I am happy to announce that yesterday I ordered two new 20" iMacs for my law office. When our firm made the switch from PCs to Macs over three years ago, I bought our two legal assistants Mac Minis, which have served admirably since that time. I made these purchases through Apple’s "Business Unit," which made the shopping experience quick and easy and also yielded a slight discount on certain items.
However, even though the Minis are still going strong, I decided that it was time for an update, and it was quite an easy decision to get the iMacs. Not only are the iMacs beautiful, but they are also quite a good buy when considering the many features that they offer. They are scheduled to arrive on Friday, though I would not be surprised for them to show up early, as typically happens with my purchases from Apple.
I also have plans for the used Minis. I intend to convert one into a media server, as discussed in a recent guest post. The other one will probably be used as a file/data repository in the office, which will hopefully enable us to get rid of our Windows server. If not, I am sure that I can find another creative use for it, as it is still quite spry after all these years.
Oh, this was not my only hardware purchase made this week… Stay tuned.
I wish I could buy the iMac but I don’t like the display (iGlare). Instead, I’m going to order a much pricier Mac Pro. Ugh. The mini will serve you well as a file server, but it has only one hard drive so you’ll need a good backup plan. We recently migrated from a mini to a Mac Pro with 4 hard drives and an Apple RAID card for our file server. We felt the redundancy was worth the money since we all work off the file server and don’t store any files on our local hard drives.
I’m curious how your legal assistants will find the glossy screens, when used in a job that requires them to stare at a glossy screen for many hours per day. In my case, I use an older Intel iMac for my legal practice. Since I cannot tolerate glossy screens, I am forced to keep using my old-generation white iMac with the matte screen, and keep using them as long as they last. Although I would want to upgrade to the latest iMacs, I simply cannot, because I cannot tolerate the glossy screens since my job involves literally starring at the screen for many hours per day. Apple are showing their arrogance by removing the matte, antiglare screen option, when online polls show that a substantial majority of people prefer matte screens.
In a MacPoll.com poll, 44% preferred matte. 32% preferred glossy.
Try the following google searches:
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“eyes start to hurt” glossy matte imac
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“get a headache” glossy matte imac
Another new Mac is coming to the MacLawyer? Is there something in the air?
You can buy stick on screen filters that give a glossy display a matte finish, but I am not sure where to get them off the top of my head.
Anti-glare filters are available from photodon.com — although a google search for reviews and end-user comments indicates that not everyone finds them satisfactory.
If you decided to use the Mac mini as a file server (assuming it is running Leopard), how have you dealt with the permissions issue? Did you upgrade the OS to Leopard Server?