My birthday present arrived a little early this year - courtesy of FedEx (thanks to their Home delivery service that delivers on weekends). A new (refurbished) 2.66GHz 20" iMac. It's replacing my MacBook Pro as my primary desktop at home so my MacBook Pro can go back to being a laptop and move around the house and stuff without me having to detangle a bazillion cables.

The present is early because of the way I've been buying Macs in the last few years. I used to buy Macs utilizing Apple "friends" and something called Q-Promo, which was a mega-discount to employees and friends of employees on overstocked items. In the last few years, though, Apple has gotten much better at controlling inventory, so Q-Promo is no longer the way to go. So my new strategy is to buy Macs off the refurb page at the online Apple Store. And, in particular, to buy right after they announce new models, so the models on the website become "previous generation" and get a further markdown. Then, buy it after entering the store from the discovercard.com website (for an extra 5% Discover CashBack bonus) and we're really talking discount!

But buying something refurbished means you have to buy what they have. So when you see something you want, you buy it! I saw what I wanted. I bought it. Even if it was a little before my birthday.

The new present also led to this "Now and Then" shot:



"Now" is the new iMac to the left (also connected to a really nice 24" Sun LCD flat panel for a second screen). "Then" is my "Grape" 400MHz iMacDV, circa 1999 (we bought it about the same time Andrew was born). It still boots and I still use it from time-to-time to play MacOS 9 games. But what a difference in technology!

Oh, and I'm sure I paid less dollars for my new iMac than I did for my original iMac.

I can only hope to get almost 10 years out of this iMac!

(This blog entry written on the "New" iMac)

Tags: Technology