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 1x2GB, 1x1GB.

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