Making the switch... where should I buy my Mac?

Life long PC user seeks advice on PowerMac acquisition...

[zander213]

Hello,

I am a long time PC user, and I have been looking for a good place to pick up a nice used or refurbished PowerMac.

Can anyone here recommend some good places? For PCs I would go to sites like www.pricewatch.com and others, but I really have no idea with this. Ebay is cool I guess, but there must be others.

Thanks!

[sonjay]

Apple's own online store sells refurbs -- not sure if I'm allowed to post the link, but at the Apple store scroll down and look for the "Looking for a great deal?" link at the lower right.

They come with the standard Apple warranty and are gone over by Apple techs, and generally have a good reputation for quality. My husband bought his refurb PowerBook there, and has been extremely happy with it.

[lZakl]

I buy some of our used equipment from ebay. With Mac's, like PC's, the problems that they have are pretty well documented, and parts available if one of the boxes you buy goes bad. I have bought *thinking* ... about 10 used boxes within the last year, and the only problem I had was one of te power supplies failed a month after I bought it... Not bad, considering that can happen to a brand new power supply.

The other place I buy used from, is the refurb part of the Apple-Store. But if the unit you're looking for is older, you won't find it there. Say I need a used G3 500 Mhz for a word-proccessing computer, I won't find that at the Apple-Store.

also you could check your local PC shops, some of them have used Mac's that customers bring in when their talked into switching to PC, and the dealers have no use for them and will usually let them go cheap.

I won't need to be buying used anymore with the realese of the Mini! Did you ever think of going that route? Unless you're rendering video, or working an pre-press or something like that, one of those should suite your needs. A friend of mine just got his, and we loaded it down just to see what it could take... Pretty impressive. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Quark were all open with soem pretty hefty files open and iTunes didn't even hiccup.

-- Zak