Vintage Macs are a Good Buy

Since the beginning of my "Mac" experience in 1987, I've never been one to pay retail. If you have been a Macintosh user for long, you will remember a time when the computer made "for the rest of us" really was an expensive proposition.

I avoided that mostly by always buying closeout Macs that were last year's model. My first Mac, a Plus, was purchased at a Little Rock, Arkansas, downtown computer store for $1,299. For that price, all I got was the basic system. I purchased a tote bag (remember those?) and an external floppy drive.

I lived with the Plus for a number of years before purchasing a PowerBook 145B in Tupelo, Mississippi, which was being offered at an enormous discount at a Sam's Wholesale Club. At the time it was quite an upgrade from the Plus, which I had upgraded from one meg of internal RAM to four and 52 meg external hard drive. As I recall, the PowerBook came with four megs of RAM and an 80 meg hard drive.

Later, I purchased a secondhand Color Classic in Memphis, Tennessee. I now enjoyed a colorful Mac experience and was able to use all the applications I had grown to depend on.

Following the Color Classic, came a new 6116 Performa PowerMac, which was being sold on closeout at Office Depot in Columbia, Missouri. I was thrilled at the price and performance for the dollar. Literally up until a few months ago the 6100 was the fastest Mac I had ever owned.

I also acquired a used Mac Classic with four megs of memory and a 40 meg hard drive along the way, which was the computer my mother used up until last month.

You might say, "Well, what's the point?" The point is the 400 mhz G3 iMac that I'm typing this column on is an amazing piece of computer technology and engineering at an incredible price ($1,299). While you can certainly buy cheaper computers, you would be hard pressed to find a better value in top-of-the-line, cutting edge computing today.

The drawback for those upgrading to an iMac from older Macs is that Apple has created a legacy-free machine with the iMac. Gone are the outdated SCSI and serial port connections and in are Firewire and USB connections. The flip side is that everything you'll want to do with your new Mac will literally fly! The processor and hard drive is a screamer. Firewire smokes and USB does just about everything else.

Legacy-free can be good. It takes a company like Apple, however, to take the hit and make it happen.

This is really a great time to be a Mac user. While Apple is turning out great products, there is a huge market out there in older Mac equipment. Contrary to the PC market, old Macs are still very usable computers today. Let's face it, even the oldest Macs, such as the Mac Plus, can surf the web today. Try doing that on the competitor to the Mac at the time the Mac was introduced, such as a 286 IBM compatible.

This past weekend I picked up a used Mac LC III with monitor and printer for little to nothing. Despite the limitations of hard drive space and RAM, which I've already upgraded, this is a sweet machine. It runs System 7.1 and older software at good speeds and could be used for an Internet surfer if so desired.

There are many other examples of great deals on older Mac equipment on the web. While these machines may not fit the bill for everyday web surfing or intensive number crunching, they can still perform 90 percent of the tasks people purchase computers for.

And still yet, over the past several months I've purchased "closeout" software for a song as well. I've bought some nice older software, which by the way still runs on my iMac, for .99 cents and for $2.99 at several local stores.

I've known for some time that "old" isn't necessarily bad. That goes for age of a person and certainly the age of vintage Macs.

$699 iMacs at Sams!

Who said Macs are expensive? If you don't believe me, check out your local Sam's Wholesale. But you better do it quick, because the low-cost Macs I saw were flying off the shelves!

I'm talking about the $699 iMacs at Sam's. They're not the latest and greatest, but last year's 333 mhz, no-DVD version. They only have 32 megs of ram, but hey, they're Macs. A Sam's I visited over Christmas had a ton of these Macs on display for $849 (Grape and Tangerine only). That wasn't bad, but still not all that good, considering Apple had just introduced the $999 iMacs running at 350 mhz. I image some folks who have been curious about Apple and its products over the years bought one. But at $849, it probably wasn't many.

With a "6" in front that number (around Christmas) I would venture to say the boxes wouldn't have lasted long at all. In some ways, it could have been a real marketing coupe had Apple sold the machines to Sam's at a loss to get the iMac prices down and into homes and businesses. That way a lot of folks who are not exposed to the quality and reliability of Apple products would have purchased one. After all, the only competition in the $600-price range are some PC boxes with a name no one has ever heard of!

Many Mac watchers have dreamed of a sub-$500 Macintosh for years. While $699 is still a far cry from that, it sure is getting close and if you would have told me just two years ago that Macs would be selling below $700, I would have said you were crazy.

I would love to see sales figures of the iMacs once the price was reduced at Sam's. After all, Sam's shoppers are supposed to be bargain shoppers. People who know value when they see it. Once the price dropped, I bet the iMacs flew off the shelves, both into the hands of long-time Mac users and newbies as well.

While PC users will argue with Mac users about a lot of things, rarely does the argument ever focus on the shoddy quality of Apple products. That's because Apple is known in the industry as the leader in manufacturing good quality computers.

That's something the Sam's shopper who picked up a bargain-basement iMac will discover and who knows, perhaps one day, they'll buy Mac No. 2.

Need Relief from Stress? Buy a Mac!

For the past several weeks I've been leading a study at church on stress. We're using the videotape series Margin: Prescription for the Pain of Overloaded Lives by Dr. Richard A. Swenson. In one of the sessions, Dr. Swenson talks about how we should schedule for "margin" in our lives and allow time for things to go wrong. After all, he says: "Things that can go wrong will go wrong."

In addition, he talks about doing the things that tend to simplify, rather than complicate our lives. For instance, Dr. Swenson says he only owns two colors of trousers and one sports coat. By owning only two pairs of trousers he never has to make a fashion decision, he says.

You might be thinking what does a series on stress has to do with a column on the Mac? Well, I think a lot.

The use of computers in our personal and work lives can be both a blessing and a curse. As I have mentioned before in this column, some people are better suited to using PCs running Windows and others are more suited to using Macintosh computers. Windows tends to appeal somewhat more to business users and technophiles, whereas the Macintosh has tends to appeal more to graphic arts and publishing professionals.

With all that said, there are aspects to owning a PC running Windows that some embrace, whereas users of the Macintosh tend to really detest. One is the shear number of software titles and hardware options available for the average PC.

In this month's edition of MacAddict magazine, editor Robert Capps writes about his first trip to Comdex, which is considered to be the ultimate trade show by many PC users. As he arrives at the Las Vegas Convention Center where the show is being held, he sees an immediate contrast between PC and Mac users: many people in attendance are wearing suits.

To make a long story shorter, Capps is generally amazed at the number of competing software titles available for PCs. He had thought that he would be jealous of all that is PC and not Mac, but concludes otherwise: "I realized that if I worked for a PC magazine, I'd have to wade through all manner of ridiculous software. I'd be the guy that would have to test 50 different business management apps in order to find out what features would work for which people. Sure, these programs are functional, even necessary ­ but they're no fun and there are 10,000 of them."

And finally: "The longer I strolled the convention floor, the happier I was that I worked for MacAddict. We get to cover just cool stuff.The Mac pond may be way smaller, but thanks to its simplicity and its appeal to creative people, by comparison our pond is filled with champagne."

As I mentioned earlier, there is something to be learned here. Some people purchase a computer that they can constantly tinker with, while others buy a computer to get work done on and have fun on occasionally. That's where I believe the Mac excels and why so many people have found the iMac so appealing.

So the next time you're somewhere where there is an overwhelming number of PC titles over Mac titles, remember Robert Capps' visit to Comdex and go home and enjoy the stress relief of owning a Mac!