With Windows 8 on the horizon, why did I buy a new iMac? It boiled down to a few practical issues.

My Digital Media Hub which was a Windows 7 PC gave up its last breath after nearly 5 years when I looked around for a good branded PC from Dell or HP with lots of RAM and storage (1 TB HDD, Quad-Core, 8GB RAM, Powerful graphics) it came to nearly Rs.75K-80K like the Inspiron model below.

Price & Config of Dell Inspiron One 2320

Price & Config of Dell Inspiron One 2320

First, I realized any Windows 7 PC I buy today will not have great touch capabilities and it will be better to buy a new Windows 8 PC when it ships, but that’s going to be a wait of another 6-9 months. My son who has not been able to see his favourite TV shows on my Apple TV or in my iPad will not be happy with this wait. Over the years I have learnt that is wiser to go for a device/gadget that solves the problems that I have today, rather than wait for a new device. You can never beat the new technology wave.

Second, it is going to be in my Home. I can never imagine replacing my Windows 7 workhorse on my office desk, what’s the point of losing 20 years of experience and productivity that comes with it and I have so many applications that work only in Windows? But the PC I was looking for now, is instead going to be used by my family for some regular browsing, Facebook, YouTube & some MS Office, all this iMac can handle comfortably just like a Windows 7 PC. Mainly it is going to be my Digital Media Hub, so it is going to be only iTunes based. I have already moved my Digital Library last year from Zune/XBOX to iTunes as my iOS devices in the house started proliferating at an unstoppable pace. As it stands today Windows Phone 7.x does not support even display of Indic Languages (Tamil for me) so I don’t see myself moving from iPhone to WP7. So what can be a better PC than an iMac for iTunes workload?

Third, I am not new to OS X as I have been using a MacBook Air for the last 4 years as my travel laptop in dual boot with Windows Vista/7.  But frankly, I always ended up using more Windows due to familiarity.

And lastly, my wife ordered that if she allows me to write this big cheque then whatever I bring home has to look good in “her” den along with our Bookshelf & TV and I have to use it for the next 3 years at the minimum.

Having narrowed it down I checked out for an iMac and got the below quote. It was a bit more expensive than the PC choices but not my long, so I went ahead with it. I convinced our regular vendor to rush me delivery in a few days against 2 weeks for this 1TB SKU.

iMac 2011 - iMac 21.5 Price in India

iMac 2011 – iMac 21.5 Price in India

When the iMac arrived in the carton box it was a treat to open just like opening the box of iPad or iPhone4. The box came with just the monitor (with the machine in it), just one cable (power cable) and a small wireless keyboard and mouse. Setting it up was a breeze. I will post my experience of configuring it for my taste, my apps and my accessories in the next post.

iMac 2011 in the carton box

iMac 2011 in the carton box

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