Well, I finally took the plunge ...

... And ordered an iMac.

20" iMac, 2GHz Core 2 Duo Processor, 2 GB RAM, 250 GB HDD, 256 MB ATI Radeon X1600 graphics card, wireless keyboard & mouse, and Final Cut HD. All with Apple's measly 6% discount through the Employee Purchase Program.

It should be with me by the end of the week.

I'm a first time Mac owner (used my friend's a few times, to surf and such). I shiver in dreaded anticipation.

Comments

[namrata]

Awesome!!! pls tell me u will lemme use it unlike my brother who doesnt lemme touch his gbook;)

[Nikhil]

Axe, for once I want to know how much it cost and you did not write anything about the actual cost. That is so unlike you. Come on How much did you spend and what will you be using it for? I still cannot make up my mind whether to buy a mac or build a PC.

And yes, did you buy Final Cut or Final Cut Express?

[Axe]

The total, including the 3 year warranty, taxes and shipping came to about $2,000.

Yes, I could've gotten a decent PC build for that (the Alienware PC I'd built was coming to about $2400, not including tax or shipping). I could've built a PC for that amount too, but my recent experience has made me a little shy of doing that again soon.

Don't get me wrong, I'll also invest in a PC sometime. It depends on how well Boot Camp allows me to run Windows programs. One thing that I took into consideration is how my usage pattern has changed over the year. The only game I've played with any consistency is WoW. Other than that, I was using my PC mostly to surf, blog, manage music & photo collections. Oh, and use MS Office (Word, Excel, and Outlook, mostly). With the engagement & wedding scheduled this year, I will be investing in a miniDV Camcorder, and wanted something simple yet elegant to help me edit videos, and create a slick DVD (I foresee this as a lasting need for the next few years as well).

Considering that, I just wanted something that would *work*, that had good software OOTB or available cheaply. A Vista PC was out of the question, and since OEMs have automatically upgraded to Vista, I couldn't get a regular XP machine. Only other options were Linux (forget it), Mac, or build-my-own.

Hence the Mac.

And I got Final Cut Express. If you purchase a Mac online, they give you $200 off the sticker price, that is for $99.

[namrata]

$2000?????? there goes my valentine's, engagement, birthday and 1st year wedding anniversary gift :( donations anyone???

[Nikhil]

Actually, you should add $1600 he spent on the PC defunct since November.

And this Mac is Valentine's gift, the video camera will be Engagement gift and after that for every occasion Axe is going to give you a slick personal DVD as a gift (unless they come out with another collector's edition of LOTR of course).

[Vee]

errr.. hint here, Namrata.... shdn't have said that now.. should've saved it up for a special occasion and put Axe on a BIG guilt trip

[Ruchi aka (The Lady's Nightmar]

Welcome to the real computer world, now you will never go back to windows. The initiation to the Mac world can seem tough and frustrating but once you have learnt all the tricks then you will realize this is the way computers were meant to function :)

[namrata]

"lady's nightmare" - since when did you turn soo vicious?;)

and since when did you become a geek...gosh! axe is converting everyone!!!

[Michael J. West]

Please tell me you didn't have one of those stupid "Mac Parties"...