$25 iMac = Mac Happiness

So during my hiatus on posting on this blog, my local high school had a garage sale. I was hoping to pick up a new laptop since my Compaq has become a fire hazard due to the powercord, but alas I got there too late. While it started at 2pm, my wife and I arrived about 10 minutes early and people were already carting things out.

I had been tipped off that there were going to be quite a few iMacs there, and there were. At least two had been sold, but there were almost 25 left. It was nothing but the light bluish-green iMacs, but sticking out like a sore thumb was a Grape iMac. It contained a stock 333 G3 proc, but had been upgraded to a 30gig HD and 96 megs of RAM, and was running OSX. I paid $25, and the iMac was all mine (after a few trips to pick it up after the were supposed to wipe it clean).

With just a bit of trouble on my part, I got it up and running after reinstalling Mac OS 10.3.9. I installed Thunderbird and Adium, and my wife now has a computer to match her corner of the office.

I myself am very pleased with how well it runs. I did upgrade the RAM to 160meg since my laptop is dead (and thanks Apple for deciding to use SO-DIMMs in the iMacs instead of regular desktop RAM. I had planned on raiding my server for RAM, but no...)

If anyone is looking for a nice internet computer, getting an old iMac is well worth the few bucks. Here are a few iMacs available at Amazon.com, both old and new.