Today Apple announced revisions to the iMac line of consumer desktop computers. Processor upgrades are always nice, but the big news was the new top model, the 24-inch iMac. To me, this seems to be a great value at $1999 ($1899 education pricing). That was the price of a 23-inch flat panel monitor by itself not that long ago.

While the standard config is great out of the box for almost any user (2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 1GB of RAM, 250GB hard drive, 8X SuperDrive, 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 7300 graphics card and Firewire 800), the options to max out the machine only add another $1200 or so (education pricing). That would upgrade the processor to a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, increase RAM to 3GB, up the hard drive to 500GB and switch to a 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT graphics card. Not sure why they list 3GB instead of 4GB as the max RAM–there are two slots and the 3GB is listed as 1×2GB, 1×1GB.

We have several of the pre-Intel iMacs at the school and have been very happy with this form factor. My wife purchased a 17-inch 1.8GHz iMac G5 last year that we are getting ready to sell (she ordered a black MacBook portable for her return to grad school this fall). It’s been a great unit: 1GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive, combo drive and Airport/Bluetooth wireless. Looks like eBay says it should sell for $650 or so. Anyone interested before I list it? Drop me a line if you’d like to know more…DK