Best way to get my feet wet?

I have been anti-mac for the longest time, partly because of jealousy, and partly from me not being able to afford one. But lately I have had a change of heart and want to start dabbling with one. What is the cheapest way for me to do that? I thought about a mac mini, but are those even worth it? Are there any places i can get a refurb or something? Thanks for the help guys.

 

Apple's own online store has a refurb section. The macbooks sell out too fast.

 

Hmm, gonna venture in here too.

How is the quality of refurbished Macs? I checked out Apple's Refurb section, and it says defective parts are replaced, but I mean, if the lid is all scratched, or the LCD has a scratch, does Apple replace those parts before selling them out as refurbs?

 

Nice thing about Mac refurbed units is they come with the full warranty.

 

If there's an apple store in your area, go in there and give the macbooks a test drive. Costs nothing and there will be knowledgeable sales consultants there to help you with your decision.

And, well, congratulations on your decision to get a mac. You won't ever want to move back to windows again. I don't.

 

I have not really heard of people getting dinged up refurbs although it is possible according to Apple. So take that into consideration. Sometimes you may even get a free upgrade if it was a previously customized version.

As for a first Mac, the iMac can be had for 800-900 with an educational discount. The only thing cheaper would be a mini. A mini is not a bad choice though because if will be buying another one rather soon, the mini could make a great home theater PC, or you could hook up a couple large hard drives and basically make it a file/print server. If you can afford an iMac or MacBook get that, but if you don't want to spend a ton the mini's while not blazing are decent machines.

 

Cashmonee already said what I wanted to say. If you can afford an iMac or Macbook, get one, but if not, the Mini is a great little machine - good value for money, really.

 

Hackintosh, I've got 3 of them installed on my normal pc. If you have a compatible hardware you can install it with ease.

Sorry to say but only been using for a month and it is definitly not suitable for me. There are too many restrictions on them and incompatibility with other OS that my colleague uses.

 

Listen to what you are saying. You have installed an OS on an incompatible chipset with incompatible drivers, so it is no surprise that you are suffering from compatibility issues and so called 'restrictions'. You say that if you have compatible hardware, but you can't, because Apple machines all use their very own motherboard and chipset which is not for sale on the PC market, so there is no way that you can have compatible hardware.

 

On the topic of refurbished stuff, I recently bought a refurbished MacBook from the Apple store, and I have yet to find anything wrong with it, cosmetic or otherwise. As ZaZ pointed out, it also comes with the full warranty--so if Apple has that much confidence in it, I guess I should too (that was my reasoning).

Anyway, I was able to get a black macbook with 2ghz core duo, 1gb ram, 80gb hdd for $999 with a student discount, which is about $500 less than an equivalently specced new model, so that's definitely something worth looking into imo.

 

I asked an authorized reseller XXXXX if they had refurbs, and they said no, but told me to check out this place which has a good reputation
http://www.powermax.com
For obvious reasons it's was only a personal recommendation, and not guaranteed or suggested by Apple or it's Resellers per say, though they are also authorized.

 

This is NOT the way to get your feet wet. For one it is illegal. Secondly, you will not have a good experience. As Budding said, you are using hacks to get the thing to work.

 

You're saying that the student discount works on refurbished items as well? That's fantastic.

(edit) I was poking around there, and I see no difference in the refurbed price when I'm on my school's "custom store". Maybe your school has some deal to subsidize part of the price.

I'm not too sure about the Hackintosh either... It seems like you could get something of a feel for the operating system that way, but certainly there'd be a host of tiny issues that would degrade your experience, and likely some larger ones as well. I fiddled with it a little just out of curiosity. Pretty quickly uninstalled it because my wireless wasn't supported, and I would have had to mess with stuff to get sound working... It was cool to have a quadruple-booting laptop for a while though.

 

If you have a keyboard and mouse (usb or bluetooth), and monitor (dvi or vga) you are happy with already and can dedicate it to Macing , I'd suggest the MacMini, but for the extra $200-$300 dollars you get a keyboard, mouse and 17" monitor on an iMac

And of course if you need portable, you can get a MacBook for about the same price as the low end 17" iMac (just under a thousand dollars before discounts).

 

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. I forgot I have an old friend who has an old powerbook G4, so I may end up trying to get that. Otherwise I think im going for the mac mini. Thanks for all the help guys. The apple community is awesome.

 

As for refurbs, I have purchased several Apple refurbished units over the years. All have been cosmetically perfect and fully functional. They do come with a new unit warranty and Apple Care is available.

Would not hesitate to buy a refurb if it was the unit I wanted.

Good luck with your purchase!

susan

 

With incompatibility, I don't mean drivers/ chipset. Because if you have the right drivers/hardware everything is fine. All the programs on it runs fine. There is actually a big community that works on hackintosh.

The incompatibility I'm talking about is the inhouse software we use. Also having problems of ppt that were created in mac are not very compatible with PC. Almost all of my colleague here have a linux desktop and a windows machine.

I'm using a macbook pro at work but I spend most of my time on the hackintosh as I find it more interesting to use. I don't see a large difference between a real and hacked one.

With regards to the compatible hardware, most of the time I would just need to change the device id in the kext files to get it to work. Give it a try and you will see that there isn't much incompatibility with the hardware.

I don't particularly like mac because during my last year at uni I met so many mac users who doesn't have a single clue about computer and just buy things that looks good. They came in with their mac asking how to do this and that. I just laugh at them when they couldn't get any work done and had to use the university computers instead.

My friend who works for Apple in NL told me that mac are designed to be easy to use because the users who uses them are not so smart. I'm sure no one would agree with him, but at the time I just laughed and agreed with him.

Of course that is just some bad experience and while at work I have met some really intelligent people that uses mac.

But I'm glad that my company bought me a mac or else I would've bought one to see what is the fuss about. The only time I use my mac now at work is when I need to showoff my nice laptop lol. Then I take out my hackintosh and there is even more wows..

 

Are macs easier? I think macs are more accessible and obvious than PCs. The Doc is a good example. There is no need to go in windows start/control panel/display/etc/etc too many clicks just to change the resolution. Yes there is the right click over the desktop..but PC's also confuse novice users with the multiple ways to get to the same place. Macs also confuse Novice users though they hide the details behind a glossy interface.. I had a friend who didnt' know how to turn on his OS9 Imac. I'm not kidding. Then I had to make it do that "word processor thing" for him so he could type a paper, but this is an extreme example. And he was smart and talented:
Give him a piece of wood and he could make the most beautiful technically skilled sculptures. Some people aren't tech savy, neither mac nor pc can save them if they're this lost.

 

So can you or can you not use student discounts on refurb items?

 

I sure can't... that guy in the other thread couldn't either. I assume noone can, but I don't know.

 

As to whether or not student discounts apply to refurbished units, I think the answer is: "sometimes".

When I was looking around, I navigated to the apple site via my school's education discount page, and compared those prices to apple's main site. Some models cost the same on both pages, and some were discounted. Also, bear in mind that *what* refurbs are available varies--they don't always have the same models/configurations available. Finally, which things are discounted, and how much they are discounted, probably depends on your school's particular deal--I go to a big state school, so they maybe have a bigger discount contract than some others; I dunno.

I hate to give such a complicated answer, but that's how it appears to work.

 

you could try to find an older iMac or something too, those have to be super cheap by now i would think