New iMac or Refurbished iMac

Looking for some help here.

I'm ready to make the switch from a PC to Mac, but I'm having a hard time deciding what to do.

Do I get the "new" 24-inch : 2.66GHz $1,499.00 iMac or do I spend a little more and get the "refurbed" iMac 24-inch 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, $1,849.00?

Is $350.00 worth a larger/faster processor, hard drive and "better???" GPU?

Are there other drawbacks to getting a refurbed machine that I may not be aware of? (older design, less capabilities, issues?)

Any help you can offer to help me make an informed decision would be appreciated!

i vote for the refurb. you will be fully covered and Apple has always been great with any problems i have had.

i have a 20" and if i could do it over again i would have gotten the 24".

What are you going to be doing with the system.

If all you're going to be using it for is light web browsing, music, watching video, I don't imagine you'll see the benefit of spending more.

If you're playing games, working with a lot of video transcoding you may find the faster CPU etc. worth spending the extra money.

I plan on doing video editing.

I'm not a professional, I just like to play with personal videos. I've edited on a PC many times with Final Cut, but hate the rendering time and the constant crashes from the large file sizes.

I am hoping that a Mac will be more stable when it comes to video and picture editing.

Nothing is more frustrating than waiting 1 hour for a video to render to have the system hang or crash out about 53mins into the project!

Refurb or new

I would go for the refurb,I don't think you'll need the extra speed.You'll
love thee Mac regardless of which you choose. Good Luck Van

Thanks vank66, but I'm a little confused...

The refurb is the faster, more expensive one.

I would have to say the refurb, speed is everything when it comes down to rendering scenes for movies.