Getting a mac

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granty84

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Hi all,
I'm looking at getting a mac, probably an iMac but maybe a MacBook Pro I'm not overly fussed what. I've never owned one before and always been a windows user but own iPhone and ipad. I will mainly use it for photos and office etc, and streaming, I'm not a big game player only football manager.

I've got a budget of £600 can stretch a bit more if needs be but hoping not to.

So can I expect anything half decent at that price? Looking on gumtreee their are quite a few that get advertised but I don't really know what is a good price and what isn't.
 
You would get a fairly decent windows computer for that which will probably be significantly faster than an equivalently priced Apple. If you do decide on a Mac, you should be looking at one with an i5/i7 processor with 8GB of memory at a minimum IMHO. No idea what that'll cost second hand....
 
You will get a Mac perfectly capable of running what you want within your budget....whether you want an iMac or MBP is really up to you. Depends what kind of photo processing you want to do though.....as that will stress your system more than anything else.

Not really into second hand prices but I have a 5 year old iMac which I think is worth £400 or so and runs most thing absolutely fine though struggles a bit with photo processing. So I would think something 2 or 3 years old is within your budget. New iMacs just out so should be a few trade in's around soon.
 
I've decided on the iMac it's just waiting for something to come up, gumtree seems the best place but there are a few scammers about
 
What about the mini?
 
Would I be right in saying by the time I've brought the mini, keyboard and mouse let alone the screen I'd be better off just buying the mac?

As I say I haven't a clue really
 
I bought a 27" iMac about 18 months ago, I also bought AppleCare which was a good job, 2 weeks ago it wouldn't power up , I took it back to apple, they estimated what could be wrong with it, PSU or logic board

It was being fixed free but the receipt they gave me had a £400 estimate attached to it

Yesterday after they had it 2 weeks I got a phone call saying they'd tried a few components but it was still broken

So they're replacing it with a new one which I assume will be the same spec as its going to take 2 weeks to get it

The upshot of this is while iMacs are sexy they cost a fortune to fix if they go wrong so I'd be reluctant to buy one secondhand with an unknown history from gumtree

Either save a bit more money or go for something more conventional if you're on a budget as it could easily cost a packet to fix if it breaks
 
I'm still biding my time, a few have come up on gumtree still witching the first years warranty for a bit above my budget which I'll stretch to simply to get the apple care
 
Apple have interest free credit on iMacs at the moment :D, ordering mine tonight.
 
Do you need portability or is desktop enough? That should more or less define your needs.

I have a mini (2.3 i7 x4 and 16GB of ram) and thats a nice machine. I much prefer Dell IPS screens (and why wouldn't you?) instead of the mirrors apple put in so that completely ruled out any imac.
 
daugirdas said:
Do you need portability or is desktop enough? That should more or less define your needs.

I have a mini (2.3 i7 x4 and 16GB of ram) and thats a nice machine. I much prefer Dell IPS screens (and why wouldn't you?) instead of the mirrors apple put in so that completely ruled out any imac.
Click to expand...

THIS! I've just got the base model and very happy with mine!
 
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