New to Mac from Iraq!

**note** I wasn't sure what prefix to use, so I went with the iMac?

My wife and myself are currently deployed to Iraq, we're returning in just a few months and looking to upgrade from our current Acer laptops. They did what they were supposed to do, cheap laptops to get us through a deployment. I'm in the market for a new tower computer, but honestly not very up to speed with what's current in the market and I'm so-so tech savvy. Few people have suggested Mac's and even though I havent used one in years, I figure it's worth taking a look at I figure you fine people could point me in the right direction as to what model would fit my needs and what I could expect to pay.

I'm looking for a bit of a gaming computer, I mostly play World of Warcraft and I'm looking to run it in it's highest resolution possible with no problems. Aside from that, I just need it for basic web browsing and word processing for college.

A buddy of mine did it with his computer and it's something I'm pretty stoked on doing - hooking it up for his tv. Will a Mac support being hooked into a 50 inch tv the way a windows PC would? I'm not familliar with the male/female connections on Macs.

I appreciate any help you guys can offer. Thanks in advance!

Firstly thank you for your service, and yes I would say that an iMac would suit you well, it is what I am using and I do play a lot of WoW as well. To hook up your mac to your tv you would have to buy the video adapter thingy, then check to see if you tv has a VGA or a DVI port on it.

First off, welcome to the forum, and Where in Iraq are you? For word processing, I use OpenOffice.org - The Free and Open Productivity Suite it's totally free, and does pretty much everything I could need for school. My wife is military and uses it as well for work. You should have no problem connecting your mac to an hdtv using a dvi adapter.

Fonzy,

Welcome to the forum and thanks to you and your wife for your service to the Nation. I returned in December of last year and bought an iMac last month to replace my laptop which was not fairing well after a year in the desert.

The iMac is a great machine. I handles WoW quite well from what I can tell, and of course it does all of the little things like surfing the web and normal office work with incredible speed.

Not sure which service you're in, but if is the Army and you think you'd be doing some transferring of work files between work and home (presentations, etc.) you'll find that the iWork suite from Apple will handle those tasks easily enough.

If you still want to use Microsoft's Office (since that is what the military uses), you can get it through Microsoft's Home Use program for military members at about the same price as buying a new movie on DVD. Just go to the Army e-Commerce site under the "Self Service" tab in AKO.

By the way, from there you can also link to Apple's Gov't employee discount program. Not quite as good a discount as the educational one, but better than full price.

Best of luck on your tour and get home safely.

Thanks for your help. I'd be using my mac primarly to game on, she wants a laptop to ... I don't know what she does other then use the internet really, but she wants a Mac so she'll prolly end up getting one ^_^

How much is the Government employee discount and the educational one? We're both college students in the "real" world, we're just activated Guardsmen.

Right now we're in Baghdad, fyi.

Well, for my 24" iMac with a 1TB HD, high end graphics, iWork and Applecare, the difference between the gov't discount and the educational discount was more than a $100, with the educational discount dropping the price by about $400. So edu route is probably the better deal, although with both you have to pay sales tax.

Another route available to you is to buy through AAFES to save sales tax but you're limited in what's available and there is no customization.

I recommend that when you start trying to figure out which setup you want, you check AAFES and the Apple Education Store to compare. Depending on price, you may find the tax break better than the discount.

Do check out the Army e-Commerce site though. There are some great software deals. Microsoft also has a program to provide free software to students called DreamSpark, and a site called JourneyEd.com provides significant discounts for students on all sorts of software products.

I've done a hitch in Baghdad, although my last was up north in Mosul with the Iraqi Army. Hopefully you're both enjoying a relatively decent life at Victory and are not stuck on some micro-FOB with little life support. Best of luck.

Fonzy said:

**note** I wasn't sure what prefix to use, so I went with the iMac?

M
A buddy of mine did it with his computer and it's something I'm pretty stoked on doing - hooking it up for his tv. Will a Mac support being hooked into a 50 inch tv the way a windows PC would? I'm not familliar with the male/female connections on Macs.

I appreciate any help you guys can offer. Thanks in advance!

Click to expand...

Most definitely!
I am new to Macs also. I bought the least costly Mac Mini just to test the water and it turned out to be such a great DVD jukebox (42 inch TV) that it got the job permanently and I had to go out and buy an IMac to replace it for computer use. I don't even have my JVC DVD player hooked up now.

Thanks for your service and remember to keep your head down. When I got back from 'Nam, the only computers available for purchase were 1 ton mainframes

Konan

The mac mini looks interesting, I priced it at $947 (I'm not sure if that's with or without the student discount .... I'm an idiot!) for the following specs.

2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB memory
4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
320GB hard drive1
8x double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics

Like I said, I'm pretty much just looking for casual web browsing, word processing to finish up college, and play lots of World of Warcraft on it's highest resolution on my tv (everyone's got their guilty pleasure!). Will this machine suffice for what I'm looking to do?

Thank you again for all your help!

edit: i just found the same model on aafes.com for $779. thoughts?

Fonzy said:

i just found the same model on aafes.com for $779. thoughts?

Click to expand...

Fonzy,

When I was looking at AAFES as a possible avenue, two things turned me off: 1) the inability to modify and 2) the almost 3 weeks it was going to take for delivery. If neither of those are a concern, and if the pricing is competitive with the edu or gov't discount, then I'd say go for it.

Beyond that, I can't say I know much about the mini itself.

Fonzy said:

The mac mini looks interesting, I priced it at $947 (I'm not sure if that's with or without the student discount .... I'm an idiot!) for the following specs.

2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB memory
4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
320GB hard drive1
8x double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics


edit: i just found the same model on aafes.com for $779. thoughts?

Click to expand...

remember that you will need to buy a monitor because when you buy the mini it is just the computer its self.

Firstly, thank you for your service.

While an iMac may be good for your simpler word processing and internet needs, I think you may be playing roulette with WoW. In the WoW forums, iMac users frequently complain of lockups and high latency -- a problem which Blizzard claims is due to some issue with OSX and the iMac's graphics card.

I would post there in order to pick up more details about the issue, and ascertain whether or not it persists in the current iMac release.

Also, if you want the highest resolution on an iMac, I'd highly recommend maxxing out the system memory.

Good luck.

Z