Apple iMac Desktop with 20" Display MA589LL/A (2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive)

by Apple

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 22 x 23 x 10 inches ; 22 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 31.8 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000EPNES6
• Item model number: MA589LL/A
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (66 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 6, 2006

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Cast your gaze on the ultimate eye-opening experience: the new faster, bigger, and brighter iMacs. S tarting at under $1000, the most personal of personal computers comes out packing a powerful punch. That's thanks to the new 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo processor, you'll find in each and every new iMac.

The iMac's display pivots to whichever angle is best for you.

All in the family
The fastest iMac ever, the 24-inch iMac provides professional performance along with the convenience of an all-in-one design. Like its 17-inch and 20-inch siblings, it features the new 64-bit Intel Co re 2 Duo processor with speeds ranging from 1.83 GHz to 2.33 GHz. The new processor delivers up to 5 0% more performance than the previous 20-inch iMac. It also doubles the amount of L2 cache, the twin cores sharing 4 MB between them. The result? Turbocharged performance, making it easier--and more f un--than ever to work with digital photos, movies, music, and the web.

The simple six-button Apple Remote gives you control over your music, movies, and photos from anywhere in the room--and it stows away neatly (and magnetically) on the side of your iMac when you're not using it.

Dazzling Displays
Whether you’re surfing the web, editing video, managing photos, or enjoying face-time with far-flung friends, you'll thoroughly enjoy the lush visual experience of working on iMac. With excellent colo r saturation, all three models feature a cinematic 16:10 wide aspect ratio that's perfect for watchi ng movies. And iMac delivers a beautifully bright display with the new 24-inch model lighting the wa y. In fact, it’s a full 40% brighter than the 20-inch model.

It's a wonderful iLife
iMac comes with iLife ’06, a suite of easy-to-use applications that make the spectacular a regular p art of your everyday life. Enhance, organize and share your photos via iPhoto. Make an epic starring your kid in iMovie. Turn your photo and movie creations into professional DVDs with iDVD. Create or iginal music in GarageBand, even if you can't carry a tune. Make podcasts and blogs. Then publish th em online via your .Mac account and the all-new iWeb.

The ultimate see and say
There's an iSight camera built into every new iMac, so you can start a video chat (or join one) at a moment's notice. There's nothing extra to buy, nothing to attach, no cords to fumble with, no softw are to install or configure. Simply start up iChat AV, click your buddy's video icon and you’re read y to chat with sight and sound--with up to three friends at once. Proper attire suggested.

Now showing
With iMac, you've got the best seat in the house. The full-screen Front Row media experience--with i ts intuitive menus, large text and brilliant graphics--lets you browse the music, photos, and videos on your iMac as easily as you browse music on your iPod. And the new Apple Remote lets you do your browsing from anywhere in the room. So gather your friends and dazzle them with a slideshow of your vacation pics, a home movie or a DVD. iMac was born to entertain.

Product Description

20" Used iMac 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (MA589LL/A) 20-inch iMac 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB Memory, 250GB Hard Drive, Superdrive - 2 MONTHS WARRANTY - Certified Used iMacs are still available in our store with 2 month warranty. Buying an used iMac desktop is your best option for daily basic usage, video, sound editing and graphic design. Instead of an Apple refurbished iMac, you can buy a cheap used iMac.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

125 of 135 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still THE computer for the rest of us., September 19, 2006

By 

Joseph Ekaitis "author of Collinsfort Village" (Southern California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Apple iMac Desktop with 20" Display MA589LL/A (2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive) (Personal Computers)

Twice in a single year, Apple has released Intel-based iMac computers, and with Intel's announcement of the Core 2 Quad chip (yep, 4 processor cores), should you wait?

If web surfing, home movie-making, photo editing and home office work are all you have in mind, the answer is no. The 20-inch iMac in its basic configuration (1 GB of system RAM, 128MB of video RAM, 250GB hard drive) is more than plenty. Only the most rabid gamers will opt for the 256 MB video RAM upgrade, and impoverished graphics designers who can't afford the Mac Pro will find the 24-inch iMac an enticing alternative. Right out of the box, this iMac carries on the Macintosh legacy of "The computer for the rest of us."

The 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor provides ample horsepower to run Microsoft Office 2004 (via Rosetta) as fast as (and some claim faster than) the iMac G5, where it runs as a native PowerPC application. The built-in iLife applications are all Universal. You'll get zippy performance that makes photo enhancement in iPhoto and home video editing in iMovie a breeze instead of a chore. And all the while, you can work to your favorite music in iTunes without skips or stutters.

The 20-inch 16x10 aspect ratio display might seem like overkill if you don't play DVDs and watch movies regularly, but once you work with it, you won't want to go back. There's so much room and the screen resolution is so fine, you can edit whole pages of text in Microsoft Word 2004 while keeping the iChat window in full view without overlapping. The optical SuperDrive completes the package, giving you the ability to burn music and data CDs as well as DVDs.

For many, the iSight camera will be icing on an already satisfying cake. Even if you rarely video chat, iSight lets you snap your own photo and throw in some visual effects with Photo Booth. It's an easy way to keep your bulletin board avatars and chat icons up to date.

Expect high-end laptop-quality sound from the built-in speakers. I saved a 3-piece set of Altec-Lansing speakers from my old Dell and turned the iMac into an honest-to-goodness entertainment center.

Running the show is Mac OS X Tiger, always a 64-bit operating system and finally able to show itself off. Acclaimed around the world as the best operating system for home users, OS X Tiger protects you and your family from the perils of a connected life by turning up its nose at Windows trojans, spyware and other nasty stuff. On the surface, OS X Tiger seems tame as a kitten but deep down inside, amazing things are going on, like Spotlight, a search tool that chews up and spits out Windows XP's cute li'l puppy. Search results appear AS YOU TYPE YOUR QUERY, and not just file names but references in nearly every file format. Open your fantasy novel manuscript, change the dragon's name from Elliott to Fafnir and by the time you've saved it, Spotlight already knows about it. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

This is my second Mac. Transferring everything from my PowerPC G4 Mac mini was a breeze with Migration Assistant and a FireWire cable. It was as if it had been my Mac all along. It didn't even matter that my default web browser and email client are Mozilla's Firefox and Thunderbird. There were no "You are not using Safari!" warnings or "Would you like to make Mail your default mail client?" offers. Ditto for transferring my wife's info from an even older G3 iMac (also running Tiger) to the Mac mini after I refreshed it with its restore DVDs. We had planned on the project taking a couple evenings. It was all done in about an hour and a half.

The only part of the iMac that disappoints is the optical wired Mighty Mouse, but then, we all know Steve Jobs is a quirky guy who seems to enjoy throwing a ringer into every product, so his idea of the perfect mouse is just as quirky. It's love (or hate) at first touch. I don't know anyone who has said "Yeah, it's different, but I can get used to it," though I've heard customers at The Apple Store ask "Can I get a credit if I give back the mouse?" I'm a trackball fan myself and the iMac happily said "Well, hello d'er!" when I plugged in a Logitech Marble Mouse USB trackball. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Apple to offer a BYOKM (Bring Your Own Keyboard and Mouse) version of the iMac.

Anyone old enough to read this has been alive since the days when 20-inch flat panel displays sold for the price of the 20-inch iMac. Considering that you get a machine that runs Mac OS X as well as Windows XP and Vista (which you supply), it's a steal. Enjoy the guilt.

UPDATE: On August 7, 2007, Apple replaced this model at this price with the new Apple iMac Desktop with 20" Display MA877LL/A (2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive). Snazzy good looks inspired by the Apple Cinema Display and more bang for your buck.

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Computer That Does Everything, October 30, 2006

By 

M. Kreg (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Apple iMac Desktop with 20" Display MA589LL/A (2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive) (Personal Computers)

This is my first Mac, and I'll never go back. I moved from an HP to the 20" iMac easily using a portable hard drive. As soon as I got it home, I downloaded the trial version of Parallels and the Boot Camp Beta. I bought my own copy of Windows XP and installed it easily using both methods. I can boot up in the Mac OS, I can boot up as a Windows XP machine and run PC games that wouldn't run on my 4-year-old PC, or I can boot up in Mac OS and run Windows in a window through Parallels so I can copy and paste data or share files between the two for my work applications. I can continue to run my PC web authoring software or those sticky programs that just won't be released for Mac soon--all through Parallels.

The iMac comes with a trial version of Microsoft Office for Mac, which you can purchase for somewhere around $350. Or you can purchase the trial version of Mac's iWork for about $79. Hmmm. My wallet says I'll learn iWork. For those of us raised on Microsoft, the only tricky part is remembering those new keyboard shortcuts to make text bold, italics, centered, etc. Mac's Pages, the word processor, is a real wizard when it comes to formatting text around objects. I keep finding myself asking, Why didn't Microsoft ever think of this?

For instance, set a hot zone for your mouse, and when you move your mouse there, all the hidden windows you'd be Alt+Tab-bing through to find what you need scatter across your desk so you can see all of them right in front of you. Click the one your looking for, and that becomes the front window, all the other windows zooming back to their original position behind it. And I love the voice that says, "Excuse me, Safari (the web browser) needs your attention." If I'm away from my iMac, the voice lets me know when I have messages, when a file has finished downloading, etc. I have it set to remind me the time so I don't stay too long playing with the new iMac.

I plugged in my old printer, waiting for the "Found new hardware... Found Printer... Installing new hardware... Drivers missing..."--nothing. Like I never plugged it in. I thought it must not have worked, so I opened the word processor to see if I could print, and there it was. It just works. There's a USB port on the keyboard for the mouse. Why didn't anyone ever think of that before? I imported my 1,500 photos, and they're not catagorized by file name--they scroll by with the month and year taken. Pull out the remote and from across the room you've got a slide show of your photos complete with music in the background. And not one single sales icon on the desktop trying to sell me Internet access or security software. If you want to know how to use a PC, ask a 10-year-old. If you want to know how to work a Mac, ask anybody who's never used a computer before how they think it should work.

Honestly, and I hate to sound like a convert but, the only problems I had were with the Microsoft applications. I had to call Microsoft and get them to release the code on my copy of Windows since I was installing it twice (on the same machine).

For those afraid to take the plunge from PC to Mac, this is the ideal. It can easily be both, but the Mac appears to be made with more common sense behind it. I can enjoy the spiffy hardware and software of the Mac, but use Windows to do the other stuff I have to do. Mac even includes tools in its Boot Camp software to make Windows do some of the things Mac does by nature.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars There's no better time to make the switch from PC., January 29, 2007

By 

Michael Hacker (Poteau, OK USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Apple iMac Desktop with 20" Display MA589LL/A (2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive) (Personal Computers)

I've been an avid supporter or PCs for many years now. I'm a technician, and I've built many machines for myself and my friends and family. Needless to say, I was always a bit skeptical of buying a Mac. Windows can run many more applications and games, and that fact would always sway me from buying Macs. Recently, however, my wife (a film student) said she needed Final Cut Pro, and so we decided to splurge and try out this iMac. (Note: I got the same iMac, except with 2 GB of RAM, a 256 MB video card, and a wireless Mighty Mouse and keyboard, bought directly from apple.com)

First of all, let me say this - the quality of everything is amazing! The design is, in my opinion, very refreshing. It looks clean, neat, and very well done. The screen is very crisp and bright, with an impressive resolution (widescreen 1600 x 1050).

I play World of Warcraft, and the game runs virtually without flaws, even on the highest graphics settings. When I first saw it, I was stunned - was this the same game? I'm sure you can get the same effect running a really tricked out PC, but I have a laptop with completely equivalent hardware, and it does not run near as well as it does on my iMac.

No crashes, no hang ups, and no problems so far. DVDs play with absolutely no hiccups (even on high end Windows machines, I would get the occasional skip). Everything just works, no strings attached. I've had it for a little over a week so far, and I'm still falling in love with it. I will say a few things negative - to be fair. We left GarageBand running for several hours on end(5 tracks opened), and the program claimed to be out of memory (2 GB of memory just doesn't disappear). The problem did correct itself, though, and it didn't crash. Also, the new Intel Macs have dropped Classic support, for older applications. Again, this isn't a big deal, since you probably don't have that many old Mac programs that would be of any use to you.

So, I was converted from a PC guy to a Mac man in the span of a couple hours. If you're looking for a chance to switch from PC to Mac, here's your chance. The price tag isn't too bad, for what you're getting (Excellent monitor + Mac + built in webcam and microphone + good keyboard and mouse).