One thing that people harp on about the Mac is that it’s “expensive.”  Ignoring for the moment that when you purchase a $500 PC, you get what you pay for.  After the recent price hikes for the low-end iMac, there are very few ways to get Macs under the $1000 mark ($1 under just doesn’t cut it).

I was recently asked to purchase five Blue & White G3 towers.  After discussions with the client, I determined that the only reason that they wanted the B&W G3 was that they wanted to use their existing monitors.  After pointing out that the cheapest B&W G3 was $800 and only 350MHz and that they could get an iMac DV with VGA port for less running at 400MHz they changed their order to five Indigo iMac DVs.

The best deal that I found was at RefurbMadness, who advertised the iMac DV 400 (FireWire and CD drive) for $649.  The bad news, they don’t have any in stock and, despite their claim of getting more within two days, they have no idea when they’ll have more. (I called Tuesday, it’s Friday, still no iMacs, still no idea when they’ll be able to get any)

SmallDog.com to the rescue, they had the same iMac for $699 but with a full one year refurbished warranty from Apple.

Has anyone else had any good/bad experiences finding deals on older macs (used or refurbished) that they’d like to share.  It may help someone who wants or needs a new mac but can’t swing $999+.

Try this site

http://www.powermax.com/cpus/used_500to1000.html

They have a pretty good selection of older machines ranging from under $100 to over $2000 depending on what you want.  Personally I think they are a little high priced for what you get, but not too bad. 

Another really good option is to check with some local universities to see if they are liquidating any old hardware that is being replaced.  You can sometimes find beige G3 tower type machines for under $400 or so.  Of course, no warranty, but hey, for that cheap what do you expect.

Hope this helps….

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Jon

I would have to agree on powermax also i use other world computing a lot too.

Dave