an easy driving distance of an apple store so i knew i wouldn't take advantage of it. my friend bought it when she converted, went once a week, and loved it and learned some cool stuff. keep in mind that the help package can only be bought when you buy the computer but applecare can be added any time within the first year.

i have not encountered ANY compatibility issues with websites.

just my opinion, but it sounds like you would benefit more from the external hard drive than the bigger hard drive.

good luck with your decision!

 

[tvguy]

I say to go with Mac and get the AppleCare warranty.

The problems that tvguy mentioned can easily be circumvented by installing windows on a Bootcamp partion or installing windows a virtual machine using either Parallels Desktop or VMWare's product (forget the name at the moment). Macs can do everything that a Windows computer can do and more.
...

My daughter did that, and and there are still issues, but we have enough PC's around the house so the few times it is an issue, she has options.

 

[Carl]

With the Apple Care you can get all your questions answered. The $99 package is for personal help at the store. They will work with you on individual programs to help you master them. Unless you want to go to the store for individual help, I'd just get Apple Care. Your drive space will fill up quickly - believe me! Get the biggest available - especially if you will be doing any videos.