Buying a new Mac is an art form. Oh, not in the Picasso or Michelangelo sort of way, but an art form nonetheless. Where it gets tricky is knowing when to buy. Many of us have felt the pain of buying a new Mac (Or DVD player, toaster, Star Wars trilogy on VHS with LOADS of NEW material that add absolutely nothing), only to find that in the following week a new model comes out that leaves us feeling old and just not with it technology-wise. There are tricks to know to make an educated guess at when the updated (NOW in refreshing teeth-whitening BLUE!) models are getting ready to appear, but most of them are not sure-fire ways of knowing.
1. Being Steve Jobs. This of course is absolutely the best way to know. Unfortunately for me and my bank account, not everyone can be Steve Jobs (Wiley Press I’m sure is grateful).
2. Being Jonathon Ives. See reason one.
3. Being Steve Balmer. I’m kidding of course. Even if this were true, it still wouldn’t be worth it. If you don’t know who Steve Balmer is, your life is much richer than mine.
4. Knowing a Design Engineer with Apple that is also your wife/husband/brother/sister or subject to blackmail with a really big mouth. The problem with this is that people with big mouths tend not to work for Apple very long (Steve Jobs not withstanding).
5. Reading each and every rumor site out there and really believing that they know. Well, since they have all been wrong on occasion (Or every occasion), putting your faith in the rumor sites is a lot like buying Lottery tickets. You just KNOW this time you’re gonna hit!
6. Having a time-traveling DeLorean, going into the future and buying ‘History of the only computer to survive the Windows Apocalypse’ (published by Wiley Press and still not stocked in Apple Stores) and reading the timeline of each machine’s release date. Keep your eye on eBay, maybe one will be for sale soon.
Of course, there is one absolutely guaranteed way not to be disappointed when you buy a Mac that it will be replaced soon. Buy one that isn’t new. Neale Monks has written an eBook on doing just that. Besides being informative, ‘Buying Used Macs is a fun read as well.
Another good way to get a near state of the art Mac is to actually wait until the new ones are released. Then go the Apple Store and check in the lower right corner of the opening page for a big red SAVE sign. Clicking here will get you to their Certified/Promo page where bargains are a plenty.
My kids needed a new computer. Their iMac DV (A 450MHz G3 beastie) was just not cutting it anymore with some of the new software they had. My son Peter (His superhero name is ‘It’s all about me boy’) had bought THQ’s ‘The Incredibles’ game with his Grandma money (This is money their Grandmother gives to both Peter and Guy for being cute. For some reason it doesn’t work for me) and none of the machines in the house (Including my QuickSilver G4 tower) would play it well. Also, applications like ThinkFree Office was really slow as well. You know, those applications that your kids CLAIMED they needed the computer for.
Anyway, on Apple’s site, I found the previous generation midrange 17’ iMac (1.8 G5/256 Mb Ram/80 Gb hard drive) that sold for $1499 was now marked down to $999. That’s over 30 percent off. Even after adding 1Gb of Ram, an Airport card, and AppleCare for 3 years, it was still cheaper than the updated model. Of course the new one has more hard drive space (My kids never even filled the 40 Gb drive I put in their G3 iMac), a slightly faster processor (2 GHz as compared to 1.8. Big whoop), and a 128 Mb graphics card (OK, that is more impressive, but for what my kids use it for it’s not as big a deal). It also comes with Bluetooth (I’ve never seen the point of a wireless keyboard and mouse for a desktop) and a built-in Airport card. By the time you add in AppleCare (If you don’t get it with any computer that uses an LCD display, you are being very foolish), you’re still over $1700. All in all, I spent 300 bucks or so less and my kids have a nice new shiny iMac.
The only thing that ticks me off now is that they have the fastest computer in the house.
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