Wish me luck (1 Viewer)

[Sam Posten]

Got a lead a good deal, watch this space!

 

[Ronald Epstein]

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

Hurry back, will yuh?

 

[Sam Posten]

Another hour or so and I'll know for sure =)

 

[Gerald LaFrance]

Wonder what this is all about !!

 

[Carlo_M]

This is gonna be either really cool...or really illegal!

 

[Sam Posten]

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!

 

[Carlo_M]

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!

 

[Sam Posten]

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.

 

[Carlo_M]

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.

 

[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.

 

[Craig S]

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.

 

[Carlo_M]

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.

 

[Sam Posten]

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?

 

[JohnRice]

Sam, I would just put it to sleep unless you will be away for more than a day.

 

[Joe Casey]

I have two iMacs that I leave on 24/7.

 

[Andrew Pratt]

Ours in on 24/7 with it set to auto sleep during the wee hours of the night.

 

[Sam Posten]

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.

 

[JohnRice]

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.

 

[Sam Posten]

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.

 

[Sam Posten]

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...