04-12-2009, 03:43 PM

Just registered here after spending a good amount of time browsing the posts! Great place you got here.

I'm currently shopping for my first VERY OWN Mac, I'm going with an iMac.

I'm a PC convert, made the switch with my company issued laptop about two years ago. I've been enjoying using a 15" Mac Book Pro. I'm a software QA engineer and switching has been one of the smartest things I've done! I test a Linux appliance and Mac OS X has really simplified things for me. NO MORE CYGWIN!!! (yuck! no wait, DOUBLE YUCK!)

Anyway, I've been pricing iMacs from various online resellers as well as the online Apple store and have a few questions.

1. Do the brick and mortar Apple Stores give discounts or offer price matching? I kind of doubt it. I can save myself nearly $400 by ordering from Mac Connection due to no sales tax and they offer a discounted price already plus the $100 mail in rebate. Will the Apple Store even try to compete with that?

2. I'm going with the top of the line 24" iMac. Of course no noobie intro thread would be complete without the ever popular question about the video cards offered. I am wondering if anyone can point me to a thread that actually has hard benchmark data that compares the two. I'm sure the NVIDIA would be fine for me, but I can't help but that the ATI would be a bit safer purchase in the long run for the measley $50 up charge. Now if I can only convince myself to wait. I will be playing Wow and Guild Wars on it and using it as a DAW.

Thanks in advance for any help advice and HAPPY EASTER!

Greg

04-12-2009, 05:15 PM

1. Nope, not unless you are friends with someone that works there and they haven't used their discounts yet.

2. Check tomshardware.

04-13-2009, 09:43 AM

Thanks CR.

Are the ATI equipped iMacs available at the brick and mortar Apple stores yet?

I'll be hitting my local AS as soon as they open today so I'll find out. I kind of doubt it.

If not I'm coming home with an Nvidia equipped one. (That's what I was going to go with before I started reading this forum)

04-14-2009, 03:56 AM

Got my 24inch 2.66 GHz WITH 3 year apple care for $1317.90 with that live.com rebate (11%) and ebates.com (3%) cashback, need to make sure you open your browser window in the correct order. Flip side is they (Microsoft et al) will track your purchase and ... i dunno, probably use it for their economic engineering plans. I did (and recommend you do) use disposable accounts.

I checked ebay just now, didn't see any base 3.06 GHz models that you're looking for, all the ones available now have 2+TB harddrives, 8GB RAM, etc. Good luck.