Hi everybody,
My wife's 4.5 year old Dell Inspiron PC is circling the drain, and I've been eyeballing an iMac as its replacement ever since I got an iPhone and iPad (very impressed with Apple's product quality). We're life-long Windows people and know nothing about Macs, other than the fact we're ready to give them a whirl after several Windows-related frustrations. We're looking at iMacs instead of Macbooks because 1) we want to save money, and 2) it's a work computer for her and the bigger screen is essential. So my question is as follows: should we get a refurbished iMac or a brand new iMac? And I ask not as pertains to the safety of buying refurbished Apple products (I am eminently comfortable buying anything of Apple's that is refurbished), but rather as a means of comparing specs and feature sets.
Here are the options: 1) the brand new, late 2012, 21.5" base model iMac (8 gb ram, 2.7 ghz quad-core Intel i5, 1TB hard drive), or 2) the refurbished mid-2011 mid-range 21.5" iMac (4 gb ram, 2.7 ghz quad-core Intel i5, 1TB hard drive). With the exception of the new iMac being thinner, the only differences I can perceive are that the new iMac comes with double the ram, and no optical drive. If we buy the new iMac we will have to buy an optical drive, so that's another $79. This refurbished iMac is $1189, and the new iMac is $1299 (plus the superdrive is $1378). Essentially that's a $189 difference between the two iMacs when the only difference, as I see it, is 4 gb of ram and a thinner design with less screen reflection (which I don't care about, at least not for another $189). Am I missing something? If I need an optical drive, is the better option the refurb and then I can always buy more ram later?
I would really appreciate any insights or feedback. Thanks everyone.
Unrelated - Parallels or VMware Fusion for running Windows 7 (and in turn Windows MS Office) since my wife works remotely and all her work software is Windows based?
My wife's 4.5 year old Dell Inspiron PC is circling the drain, and I've been eyeballing an iMac as its replacement ever since I got an iPhone and iPad (very impressed with Apple's product quality). We're life-long Windows people and know nothing about Macs, other than the fact we're ready to give them a whirl after several Windows-related frustrations. We're looking at iMacs instead of Macbooks because 1) we want to save money, and 2) it's a work computer for her and the bigger screen is essential. So my question is as follows: should we get a refurbished iMac or a brand new iMac? And I ask not as pertains to the safety of buying refurbished Apple products (I am eminently comfortable buying anything of Apple's that is refurbished), but rather as a means of comparing specs and feature sets.
Here are the options: 1) the brand new, late 2012, 21.5" base model iMac (8 gb ram, 2.7 ghz quad-core Intel i5, 1TB hard drive), or 2) the refurbished mid-2011 mid-range 21.5" iMac (4 gb ram, 2.7 ghz quad-core Intel i5, 1TB hard drive). With the exception of the new iMac being thinner, the only differences I can perceive are that the new iMac comes with double the ram, and no optical drive. If we buy the new iMac we will have to buy an optical drive, so that's another $79. This refurbished iMac is $1189, and the new iMac is $1299 (plus the superdrive is $1378). Essentially that's a $189 difference between the two iMacs when the only difference, as I see it, is 4 gb of ram and a thinner design with less screen reflection (which I don't care about, at least not for another $189). Am I missing something? If I need an optical drive, is the better option the refurb and then I can always buy more ram later?
I would really appreciate any insights or feedback. Thanks everyone.
Unrelated - Parallels or VMware Fusion for running Windows 7 (and in turn Windows MS Office) since my wife works remotely and all her work software is Windows based?