Pro's and con' of buying a 5 yr old iMac

New to this! Would love to hear reasons why buying a 5 yr old iMac would be a good idea but more importantly why I should think very carefully against. Won't be able to buy another computer for years and on a very tight budget. I would like to be more creative on it ( design wise) and the kids will need it for school use ( primary and through secondary). Please advice. Many thanks

You want an iMac that is intel based. You ideally want it to be newer than 2007 so that Mountain Lion can run on it. You didn't say what your budget was, but I picked up an early 2009 20" iMac for my daughter from eBay for around $450 and it happily runs ML and will serve her well for a few years..

Personally, would not recommend buying a 5 yr old any kind of Mac for someone on a tight budget planning on using it as their primary computer for several more years.

Not unless you found one with a price that is too good to be true - like "maybe" $250 or less - and you have turned it on, used it for awhile and verified it's all in great shape - and it has the original Snow Leopard (10.6) disk that came with it or has the Snow Leopard retail disk at a minimum.

For the price of most 5 yr old Macs you can buy/build a brand new Windows desktop and have a machine that should be able to run current software for the next 5 years or so.

Thank you Ashwin and bobtoday. Good info for me to research further with. My kids have new iPads so I don't even know if they are going to be compatible. Guess what another posting is going to be! Many thanks again.

An iPad is not going to sync with Leopard 10.5 - you will need 10.6 at a minimum at this point in time.

We already have members running 10.5 being left in the dust viewing web sites as the newest Flash player will not work with 10.5 and they're running into sites requiring the latest flash player.

Much of the current software available will also not work with 10.5. You'll be having to look for previous versions of just about anything you want to install.

If you want to insure that your kids will be able to use a machine for school work for several years to come, 10.5 is not the OS for you.

To know whether the machine you are looking at will run 10.6 &/or later, we would need to know the specs of the machine you're looking at.

Eager2learn said:

Won't be able to buy another computer for years and on a very tight budget.

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Eager2learn said:

My kids have new iPads so I don't even know if they are going to be compatible.

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Some thoughts:

- It would be helpful to know what your computer budget is.

- Did you purchase the new iPads for your kids (or did they come from a school)? If so…this is probably a good reason why you have a "very tight budget" for a computer!…and in my humble opinion…buying iPads for the kids may not have been the best idea (even though I'm sure they REALLY wanted one)…especially if you really need a computer for "serious stuff" (versus the kids playing games on the iPads).

- Apple has come out with 4 versions of the iPad in approx. 2.5 years…and some folks (not all) feel the iPad 1 is showing its age from a performance & feature perspective. Thus an iPad may have a shorter useful lifespan than a laptop or desktop computer. Another reason iPads for kids may not be a great idea.

- If you buy a 5 year-old computer now…and won't be able to get another computer for "years"…in a few years that computer will be 8 years old (and possibly not very useful).


- Nick

I was thinking about getting an iPad pretty soon but I think I'm going to wait a while longer because Intel's next generation processor lineup "Haswell" is designed from the ground up to get phenomenal battery life out of mobile devices (Haswell is slated to use roughly 20% of the power that Sandy Bridge architecture uses). I wouldn't be surprised if Apple starts using them in their iOS devices and I want to wait and see if they do.

As for the iMac, forget it if it's a power PC based iMac. At the very least get an Intel model or it will be practically useless if you want to do anything other than listen to music/browse the web. I would buy a Windows machine over a PPC based Mac.

All of the iOS devices use ARM-based chips designed by Apple. The A4/A5/A6/A6X and so on. They do not use Intel processors..so waiting is silly..

But Apple will indeed focus on battery life as these products end up being the device used for things that most people would've turned to a notebook or desktop for..

I'm waiting to see if they switch to intel.

They already did it once with Macs so iOS devices might be next. I don't need an iPad immediately anyway.

The rumor is that Apple might switch to ARM-based processors for the Mac, not the other way around. There is almost no chance that the iOS based mobile devices will switch away from the ARM-based processors they are currently running..

Yeah, the chances of the iOS devices switching to Intel is roughly the same chance of Sarah Palin getting elected President in 2016.

Apple is moving very strongly into the chip-design business. I don't know whether they will move to their own chips for desktop Macs anytime soon (not likely, at least for the next few years), but I know there is ZERO possibility that iOS will move to Intel. If you're waiting for that to happen, you're going to be disappointed.

To the actual topic of this thread: the only thing I would be comfortable recommending to someone who says they are on a budget and won't buy a new computer for years AND YET needs to do design work is a refurbished recent model from Apple (other than buying new, of course). I would NOT recommend a five-year-old machine in any way shape or form, as five years is already near the end of the useful life-cycle.

chas_m said:

To the actual topic of this thread: the only thing I would be comfortable recommending to someone who says they are on a budget and won't buy a new computer for years AND YET needs to do design work is a refurbished recent model from Apple (other than buying new, of course). I would NOT recommend a five-year-old machine in any way shape or form, as five years is already near the end of the useful life-cycle.

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Touche
My sediments exactly. . . .

chas_m said:

To the actual topic of this thread: the only thing I would be comfortable recommending to someone who says they are on a budget and won't buy a new computer for years AND YET needs to do design work is a refurbished recent model from Apple (other than buying new, of course). I would NOT recommend a five-year-old machine in any way shape or form, as five years is already near the end of the useful life-cycle.

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I've had my mid 2007 iMac for 5 years from new. It happily runs ML (though I have put more RAM in). We've used it as a family (my daughter is now 11 and has used it every day) since we got it and it still does everything we need.

I realise that this is probably the last OS upgrade it'll take but it certainly doesn't feel near the end of its useful life cycle.

Raz0rEdge said:

The rumor is that Apple might switch to ARM-based processors for the Mac, not the other way around. There is almost no chance that the iOS based mobile devices will switch away from the ARM-based processors they are currently running..

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This. If anything, Apple will move away from Intel but since the fastest ARM chips are only about as fast as Intel's slowest (source), that won't happen anytime soon.

nickyr said:

I realise that this is probably the last OS upgrade it'll take but it certainly doesn't feel near the end of its useful life cycle.

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By your own definition, it IS near the end of its useful life-cycle. Note the difference between "near" and "at."

There are probably already a number of things that newer computers can do that yours won't even attempt -- because they require technologies your machine doesn't have or it just doesn't have the graphic processor needed. These things may not be affecting you yet, and that's great -- my 2007 BlackBook is still in service as my wife's computer, and has the max RAM I can put in it -- it's perfectly serviceable but she's not under any illusions about its limitations.

Some people (particularly those with lighter needs) will be able to get more "life" out of a kept-up-to-date older machine than others. And that's a great thing. But to buy a laptop -- any brand or model -- with an assumption that *relies* on it being just as useful in (x number of years greater than five) as it is today is, IMHO, a foolish premise.

nickyr said:

I've had my mid 2007 iMac for 5 years from new. It happily runs ML (though I have put more RAM in). We've used it as a family (my daughter is now 11 and has used it every day) since we got it and it still does everything we need.

I realise that this is probably the last OS upgrade it'll take but it certainly doesn't feel near the end of its useful life cycle.

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You and the OP are in completely different situations. While I'm not saying a 2007 iMac won't get the "job done" in 2012...you bought this iMac new 5 years ago...the OP is looking to purchase a 5 year-old iMac now.

My point is...would you feel the same way about this 2007 iMac if you were the one doing the buying now?? I'm guessing that if you were doing the buying now...you would probably either want a brand new iMac...or at least one that was newer than 5 years old.

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

... I'm guessing that if you were doing the buying now...you would probably either want a brand new iMac...or at least one that was newer than 5 years old.

- Nick

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especially when the op is planning on that Mac being their only computer for yet another 5-7 years.

Now we're talking about a 10 - 12 yr old machine.

edit: Don't think the op was expecting this sort of response from a Mac forum about buying a Mac.

bobtomay said:

Now we're talking about a 10 - 12 yr old machine.

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Yes-sir-eee. 10-12 years old for a computer (especially if it's going to be someone's "main" computer)...is pretty darn old.

- Nick

Hmm.. You guys really think an older Intel would be a bad idea for the OP? Seems like it would see "light" use IMHO.