I thought the Mac Mini post would be my last “My Macs” post for a while but I’ve just come into the possession of a 2nd-hand iMac 20″ and it’s simply superb.

I was having an eBay moment.  I’ve had good and bad experiences with eBay like the majority of people I imagine but on this occasion, I felt like someone was smiling down on me.  I’d recently sold some old hardware items I had gathering dust, components and such from workstation, servers etc and made a nice tidy sum.  A sum that really *needed* to be re-invested into IT hardware!  So I thought I’d look for some Apple kit.  My main focus was to acquire a Time Machine for the house so that the AirPort Extreme could move into the home office outside.

The evening turned into a mix-bag of fortunes because I narrowly missed the TimeMachine auction I wanted because my 10-seconds-to-go manual bid didn’t come off because my Broadband/Safari session paused on me mid-transaction and I missed it. If there had been anything in the vicinity to hit, it would be hurting…but…the very same seller had an iMac for sale, so with the money I didn’t spend and the remainder of my recently acquired coffers, I decided to look at how the bidding went in the next 30 minutes for the iMac.

Long story…short…I won it for just over £700.  That doesn’t sound like too much of a bargain, except it’s spec is:

Dual Core 2.4Ghz, 4Gb RAM and a 2Tb disk and Snow Leopard installed.

On top of that, I had a voucher from eBay…the first one I have ever had, which entitled me to 10% off an auction upto the value of £70, hey, 10% of 700 IS £70, so I got it for £630!  It doesn’t end there though…

I hadn’t realised when I placed the bid that this also came with an additional 20″ TV/Monitor.  None other than the Samsung SyncMaster T200HD, worth at least another £150+. This screen comes with 2 HDMI ports, DVI and 15-pin D-Sub and a built in FreeView Tuner. Included were all the connectors anyone would ever need to hook it up too!

There is a suberb review of the T200HD <here>

I actually did a little dance around the room…yes very sad I know…but I kinda felt I was in bargain city!

So…now I have a super-fast replacement for my iMac G5, which was still going strong but I knew it was only a matter of time before I would need something more.  What’s more, I have since sold the iMac G5, to a friend for a mutually beneficial price, so all these goodies really only cost me £100 after I take off all the sales!  Fantastic.

I’ll post if I do anything out of the ordinary with this machine, but I think it is just going to well-versed in day-to-day stuff for a little while!

If you have any *great* uses specifically for an iMac, please let me know!

PL

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