Dan Knight
- 2006.07.12
Edu-iMac Compromises
After reading Is the New
Edu-iMac a Good Value or Simply Too Compromised?, Ian Anderson
says:
To: Dan Knight
Sorry, but I have to disagree with you on your Mac Musings
article about the
Edu-only-iMac.
Here's why:
- The education iMac has the Intel GMA Graphics, which, as we all
know, sucks up 80 MB of RAM. Now, I would not use Mac OS X
with less than 512 MB, and that's stretching it. Strike one: RAM
upgrade. Total System Cost, $989
- An 80 GB hard drive. 160 GB drives are a commodity these days
and are usually, if not always, priced lower per gigabyte than 80
GB drives. I don't know how Apple can get away with charging $50
when a 160 GB drive could have been used in the first place. Also,
160 GB would be better for students in photography and graphics.
Strike two: Hard drive upgrade. Total System Cost: $1,039
- Combo drive. The prices of Combo and SuperDrives are so close
these days, it's not worth (IMHO) to use a Combo drive. Not to
mention, an upgrade to a SuperDrive isn't even available. Strike
Three: Combo drive. No upgrade option.
Now, add on iWorks and AppleCare (which I refuse to buy a Mac
without), and we have a total cost of $1,207.
Compare this to a standard, education iMac, with 1 GB RAM,
iWorks, and AppleCare: $1,457.
Yes, the iMac with ATI Graphics costs $250 more, but for
performance and specifications, I'd say it's money well spent. I'd
hate to be a school student using one of these edu-iMacs,
un-upgraded years from now in elementary or middle school.
Ian A.
You make some good points, Ian.
For performance reasons, I wouldn't set up a new
Mac with less than 1 GB of RAM. That's a low-cost upgrade, and
you'd probably do it with either version of the iMac. At that
point, losing 80 GB for video isn't much of an issue.
Apple didn't choose an 80 GB drive because of the
cost per GB but because the cost of the drive is lower than a 160
GB drive. Again, I'd drop in a big, fast third-party SATA drive
rather than have the Apple Store do it. And I'd do the same with a
160 GB drive. 250 GB would be nice, but it would increase the
price.
Apple charges $50 to upgrade the Mac mini from a
Combo drive to a SuperDrive. I'm surprised they don't offer that
option, but there are third-party SuperDrives for those who want
them. But at that point, the difference drops to well under
US$200.
Add iWork? Why? (Apple, what ever happened to
AppleWorks? Please bring it into the 21st century!)
As for AppleCare, the cost is the same regardless
of which iMac you buy, so that's a wash.
Apple was shaving dollars to get the price of the
edu-iMac as low as practical. That's why the 80 GB hard drive and
Intel graphics are there, along with the Combo drive. While it
would be nice to have a bigger hard drive and a SuperDrive, that
would have made this a $999 model for the education market - and
iMacs are already expensive compared with cheap (and often cheaply
made) Windows PCs.
I think the edu-iMac is a valiant effort to
provide an all-in-one solution to the education market, and I don't
think the compromises are unreasonable.
Dan
Re: Education iMac Story
Following up on The Education
iMac Story, Rick Williams says:
Hi Dan, did you include the price of the SuperDrive DVD burner
when comparing prices between the Education and Retail 17"
iMac?
I just gotta have my DVD burner! I even installed a SuperDrive
in my old eMac 700 (not that hard
compared to installing an Xceed color video card and Daytona 33 MHz
68030 accelerator in my old SE/30
more than a decade ago).
When I first got the eMac and saw it had a 40 GB hard drive, I
said, "awww, we'll never fill that up." Famous last words!
So I really like the large hard drive in our new iMac.
I don't know if I would've ever noticed the "vampire effect"
since I'm just a regular user who doesn't need Photoshop or such
high-power programs. We just use it for Web browsing, email, and
Office, that's about it (with an occasional game - have you tried
the Call of Duty 2 demo yet? Cool!).
After using the 700 MHz eMac for so many years as our only home
computer, this Intel Dual Core and 128 MB of VRAM makes for quite a
speed upgrade, wow I love this new iMac! (I already installed a
1 GB RAM DIMM).
Cheers,
Rick
No, I didn't include $50 to upgrade from the Combo
drive to a SuperDrive (which Apple doesn't seem to offer anyhow).
If that's important - and I can't recall the last time I burned a
DVD - that comes to a $175 saving with the new edu-iMac.
The less powerful graphics processor will only
make a significant difference for 3D games, something I have no
interest in. I spend enough time working at my computer; I don't
want to play with it.
As for "vampire video", its only going to really
impact Macs with 512 MB of memory, because you lose about 15% of
your RAM (80 MB) to video. Once you get to the 1 GB mark,
there's a lot less impact.
Dan
Coal to Newcastle: Mac Portables Return to
Mothership
Dear Dan Knight:
I am Houlton, the old Portable duck. My hobby for many years has
been repairing and reconditioning the original Mac Portables M5120 and M5126 and you have kindly listed a link
to my
Portable pages for years. Thank you.
As you well know, vintage technology is catching on. Several
weeks ago I sold and delivered a Portable to the assistant manager
of the Apple Store at Stanford, California. I walked it in to the
store, handed it over to its new owner, and he asked me to set it
up and show him its paces. So we made some space on the fancy
counter among the other Apple hardware and fired her up. What an
image: There among the latest stuff was a Portable with Missile
Command running in full glory. Both Apple employees and
customers crowded around. The comments from the gallery included
such as: "What is that?" and "Hey, I remember that game." A good
time was had by all. I think the assistant manager was glad to have
her.
I was as proud as a new Papa. Even the fancy new hardware seemed
to beam its approval. I felt like I was finally giving something
back to Apple.
That same day I sent off another Portable to the Infinite Loop
itself. Not to any of the powers that be, mind you, but rather a
sales guy - a working stiff like the rest of us, but still. Once
again, the pride and satisfaction.
I thank them, I thank you, and I thank the Portable models for
the pleasure they have given me over the years. They still hold my
interest and affection.
Your page is both a joy and a source of information but, um, do
you really think these fine venerable ladies are "Road Apples"?
A fan,
Houlton
Thanks for writing, Houlton, and for keeping so
Mac Portables alive and kicking.
I love the Mac Portable with its full-sized
keyboard, monstrous trackball, and incredible battery life. For its
era, it was fast, had great memory expansion, and the active matrix
display was one of the finest ever used. On the negative side, it
was huge, heavy, and used an oddball hard drive with a proprietary
connector.
The Portable was an awesome portable Mac, but
people kept trying to compare it to DOS laptops instead of things
like the SE/30 and Mac IIci. The Portable was a battery powered
desktop computer, and there wasn't a big market for that type of
computer.
Much as you, I, and others love the Portable, it
merits the "Road Apple" designation not because it's poor hardware,
but because it was a no compromise portable computer that was
simply too large and heavy to be very portable.
Dan
Value of a 1986 Mac Plus
Beth Givens writes:
I would like to either recycle or donate my beloved but unused
1986 Mac Plus and all its
accessories.
Does this computer have any value at all to anyone? I'd even
ship it somewhere if it were to be used.
Or should I simply recycle it?
Many thanks,
Beth Givens
The Mac Plus has something of a cult status as the
last quiet Mac - no fan, no internal hard drive. With System 6 on a
floppy, it's relatively popular as a writing machine. In terms of
monetary value, though, you're probably in the $5-20 range.
You might try joining our Swap List and posting it there. And if
you can find someone to do local pickup, you avoid the hassles of
packaging and shipping.
Dan
SheepShaver Unstable with Mac OS 8.6
I asked for feedback on SheepShaver, and Dave Steele writes:
Hi Dan,
First off, I want to say that I love Low End Mac and read it
just about every day. I noticed that you're wondering some about
SheepShaver. I'm using it on my MacBook Pro, and it works fairly well
running OS 8.6. It is unstable, though, and crashes fairly
frequently. iCab 3.0 beta crashes the thing routinely. Even
ejecting a CD will sometimes bring it down.
While OS 8.6 boots incredibly fast, performance otherwise is
somewhat lacking for some software. It's slow with PowerPoint 2001
but alright with Word. The pinball game I have partially runs
absurdly slowly . . . the flippers, etc., run just fine,
but the ball moves ridiculously slowly. An upside of this is that
it's very, very easy to run up extremely high scores if one has the
patience to play the game.
I haven't done much else yet with SheepShaver. For me, at the
moment, it's just a toy.
Dave Steele
MP3 Decoder for OS 8
Jim Brunswick writes:
Hello,
Google took me to LEM to locate AIF to MP3 decoder software for
OS 8.6. Yahoo also took me there.
I do not see any decoders of this type on the website. Only MP3
players.
Interestingly, many search engine results which state 'aif to
mp3 ' prove to be very inaccurate. I haven't determined why!
Can you refer me to an AIF to MP3 decoder for OS 8.6? All
feedback is appreciated.
Regards,
Jim Brunswick
What exactly are you looking for, Jim? If you want
a program to convert AIF/AIFF/WAV files to MP3
format, there are quite a number of programs to do that. I suggest
you read Nathan Thompson's Embracing
Obsolescence columns on ripping CDs and setting up a Mac
jukebox.
The only reason you would decode an MP3 file would
be to listen to it or convert it to another format, such as the
AIFF tracks.
With your need for a program that works with Mac
OS 8.x, I'd suggest you look into SoundJam, the
ancestor of iTunes that runs on any PowerPC Mac with OS 8.1 or
later.
Dan
Inexplicable Cocoa Ligature Problem Solved
After discovering Inexplicable
Cocoa Ligature Problem Solved, Mathias Maul writes:
Thankyouthankyouthankyou! I have experienced the same strange
ligature problem for quite some months now and just stumbled over
your posting. Problem solved. :-)
Greetings,
Mathias
Mathias, you're very welcome. I spent months (on
and off) trying to figure that one out, and I was pretty sure
someone, somewhere would benefit from the solution.
Dan
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
