All-in-one Desktop

I had a friend who had an iMac. In my opinion, it seemed to be Mac's version of a cheap PC. A lower price than most Macs, but put together sort of cheaply. After maybe a year and a half, he started having problems where the monitor would change color and have a red tinge over everything, then he would move a wire or something and it would be okay again, for a little while.

I just think it's a cheaply-made Mac, and because of that, might be more prone to problems.

I don't know anything about the eMac.

Not interested in a laptop? That would really save space.

I'm interested in a laptop, fer sure, if one would like fall off the back of the truck. Tend to be beyond my price range. (As close to $1,000 as possible would be good.)

Are you sure about the iMac/eMac? From what I can tell, eMacs are the cheaper ones. Starting at $799 for eMac, starting at $1299 for iMac.

Those links above don't work anymore, sorry. This should be better:

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore/

Geesh, the 14-inch iBook starts at $1,099. Who knew? That's not bad 'tall.

I have one of the early imacs, never any monitor problems.
I am thinking of upgrading and will look at the links too.

All-in-one
Don't laptops run pretty hot? They don't have a lot of space for fans.

Anyway, if you're going to have a printer and a scanner, a lot of your desk space is committed unless you get a multipurpose unit. The major objection to multipurpose things, however, seems to me to be that if one feature is down everything else might be down also.

I had the same space problem with an enormously deep monitor; it left barely room for the keyboard. I bit the bullet and got a new ViewSonic display which, being completely flat, leaves plenty of space.

Personally, I'd go with the new flat display (and I am extremely happy with the ViewSonic VP191b which has a very narrow bezel) and an upgrade to XP Home or Office, whichever best suits your needs, unless your CPU itself is aging out.

Why do you want a Mac soz? Except for very specific types of computer users I think Macs are some of the worst things you can buy.

I'd go to www.dell.com and check out their deals but here's an IBM Thinkpad Laptop for under
$700.00 with a 900 Mhz processor and a DVD Rom:

http://www.overstock.com/cgi-bin/d2.cgi?PAGE=PROFRAME&PROD_ID=605717#

(You have to hurry with Overstock.com as they sell stuff out rapidly).

Thanks for the link, Wiz!

Craven, I went searching for info and found li'l K's old thread about her friend needing help finding a computer and saw you and Monger dissing macs, which I'd forgotten about. The main reason I'm interested is because E.G. got one for himself through work, a G4, and he just loves it. I use it when we travel and it's pretty cool, though the lack of mouse takes some getting used to.

That and I just plain think the iMac is cool. I love the design.

I have to remember there are a lot of new monitors out there, though, as tomkitten mentions. Upgrading to XP and getting a new flat screen monitor would almost certainly be more cost effective. Hmmm.

What I plan to do is have the printer and scanner on a little shelf thing next to my desk. The way my desk is built it's really awkward to have the tower under it, though I could probably wrangle beside it (looks ugly, but whatever.)

Lemme open this up a bit. What I would like:

- A system that takes up as little physical space as possible.

- Will use mostly for internet, email, regular documents, and photo programs. (Not any fancy games for example.)

- Something relatively cheap (~$1,000.) (Though I'm open to spending more for a really good laptop.)

- Something fast and efficient.

- Wireless/ all in one a big plus. I'll have my desk oriented so the left side is against the wall and the other three sides are free -- the back of my desk will be one of the first things you see when you come in the room -- and I just aesthetically dislike wires.

I have an ~5-year-old Gateway system with:

- Pentium 3,

- 256 MB RAM

- Ginormous 17-inch monitor (which I can't fixate on, too easy to replace)

- Epson stylus color 740 printer

- HP ScanJet 4200C

- DSL modem

- Windows 98

- Assorted photo programs (Adobe PhotoDeluxe, etc.)

This system is old and creaky and has been giving us problems of one kind or another for a long time. We definitely want to do something, just are trying to figure out if we want to tweak what we have or start fresh. And if we start fresh, WHAT we want exactly.

What you want is really easy to get, your needs are pretty basic.

Thing is, with Macs everything will be more expensive, from the actual computer to the perifs and software.

IMO, you should go for a PC. Macs are cool, and they are the first company to actully focus on the looks of desktops and make waves with design (they staged a comback almost exclusively on design) but others took notice and you can get well designed PCs too these days. Flat monitors look good and these days you can get really neat cabinets and such.

With a PC you can get all the hardware cheaper, much much cheaper, than with a Mac.

But that's no biggie. The big problem with macs is lacking compatibility with so much software and hardware, making it at best more expensive for everything and at worst impossible to do certain things.

It's a pile of many different things, to give just one example you'll have a much harder time finding free programs or support for problems (e.g. professionally I do not support Macs).

For very specific uses I think Macs are great, but I'd avoid just buying it because it's cool (which it is) because they are overrated and overpriced and lack interoperability.

BTW, I bet ya can get exactly what you need in PC flavor for about $500-800. The monitor will be the expensive part but you could do just fine on a $500 PC.

Tell me more! Where would I go to get this, what brand(s), etc.

And thanks!

As far as conserving space, getting a flat panel LCD desktop would save most of the space (especially depth where the tower can take up the
left over space). You likely can't go with a WEGA (the wide angle screens) because of cost but Dell has a lot of flat screen desktops. Their outlet store online has the best deals (they are refurbished).

Dell Oulet:

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/default.aspx?c=us&cs=22&l=en&s=dfh&DGVCode=IR

Craven, I have a cousin who told me that with the new Mac OS, there is now a lot more software that is compatible. He said that since the new OS is based on Linux or Unix (I can't remember which one) there is a lot more compatibility than before.

Dell outlet store online... going to check that out now...

I've already found a Compaq LCD 17" Flat Screen monitor that's only 7.8 inches deep... wow. $480 at Circuit City.

Another miscellaneous tidbit when I was looking around the Apple site, they have educational discounts (E.G. will be faculty at OSU, which is on their list. Discount seems to be about 10%.)

Personally, I'd go for a Frankenstein. But A brand might be better for you.

Frankenstein means more flexibility for specs and cheaper, but brands usually mean more peace of mind for non techies.

For brands I recommend Dell.

For the where, I tentatively recommend ebay. Thing is, knowing how to scout ebay and use it safely is a mini-art unto itself. You could save up to $300 on ebay but buying directly from dell would probably give you more peace of mind.

fishin' is the guy to listen to about prices, he shops around more so than do I. But this is my beginning recommendation from the dell site.

Dimension 2400
Intel Celeron 2.4GHz
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home
128MB Shared DDR SDRAM (find a deal on RAM elsewhere and then add more or get 256 MB for $50 more, 512MB is $150 more and 1 GB is $280 more)
40GB Ultra ATA/100 7200RPM Hard Drive
Single Drive: 48X CD-ROM Drive (I strongly recommend a 48x CD-RW Drive for $50 more)
10/100 Ethernet and 56K modem

Monitor:
17 in E172FPb Flat Panel Display

Price: $781

The flat panel monitor is $399 out of that price, so with no monitor that would cost you $422 for the computer.

Is that a Celeron processor? Beware that they are much slower than a Pentium IV.