Buying A Used 'iMac" Online

$100.00 shipped isnt TOO bad for that. It really depends what you would like to do with it. I got mine of the same spec as a trade for an old PlayStation2 i wasnt using anymore. If you want to do anything modern with it you've gotta jump through a few hoops... nothing too unbearable though. If you intend to run OSX and have some apps as well, 128MB of ram is not enough, neither is 6GB hard drive. Also, if you want to run Tiger, well apple has officially stopped supporting THAT model (tray load) imac, but you can get around these things. On mine i threw in a 120GB hard drive (special Notice should be taken here... the tray load imac's require that the OS be installed on the first 8GB part of the drive, so you will have to partition your drive to at least 2 partitions, and keep the first one at 7.5gigs or less... that is where your os must live. (Mine has 10.4.2 and OS 9.2.2, both bootable) Now, onto RAM... you need at least 256, which if you are unlucky, is the most that your imac can take. this model imac requires low profile laptop SODIMM ram, and ith has to be of the LOW DENSITY type, the biggest you can put in are (2x) 256MB sticks... must be low density, otherwise they will only show up as 128MB.... sometimes, on some tray load imacs they show up as 128mb anyway, even if they are low density (READ... EXPENSIVE) SODIMM's... theres no real rhyme or reason as to how much memory these individual imacs will recognize. And finally... back to Tiger... Apple says tiger will only work on machines with firewire, so the installer checks for this and wont let you install it...oh yeah, and if you buy it, Tiger only comes on DVD and the imac tray load is only a CD model (Tiger is available on CD, for an additional $9.95 and then the exchange of your DVD) You can get past the installer not allowing it by using a program called XPostfacto (can be downloaded somewhere off of www.macsales.com) but, before you run it and start your install make sure you have a bootable classic os (system 9.1 or 9.2) installed so if it lurches you can get back into xpostfacto and change its settings so you can get into your new OSX install. And the way i got around the DVD media, CD drive problem was i removed the DVD drive from my mac mini, removed the tray load CD drive from the imac and took the adapter off of the back of the imacs orig. drive and fitted it to the DVD drive from the mini, then i hooked it all up and left it open on the table while i installed tiger. So, in conclusion... WAY WAY WAY to much work and money to install tiger and so forth (however, i have never seen my imac run faster... 10.4.2 is WAY WAY WAY faster than 10.3.9 on my imac... and widgets work on the G3!!!)

As for an online source, really your best bet is eBay... dont look for much or any support from who you buy it from, but websites like this will be able to provide you with alot of help and information.

Also, if all you want to do is run classic and almost ANY set of classic apps, then that 333 tray load IS a reasonably good deal for $100.00 shipped...

later,
Bill

"eBay" & $100 *is a fair price for that "iMac" ....

kk !

Later!