Apple now offering 20-inch education iMac for $899

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Apple now offering 20-inch education iMac for $899

Apple has replaced the 17-inch educational iMac with a 20-inch model selling for the same price. The upgraded version is pretty nice for only $899, but it can only be ordered by educational institution buyers.

For quite a few years now, Apple has offered an educational desktop machine at a lower price point than the rest of its desktop line. That machine was first the eMac, followed by the 17-inch iMac, but now there's a new educational model in town. Apple has quietly announced (PDF) that it has replaced the 17-inch polycarbonate education iMac with a new, low-end 20-inch aluminum model, marking the end of the polycarbonate iMac case.

Previously, Apple was offering educational institutions the 17-inch iMac model for the same $899 price, so the switch is a nice upgrade. The new model includes a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, a SuperDrive, and the NVIDIA 9400M graphics package. All in all, not a bad deal for nine Franklins.

The new educational iMacs are supposed to ship in about four weeks, but even if you want to just order one now, they're pretty hard to get. The low-end 20-incher isn't currently available to individual students or educational buyers, so you may need to make friends with your institutional buyer if you want to get your hands on one (an iMac, that is).

Source: Ars Technica

[bob21]

20-inch my laptop has a bigger screen than that , $899 for 1GB of RAM what a joke.

[Rudy]

20-inch my laptop has a bigger screen than that , $899 for 1GB of RAM what a joke.

what kind of laptop do you have? lol

[nonick]

lol.. talking about expensive ....

[what]

20-inch my laptop has a bigger screen than that , $899 for 1GB of RAM what a joke.

And you put that on your lap do you?

[giga Veteran]

Similar to the base XPS One, so not too bad.

[Reimroc]

20-inch my laptop has a bigger screen than that , $899 for 1GB of RAM what a joke.

Considering the things education users do, it's usable on 1GB. I worked on 1 gig for a while.

[majortom1981]

Keep in mind the will mainly be used in computer labs where speed really doesnt matter. 1 gig will be enough for report writing and internet related stuff.

[skyrocket]

The computers at my school only have 512 MB of RAM.

[Caledai]

20-inch my laptop has a bigger screen than that , $899 for 1GB of RAM what a joke.

Still Trolling I see.

I don't even know why you frequent the Mac sections of Neowin given your bias against Mac's.

We know you don't like Mac's and you Love PC's, and disregard any statement made by people who have valid points.

Your laptop is windows, A HP from memory, and isn't exactly a "laptop", any more then a MacBook Pro is a "laptop"

Mine is a portable computer, and if I am running anything heavy - its never on my lap.

Yours, at 20" is a portable desktop, and certainly not something I would want on my lap in any circumstance.

Only recently have computers come out in the PC environment that have a similar form factor to the iMac, and every indication I have seen so far, points at them having the same "<INSERT VENDOR HERE> Tax"

You prefer the windows market, good for you - just don't expect everyone here to accept your view.

I certainly would not purchase your "laptop" I would prefer the Dell Adamo - and that has the "Dell Tax" which currently prices it as more expensive then the MacBooks, and I am not sure about the MacBook Air's - of course I would never buy one of those either.

It's the same argument my friends used between Sharp and Sony MiniDisc players. Sharp might have had more features, Sony might have had less - but the Sharp was also thicker and heavier then the Sony, and I only required what it did. I didn't object to paying the "Sony Tax" then for a machine that met my requirements, just like I don't object to paying the "Apple Tax" for a machine that meets my requirements (Self Upgrade / Gaming) isn't one of them.

With a decent sized hard disk, any RAM upgrades (Which is all I have ever upgraded on notebooks) can be done third party - if you find a retailer that realises that there is no such thing as "Mac Ram". My Current MBP runs Kingston Ram.

And if I was a gamer, I wouldn't be purchasing a laptop for gaming in the first place, nor if I wanted to upgrade the machine myself.

I maintain computers (Roughly 50/50 Mac/Win) in the education sector on occasion, and whatever the "Apple Tax" I find that maintaining modern Intel Mac's far more streamlined then maintaining windows machines, I also find the Aluminium Models superior compared to the Polycarb's.

In all cases we upgrade these machines to 2GB these days anyway.

This should be great to see in classrooms more often.

If you want a true comparison regarding ease of use, give an class or two of 8-10 year old students a task requiring movie editing, recording, photo slide shows, and burning - and compare the results on a Mac with the latest iLife Suite installed, compared to a Windows machine with the latest versions of Photostory, Windows Movie Maker etc.

Windows could achieve this degree of interaction if they wanted too, too but the manner in which they integrate products has always risked anti-trust law suits as they build it into the system at such a level its near impossible for the end user to remove, or for third party, open source developers to access.

If Windows Movie Maker or Internet Explorer were as easy to remove as deleting C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer or C:\Program Files\Windows Movie Maker - without crippling the system, Microsoft wouldn't have been in the same position regarding Anti-Trust lawsuits.

[Reimroc]

The computers at my school only have 512 MB of RAM.

128MB in ours. :D

[Astra.Xtreme]

20-inch my laptop has a bigger screen than that , $899 for 1GB of RAM what a joke.

Not really considering you could upgrade the memory on your own to 4GB for about 20-30 bucks.

[bob21]

My point was what will a ultra low end $899 PC contribute to education ? Given the state of funding in ireland and many other places around the world anyone who puts one of these on a school budget should be shot considering you could have a Shuttle k45 up and running with the same specs for 260 bucks.

But thanks for turning this into a generic Mac/PC debate , Heven forbid anyone would see the real issue , That these overpriced trashcans are going to end up running vista and being a humongous waste of money that could be better spent elsewhere .

Reminds me of E-Voting

Edited April 22, 2009 by bob21

[Astra.Xtreme]

^I think the point is that Apple is nice enough to give students, getting an education, a nice discount on their product/s.

It's not always about what's the best or "fastest" computer to get for the money.

Some people just want a Mac, and there's absolutely no reason to diss them for buying one.

[bob21]

No again thats not my point , Good luck to any student who wants one .

Its their purchase and use in schools that im completely opposed to for the reasons above . Its just a humongous waste of money that could be better spent elsewhere .

[Astra.Xtreme]

Okay, it's your point. But it's not the point of the article...

You're really beating the dead horse when you still try to fight that you can buy something "better" for the money.

It's a shallow thing to say, and you don't have to be a "Mac Fanboy" to understand that it's not one bit about the money.

[PyX]

No again thats not my point , Good luck to any student who wants one .

Its their purchase and use in schools that im completely opposed to for the reasons above . Its just a humongous waste of money that could be better spent elsewhere .

You clearly did not get the purpose of this iMac. It's not for an individual, it's for a school. For computer laboratories (or whatever they're called).

If a student wants one, he has to buy the other models Apple sells, which are IMO a better value for the buck. Then he has to bring it home. The other one has to stay in school.

[Caledai]

No again thats not my point , Good luck to any student who wants one .

Its their purchase and use in schools that im completely opposed to for the reasons above . Its just a humongous waste of money that could be better spent elsewhere .

Ok that one I will bite on given I manage both Mac's and PC's in school environments.

So a Mac in a school is a waste of money huh?

How many PC's still run in schools 10 years down the track, and run relatively reliably?

5 years down the track if they still run we just want to get rid of them, but don't have the funding to replace them.. The Mac's generally last 10 years with Ram upgrades. (And no they are not purchased at the apple store)

How many PC's can you boot from an external HD and image in 10-20 minutes?

(And yes I do have network imaging in place)

How many of your 8-10 year old students are producing movies on Windows Platforms which compare in quality to those created on Mac?

You have Monkey Jam / a Web Cam / Windows Movie Maker as the tools for doing Stop Motion.

And I have yet to see one example where the quality or ease of use of the windows solution beats the Mac.

How much time do you spend pushing out patches, virus updates, and fixing malware on your PC's?

What about USB Keys, and the Autorun Entry, the fact students bring games into school and do whatever they can to get out of class - up to and including - physically damaging the machine so it doesn't work, and then claiming they can't work because the computers broken. Mac's take a hell of a lot more of a beating then a PC.

We were forced to replace one Lab of PC's after 3 years due to student damage. You want to talk about a waste of money? How about the hours spent in fixing malicious or accidental damage to machines, where keyboards are pulled apart, cables are cut or network points are pushed in. The DVD Drives the students get given access to, enabling them to produces movies on DVD that have the drive bands cut.

Having managed both, I don't try and push PC's out of schools, because they will need to know them, but why shouldn't we allow students to experience more then one environment. The first thing I do in some schools is setup a PC server to support the Windows machines - to run Antivirus and WSUS, to handle other windows only applications.

I learnt on Mac's and PC's. The students at the schools I was at produced some amazing artworks, while all the PC's were used for was cheap vb games, or typing practice and word.

If all you want your kids to learn is how to type, sure get a PC.

But don't think its the only damn alternative out there.

Modern Mac's run windows these days as well, which any machine in the places I maintain have the ability to do, just to support programs and websites designed by people just as biased as you are showing yourself to be.

Not everything in education comes down to the cost of a product.

Or would you prefer your kids being taught in a classroom built by the cheapest bidder, by underpaid teachers, with computers that fall apart if you sneeze at them forced to cater for the lowest denominator - "Because its a cheaper alternative, the money could be spent better elsewhere...."

Like it or not, other people disagree with your view, and see Mac's as an Asset, not a line on a balance sheet to be reduced.

Edited April 27, 2009 by Caledai

[ienhz]

Ok that one I will bite on given I manage both Mac's and PC's in school environments.

So a Mac in a school is a waste of money huh?

How many PC's still run in schools 10 years down the track, and run relatively reliably?

5 years down the track if they still run we just want to get rid of them, but don't have the funding to replace them.. The Mac's generally last 10 years with Ram upgrades. (And no they are not purchased at the apple store)

How many PC's can you boot from an external HD and image in 10-20 minutes?

(And yes I do have network imaging in place)

How many of your 8-10 year old students are producing movies on Windows Platforms which compare in quality to those created on Mac?

You have Monkey Jam / a Web Cam / Windows Movie Maker as the tools for doing Stop Motion.

And I have yet to see one example where the quality or ease of use of the windows solution beats the Mac.

How much time do you spend pushing out patches, virus updates, and fixing malware on your PC's?

What about USB Keys, and the Autorun Entry, the fact students bring games into school and do whatever they can to get out of class - up to and including - physically damaging the machine so it doesn't work, and then claiming they can't work because the computers broken. Mac's take a hell of a lot more of a beating then a PC.

We were forced to replace one Lab of PC's after 3 years due to student damage. You want to talk about a waste of money? How about the hours spent in fixing malicious or accidental damage to machines, where keyboards are pulled apart, cables are cut or network points are pushed in. The DVD Drives the students get given access to, enabling them to produces movies on DVD that have the drive bands cut.

Having managed both, I don't try and push PC's out of schools, because they will need to know them, but why shouldn't we allow students to experience more then one environment. The first thing I do in some schools is setup a PC server to support the Windows machines - to run Antivirus and WSUS, to handle other windows only applications.

I learnt on Mac's and PC's. The students at the schools I was at produced some amazing artworks, while all the PC's were used for was cheap vb games, or typing practice and word.

If all you want your kids to learn is how to type, sure get a PC.

But don't think its the only damn alternative out there.

Mac's in schools are not a waste of money. Employing people who refuse to deal with Mac's out of a personal bias is.

Modern Mac's run windows these days as well, which any machine in the places I maintain have the ability to do, just to support programs and websites designed by people just as biased as you are showing yourself to be.

Not everything in education comes down to the cost of a product.

Or would you prefer your kids being taught in a classroom built by the cheapest bidder, by underpaid teachers, with computers that fall apart if you sneeze at them forced to cater for the lowest denominator - "Because its a cheaper alternative, the money could be spent better elsewhere...."

Like it or not, other people disagree with your view, and see Mac's as an Asset, not a line on a balance sheet to be reduced.

Talk about blowing something out of proportion.

There's a difference between a compromise in quality and flat out buying unnecessary things. Macs might be useful in elementary schools, but if secondary and post-secondary students are so incompetent that they can't figure out how to use Windows Movie Maker and a webcam or their teachers aren't able to, uhh, teach them, then there are probably bigger issues here.

Your argument on students destroying more PCs than Macs is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, I won't even reply to that.

Macs last 10 years? Please. My university has a dozen eMacs that sit in the corner because no one wants to use them. Hell, people ditched those green iMacs with the hockey puck mice at my high-school a year after the school bought them. Talk about a waste of money.

It's also funny you should mention "practicing typing on a PC", because in the 90s during my own elementary days, the only things those Macs were good for were using All the Right Type (LOL) and Kid Pix. Since these are my tax dollars being spent here, I see almost no reason for schools to spend money on Macs (for GENERAL USE) when that money could be MUCH better spent on smaller classroom sizes, more/better teachers, or pretty much anything else.

Edited April 27, 2009 by ienhz

[bob21]

Ok that one I will bite on given I manage both Mac's and PC's in school environments.

[b]So a Mac in a school is a waste of money huh?
[/b]
How many PC's still run in schools 10 years down the track, and run relatively reliably?   
5 years down the track if they still run we just want to get rid of them, but don't have the funding to replace them..  The Mac's generally last 10 years with Ram upgrades.  (And no they are not purchased at the apple store)

Same Parts Same Reliably.

How many PC's can you boot from an external HD and image in 10-20 minutes?  
(And yes I do have network imaging in place)

Any.

How many of your 8-10 year old students are producing movies on Windows Platforms which compare in quality to those created on Mac?

Premier elements

You have Monkey Jam / a Web Cam / Windows Movie Maker as the tools for doing Stop Motion.
And I have yet to see one example where the quality or ease of use of the windows solution beats the Mac.

Premier Elements

How much time do you spend pushing out patches, virus updates, and fixing malware on your PC's?

Security through obscurity isn't security at all

What about USB Keys, and the Autorun Entry, the fact students bring games into school and do whatever they can to get out of class - up to and including - physically damaging the machine so it doesn't work, and then claiming they can't work because the computers broken.   Mac's take a hell of a lot more of a beating then a PC.

Administrator privileges

We were forced to replace one Lab of PC's after 3 years due to student damage.   You want to talk about a waste of money?   How about the hours spent in fixing malicious or accidental damage to machines, where keyboards are pulled apart, cables are cut or network points are pushed in.   The DVD Drives the students get given access to, enabling them to produces movies on DVD that have the drive bands cut.

Replacing a DVD drive is cheeper than replacing an entire computer

Having managed both, I don't try and push PC's out of schools, because they will need to know them, but why shouldn't we allow students to experience more then one environment.   The first thing I do in some schools is setup a PC server to support the Windows machines - to run Antivirus and WSUS, to handle other windows only applications.

Don't worry you'll be running windows on them whenever someone wants to run education software like PROE

I learnt on Mac's and PC's.   The students at the schools I was at produced some amazing artworks, while all the PC's were used for was cheap vb games, or typing practice and word.

Photoshop Elements

If all you want your kids to learn is how to type, sure get a PC.   
But don't think its the only damn alternative out there.

No i want them to learn to use the software they will need for third level like autocad its just a fact that these applications are windows only .

Mac's in schools are not a waste of money.  Employing people who refuse to deal with Mac's out of a personal bias is.

Oh yes they are when you consider they cost 500 bucks extra and that dosnt include the 250 bucks for vista .

Modern Mac's run windows these days as well, which any machine in the places I maintain have the ability to do, just to support programs and websites designed by people just as biased as you are showing yourself to be.

Thats another 250 bucks to add to the extra 500

Not everything in education comes down to the cost of a product.

When its going to do the same thing for 500 bucks more its some cost

Or would you prefer your kids being taught in a classroom built by the cheapest bidder, by underpaid teachers, with computers that fall apart if you sneeze at them forced to cater for the lowest denominator - "Because its a cheaper alternative, the money could be spent better elsewhere...."

If its going to have the exact same specs for 500 bucks less then yes.

[b]Like it or not, other people disagree with your view, and see Mac's as an Asset, not a line on a balance sheet to be reduced.[/b]

I see them as a waste of 500 bucks that could be better spent elsewhere , Anyone who doesn't will learn the hard way when they have a 900$ computer running vista ($250) which i could outspec for ?300.

Edited April 27, 2009 by bob21

[Reacon]

I built a computer for the same price Core 2 Quad, 4 GB DDR2 1066, x2 4870 1GB crossfire, 640 gig HDD.

I'm sorry but Apple fails again on trying to make an "affordable" computer.

[King Antonius]

lol

[Caledai]

Ok that one I will bite on given I manage both Mac's and PC's in school environments.

[b]So a Mac in a school is a waste of money huh?
[/b]
How many PC's still run in schools 10 years down the track, and run relatively reliably?   
5 years down the track if they still run we just want to get rid of them, but don't have the funding to replace them..  The Mac's generally last 10 years with Ram upgrades.  (And no they are not purchased at the apple store)

Same Parts Same Reliably.

How many PC's can you boot from an external HD and image in 10-20 minutes?  
(And yes I do have network imaging in place)

Any.

How many of your 8-10 year old students are producing movies on Windows Platforms which compare in quality to those created on Mac?

Premier elements

You have Monkey Jam / a Web Cam / Windows Movie Maker as the tools for doing Stop Motion.
And I have yet to see one example where the quality or ease of use of the windows solution beats the Mac.

Premier Elements

How much time do you spend pushing out patches, virus updates, and fixing malware on your PC's?

Security through obscurity isn't security at all

What about USB Keys, and the Autorun Entry, the fact students bring games into school and do whatever they can to get out of class - up to and including - physically damaging the machine so it doesn't work, and then claiming they can't work because the computers broken.   Mac's take a hell of a lot more of a beating then a PC.

Administrator privileges

We were forced to replace one Lab of PC's after 3 years due to student damage.   You want to talk about a waste of money?   How about the hours spent in fixing malicious or accidental damage to machines, where keyboards are pulled apart, cables are cut or network points are pushed in.   The DVD Drives the students get given access to, enabling them to produces movies on DVD that have the drive bands cut.

Replacing a DVD drive is cheeper than replacing an entire computer

Having managed both, I don't try and push PC's out of schools, because they will need to know them, but why shouldn't we allow students to experience more then one environment.   The first thing I do in some schools is setup a PC server to support the Windows machines - to run Antivirus and WSUS, to handle other windows only applications.

Don't worry you'll be running windows on them whenever someone wants to run education software like PROE

I learnt on Mac's and PC's.   The students at the schools I was at produced some amazing artworks, while all the PC's were used for was cheap vb games, or typing practice and word.

Photoshop Elements

If all you want your kids to learn is how to type, sure get a PC.   
But don't think its the only damn alternative out there.

No i want them to learn to use the software they will need for third level like autocad its just a fact that these applications are windows only .

Oh yes they are when you consider they cost 500 bucks extra and that dosnt include the 250 bucks for vista .

Modern Mac's run windows these days as well, which any machine in the places I maintain have the ability to do, just to support programs and websites designed by people just as biased as you are showing yourself to be.

Thats another 250 bucks to add to the extra 500

Not everything in education comes down to the cost of a product.

When its going to do the same thing for 500 bucks more its some cost

Or would you prefer your kids being taught in a classroom built by the cheapest bidder, by underpaid teachers, with computers that fall apart if you sneeze at them forced to cater for the lowest denominator - "Because its a cheaper alternative, the money could be spent better elsewhere...."

If its going to have the exact same specs for 500 bucks less then yes.

[b]Like it or not, other people disagree with your view, and see Mac's as an Asset, not a line on a balance sheet to be reduced.[/b]

I see them as a waste of 500 bucks that could be better spent elsewhere , Anyone who doesn't will learn the hard way when they have a 900$ computer running vista ($250) which i could outspec for ?300.

Ah, so in other words, the money you save on using hardware with a different build quality - is spent on software licensing to do the same things....

Now multiply the cost of replacing 30x DVD Drives.... A site license for Adobe (Considering the Adobe Premier Elements is 150 for a consumer) and you assume that every school has to purchase its own licenses for Microsoft Products, or all these CAD Programs you mention, of which in any school I have seen, hmm short of Visual Studio - 3 instances of Professional CAD programs.

Personally I don't care what you claim about same parts, same reliability - In my experience, your wrong.

Every statement I have made, is backed up by my experience at work, maintaining computers in a variety of settings.

When you have machines that are Celeron 800 MHz falling to pieces around you with motherboards dying, dead DVD drives due to damage and misuse, graphic cards which fail and USB Ports burning out - compared to iMac 400MHz and 500MHz still chugging along, with the only component needing to be replaced on a rare occasion is a HD, your argument is falling flat or perhaps at most one other hardware failure in a year among close to 100 computers - I think my own experience is more valuable.

I am not talking figures, I am talking the work I do day in, day out.

I spend more time, per machine fixing machines that are "PC's" compared to Macs.

I spend more time fixing up machines that are patched (via WSUS) removing viruses (protected by Corporate AV) and with security policies in place, that end users fill up with spyware, malware, trojans, games, dozens of "Helper Apps" etc compared to the occasional time I need to reload a Mac, repair its permissions or run a file system check.

I never said Mac's exclusively, I said refusing to buy Mac's based on price is stupid when there are other advantages you blindly ignore, or seem to resolve by referring to other products that need to be purchased.

The next point to address - is over spec'ing a machine - out of heavy duty Multimedia or CAD Labs - where have you seen machines at Max Spec? Or are you suggesting that they should run machines that have 8gb ram, 3ghz quad core machines, just to run word because they can?

With your eye on the bottom line, I am not surprised your not pushing Linux at schools, just to save the $250 license fee of Vista....

<sarcasm>Oh wait - the CAD Programs people rarely use in an education environment - that we must teach 8-9 year old kids to use because they are so important to there future, don't run on linux..... </sarcasm>

Why don't you give up your trolling of the Apple sections of Neowin, and run back to the Windows sections.

You don't like Mac's (As you have repeatedly stated), you never will (Again as you have repeatedly stated), and personally - you don't have a chance in hell of convincing most of the people here so your wasting your time here.

And so am I, as I know your personal bias is going to kick in here as well, so long, I wont be checking this thread again as your not worth my time, because yes it is worth something, and debating this with you isn't.

[Cold Blood]

No again thats not my point , Good luck to any student who wants one .

Its their purchase and use in schools that im completely opposed to for the reasons above . Its just a humongous waste of money that could be better spent elsewhere .

Couldn't agree more. With that money you can buy 2 pc's. And seriously,apple computers aren't for study,at least if you want IT. At my university we study IT and a major part of it is based on linux because there's a lot to learn from it,multithreading,processes scheduling,file descriptors,pipes etc. And you can't have linux on an apple computer as far as I know. And we also learn asm x86 and the best environments for that are windows or linux.

[Imran Hussain]

Couldn't agree more. With that money you can buy 2 pc's. And seriously,apple computers aren't for study,at least if you want IT. At my university we study IT and a major part of it is based on linux because there's a lot to learn from it,multithreading,processes scheduling,file descriptors,pipes etc. And you can't have linux on an apple computer as far as I know. And we also learn asm x86 and the best environments for that are windows or linux.

Agreed, and good luck to students who would want to develop games or wpf applications on Macs with 1 gb.