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Wish me luck

post #1 of 31
9/21/08 at 8:33am
Thread Starter 
Got a lead a good deal, watch this space!
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post #2 of 31
9/22/08 at 1:41am

Re: Wish me luck

Oh man, I'm on the edge of my seat on this one.

Hurry back, will yuh?
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post #3 of 31
9/22/08 at 6:18am
Thread Starter 

Re: Wish me luck

Another hour or so and I'll know for sure =)
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post #4 of 31
9/22/08 at 7:17am

Re: Wish me luck

Wonder what this is all about !!
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post #5 of 31
9/22/08 at 7:31am

Re: Wish me luck

This is gonna be either really cool...or really illegal!
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post #6 of 31
9/22/08 at 7:42am
Thread Starter 

Re: Wish me luck

Well I just picked up my new toy.

20" iMac
2.4Ghz core2 Duo
2GB Ram
320GB hard disk
Bluetooth/superdrive/steel keyboard/mighty mouse
Upgraded HD2600 graphics (Not sure if its a PRO or not, gotta figure out how to check)

Sealed copy of .Mac
Sealed copy of Apple Care
ProCare (!!!!) coverage (gotta figure out how to transfer that)

For $600. !!!

Only downside is it's covered in fingerprints. Oh and it has ALL of the previous owners data still on it, plus some hinky stuff like Limewire and Adium. I'm sure if I wanted to be a creep I could go through all of that, but my plan is to take it to the Apple Store, show em the ProCare membership, have em transfer ownership and install the latest OS, Drivers and iLife, which the included paperwork seems to say they will do, dunno since I never had AppleCare before let alone ProCare.

Should be a fun week!
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post #7 of 31
9/22/08 at 8:29am

Re: Wish me luck

Congratulations on the steal! I knew it would be illegal!

Seriously, wipe it out. Have em completely wipe it out. Low-level format of the HD if possible. Just to be sure the previous owner didn't (unwittingly or wittingly) leave anything problematic on the computer.

But otherwise, have a great time with your new baby!
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post #8 of 31
9/22/08 at 9:08am
Thread Starter 

Re: Wish me luck

Thanks Carlo, I'm definitely going to have em blast it from space =)

Just spoke to the local Apple store, they think the Procare is expired so I'm going to sign up for a regular genius bar visit and talk to em about buying a Procare while I'm there and if it seems worth it will have em clean it all up rather than just reformatting myself. Will bring my lappy with me and have em clean that while they are at it =)

My only concern is whether I will make this my photo editing workstation or not. 320GB will hardly cover my existing iTunes library let alone all of my Canon and Nikon Raw files, so I'd have to go firewire external with a big disk and another for backups... The iMac only has one internal drive bay and my understanding is that it is not user replaceable without major overhaul. So I'll probably have to use twin external disks, one (probably Firewire 800) for photo use and one USB 2.0 drive just for backups, which I already have.
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post #9 of 31
9/22/08 at 9:38am

Re: Wish me luck

Sam, if you were able to get the OSX disc, I think it may be okay just to reformat/reinstall using that.

And as someone with several external HDs, trust me when I say to stick with Firewire 800 for all of your external needs. I know the theoretical limits of Firewire and USB2 are very close, but in practice I find that Firewire 800 is considerably faster in transferring files while using less computer/processor resources. If I were you I'd just buy a couple of Firewire external HDs and daisy-chain them. Leave your USB ports for mice, keyboards, other non-speed-required accessories. You mention you have a huge iTunes Library and shoot RAW, you'll want the Firewire speed for those files (while my iTunes is huge in terms of songs, I compress using AAC so it's only about 60GB) but I too shoot in RAW and after buying my Firewire HDs I'm never going back to USB2.
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post #10 of 31
9/22/08 at 9:55am
Thread Starter 

Re: Wish me luck

I have the latest OSX disk already since I upgraded my laptop on the day the new one came out, but I guess I'm weighing whether the $99 would be a good investment to get the cleanup it probably really needs but I don't know the limits of what their 'update your apple software' are. Would they install a newer OS version or just download the latest patches etc... It currently has 10.4.10 on it.
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post #11 of 31
9/22/08 at 11:04am

Re: Wish me luck

Congrats, Sam, on a good deal.

You may want to consider the new Firewire 800 Drobo for your external storage needs. A higher cost initially, but easily expandable (to 16 TB eventually) and your data is protected automatically. I'm about to get one myself for my iMac, to store my growing media libraries.
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post #12 of 31
9/22/08 at 11:13am

Re: Wish me luck

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam Posten
I have the latest OSX disk already since I upgraded my laptop on the day the new one came out, but I guess I'm weighing whether the $99 would be a good investment to get the cleanup it probably really needs but I don't know the limits of what their 'update your apple software' are. Would they install a newer OS version or just download the latest patches etc... It currently has 10.4.10 on it.
Sorry, I have no idea if they'd drop the latest OSX version on it, I'm not sure what ProCare does/doesn't cover. I'm going to guess it doesn't cover the latest version of OSX because that would be lost revenue for them.

I like Time Machine and some of their other features enough on Leopard that, personally, I would probably buy the newest OSX for any Mac I bought. Others may disagree as Leopard is really evolutionary and not revolutionary in comparison to Tiger.
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post #13 of 31
9/22/08 at 3:14pm
Thread Starter 

Re: Wish me luck

OK, you guys with iMacs do you leave em on all day long in sleep mode or do you shut em down while you are away? With my monstrously noisy PCs its always shut em off and my macbook sleeps while on travel but shut down while not in use...

I didnt think I'd like the steel keyboard but it's growing on me, fast! And I'm still dorking around with a machine I knwo I'm gonna format =)

I really really really don't like the mighty mouse, $9 logitech with scroll wheel will fix that fast tho.

Do you guys have any good mac screensaver links? I only saw one (in french!) in the recommended apps...

Anyone tried using a new boxed copy of .Mac since that's migrated over?
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post #14 of 31
9/22/08 at 4:37pm

Re: Wish me luck

Sam, I would just put it to sleep unless you will be away for more than a day.
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post #15 of 31
9/22/08 at 4:42pm

Re: Wish me luck

I have two iMacs that I leave on 24/7.
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post #16 of 31
9/22/08 at 7:51pm

Re: Wish me luck

Ours in on 24/7 with it set to auto sleep during the wee hours of the night.
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post #17 of 31
9/22/08 at 8:49pm
Thread Starter 

Re: Wish me luck

Nuking it from orbit as we speak. I will get some better speakers, a better mouse and a 750gb/1tb external disk tomorrow.

Are the expose keys different on an iMac than they are on a Macbook?
Is there a key to power on the iMac from the keyboard? I know older desktops had that.
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post #18 of 31
9/23/08 at 8:28am

Re: Wish me luck

Sam, configure Exposé from the System Preferences panel.

I don't think Macs have had a keyboard power key for some time. My 7200, which I bought 14 years ago, had one, but nothing since.
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post #19 of 31
9/23/08 at 8:56am
Thread Starter 

Re: Wish me luck

OK, will do that. Before I reset it the prefs panel had the defaults but when I used em all it would do is crank the sound up instead of flashing the widgets.

Everything seems to work perfectly. Only hitch is the wheel in the mighty mouse won't scroll down but it will scroll up, weird! But I'm replacing that today anyway. Was worried I'd find some dead pixels or the drive wouldnt work, but all good so far.
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post #20 of 31
9/23/08 at 12:08pm
Thread Starter 

Re: Wish me luck

Craig, I'd love a Drobo but that's just a bit out of my price range at the moment, I'm thinking of something like this:
Amazon.com: LaCie Big Disk Extreme+ 301199U 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire400/FireWire800 RAID System: Electronics

I've already got a few USB 2.0 backup drives. I really can't wait for BD media to come down in price so I can move to them for a double / offsite backup...
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post #21 of 31
9/23/08 at 4:50pm

Re: Wish me luck

Best of luck with the LaCie drive. We've had a half dozen die around the office over the last three years. Why do they keep buying them...price.
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post #22 of 31
9/23/08 at 8:49pm
Thread Starter 

Re: Wish me luck

Ouch. I was tempted to just go with another Maxtor or WD which I've had good luck with but none of them seem to be FW800...
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post #23 of 31
9/24/08 at 8:09am

Re: Wish me luck

If you want a good FW 800 drive, get one from OWC. They aren't dirt cheap, but they have the best housings.
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post #24 of 31
9/24/08 at 8:40am

Re: Wish me luck

Ditto on the OWC recommendation, not only the best housing, but the best Firewire chipsets (in terms of compatibility of being able to boot from it). And the performance is great too!
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post #25 of 31
9/24/08 at 4:11pm

Re: Wish me luck

A third recommendation for OWC. When the higher ups at the office wouldn't buy one (instead insisting on LaCie drives that kept failing) I just bought my own and wrote it off as an unreimbursed business expense. I still use it to back up my own data and maintain several drive images for different machines. The performance kicks ass.
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post #26 of 31
9/25/08 at 2:06am

Re: Wish me luck

Dumb question. Does an eSATA require a card to the mother board like sound card or tuner does?

Those OWC drives look killer. And the price isn't that way overboard either. Do they use Hitachi
HDs in them?
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post #27 of 31
9/25/08 at 8:47am

Re: Wish me luck

Quote:
Originally Posted by Parker Clack
Dumb question. Does an eSATA require a card to the mother board like sound card or tuner does?

Those OWC drives look killer. And the price isn't that way overboard either. Do they use Hitachi
HDs in them?
It's not obvious in all cases if they use Hitachi, but I know sometimes when the Hitachi drives have Mail In Rebates, the same rebates are on the OWC external drive of the same HD size/spec. You could always call and ask, they're really friendly and helpful.

And of course, you could always just buy the enclosure alone and put your own HD of choice in there!
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post #28 of 31
9/25/08 at 11:20am

Re: Wish me luck

If you can't afford the Drobo, the OWC drives are the best bet. I have 4 of them. Very quiet as well, if that matters to you.
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post #29 of 31
9/25/08 at 1:45pm
Thread Starter 

Re: Wish me luck

OK, I've popped in a USB 2.0 drive until I can wrangle a FW800 drive mail order. Will look into OWC for sure.
Edit: can someone tell me why the 1TB drive is cheaper than the 640GB or the 800GB?
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firew...erformanceRAID

I still can't get my widgets to pop up, every time I hit that key all that happens is my sound output boosts. I must be doing something wrong.

Any recommendations for good but inexpensive and small desktop speakers? I don't want monster ones sitting next to this guy but the on board sound is really anemic.
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post #30 of 31
10/9/08 at 7:20am
Thread Starter 

Re: Wish me luck

Well, dunno how great these are but gonna give em a shot. You can't beat half off and free shipping:

Amazon.com: Klipsch Groove PM20 2.0 Speaker System- Black: Electronics

I'm not looking for audiophile speakers, I just wanted something beefier than the on board sound.
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