When to Buy My New System

[acemaverick1381]

Okay, here is the issue. I have a Dell Insprion 5100 laptop, and I have it upgraded, so it works pretty well. 2.8ghz processor, 1gb of RAM, and I have a 160gb external hdd. The system has been good for me, but I'm looking for something new.

Since I'm going off to college in 2007, I've started to look around and get an idea of what I want. I'll be majoring in Computer Science, so I plan to have a nice system. I used to bash Mac, but since then, they have made a lot of changes that I have supported, esepcially the move to Intel and the BootCamp addon.

My dad has offered to buy me a new Mac now, or next year, which would be about one or two months before I go to college. I don't have an extreme knowledge of development under Mac, so I'll need time to play. If I don't like OSX, I can simply boot into Windows/Linux. And, it also seems that the specs on a Mac will support Vista when it comes out.

Right now I'm looking at the 20 inch iMac, with 2gb of RAM, 500gb hdd, 256 ATI vid-card, and the wireless keyboard/mouse set. The total comes up a little shy of $2,500.

I'm just wondering if I should go ahead and buy now so I'll be set and know exactly what I'll be doing with it in college, or wait about 12 months and buy  one then. Any input is welcome.

[neb1211]

I don't know too much about when Apple releases new products but I would probably wait for about six weeks or so.  You might want to check out http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/ for information on where an Apple product is in it's life cycle.

[landshark]

Yeah, and if you don't need the computer till next year, I'd wait till next year.  I'm looking to purchase my first Mac as well and I have been doing a lot of research on them lately, including that site that Neb posted.  Mac's seem to be updated (even if it's a new processor) about every 6 months.  Given that, a year from now you'll be a lot better off.  That aside, I expect to see OSX 10.5 Leopard announced at the Developers Conference in August and then released at MacWorld San Fransico in January.  So again, if you can wait till next year, the new OS will be out and, I'm sure there will be a slew of new products along with it.

Pro's for waiting:
1. New OS
2. A whole new line of Macs (everything but the MacBook's will be updated by the end of this year, including the release of the G5 PowerPC tower replacements)
3. Ability to take advantage of all the suprise releases that Apple likes to pull

Con's for waiting:
1. You can't use it now
2. You can't take advantage of the current free iPod with purchase of a new Mac "back to school" promotion (but they did it last year so I think it's a safe bet to say that they will do it again next year as well)

So, the choice is up to you.   

[mipadi]

If you can wait a few months, I'd do it, if only to wait until OS X 10.5 comes out.

As a side note, software development on OS X is a dream. Cocoa is probably the best API I have ever used, and on OS X, you have so many choices: C, Objective-C, Java, C++, Ruby, Python, Perl, assembly, and a few others. Plus all your development tools are free.

[acemaverick1381]

Well what finally made me think about switching was most defaitenly the bootcamp and Intel swtich. Being the type of developer I am, I use Linux 60% of the time, but since I still do need to write Windows apps from time to time, I need to keep up with Windows as well. Now with bootcamp, I'm a lot more willing to get it a try.