The Best Mac to Give or Get for the Holidays

The holiday season is approaching, and with the new season come new Macs. This is a good time to buy Macs, with many sales on new ones and people trying to get rid of their older - but still useable - machines for shiny new ones.

The question arises: which Mac to buy. Here's my Low End Mac holiday shopping guide of sorts.

The Best Low End Mac for a Kid

The iBook: It's white, it's sleek, the back lights up, and it comes in a variety of speeds and processors for your budget. I'd recommend the 800 MHz G3 version with a Combo drive (CD burner, DVD player) as a minimum. Even with all of that, this iBook can be had for well under US$650. I use an iBook 800 and love it. It offers just the right amount of portability. Plus, people find the small size of the 12" screen cute, and it's perfect to bring to class.

Any high schooler or college kid would be more than happy to see this under the tree. Heck, even the charger looks cool. Battery life is average, from what I've experienced, and an AirPort card is a must.

Any white iBook is a great deal, so the more you can spend the better. 1 GHz G4s can be had for under US$1,000. This is the most bang for your buck, since you get a G4 processor and AirPort Extreme capabilities, among other niceties.

For current prices, see this week's best iBook G3 deals and this week's best iBook G4 deals.

The DVD player is a nice addition, since it allows your kids to watch movies in the back of the car on the way to Grandma's house - which brings me to my next person to be on your non-denominational holiday shopping list: Granny.

The Best Low End Mac for Grandma

Classic (CRT) iMac: If you have a grandma like mine - which I'll assume you do to avoid a "Best Low End Mac for Grandma who's a Perl Coder" - she only needs a Mac that can do the basics. A CRT iMac is perfect for this. Inexpensively priced, you can snag a 333 MHz model for around US$150.

The 38 pound shipping weight can be a concern for overall pricing, but it'll still come out very cheap to get Grandma typing letters and emails to all. Lexmark, by the way, sells many printers well under US$50 if you know where to look. (A point to ponder: Why is replacing the printer itself oftentimes cheaper than replacing the ink?)

For current prices, see this week's best iMac G3 deals.

Plus you can get her Juno, which is now OS X compatible, for US$9.95 per month. While I don't necessarily agree with their business tactics, you can't beat 10 bucks a year for dialup Internet. This is good if your grandmother (or other grown up computer user) doesn't want to experiment with the Internet.

My grandma has been happily using Juno on her 386 PC since Juno was totally free and a 386 was considered fast. The computer, by the way, still works remarkably well. Of course, it couldn't hold a candle to my fully functional SE/30 as far as impressive old computers that still work go.

The Best Low End Mac for a Recent PC Convert

The iMac G5: The iMac G5 is the ultimate in flexing the Macintosh muscle. It's sleek looks are enough to make any boring black box user drool.

As I digress, again I'll mention that most boring beige PC boxes of past have migrated to quasi-techno looking boring black boxes.

But back to the iMac - underneath the nice looks is enough power to run any application (even the forthcoming Doom 3 for Mac). Plus, the new version of Virtual PC will run with plenty gusto on this new computer, giving Windows users no reason to leave their old programs behind.

While it's price isn't necessarily the cheapest around, it's still low-priced enough to be a good deal and be considered a Low End Mac in my book.

For current prices, see this week's best iMac G5 deals.

The Best Low End Mac for You

The eMac 1.25: No holiday shopping trip is complete without a little something for yourself. This little something is the eMac. I use an eMac along with my iBook, and I love it.

The 1.25 GHz G4 is super powerful, USB 2.0 lets me connect my external hard drive and have all the inexpensive storage I'll ever need, and the 17" screen is crisp, clear, and downright awesome. The best part is the price. Available for US$800 to start, you can't beat the price.

If you spring for the upgraded model, you can get an 8x SuperDrive (the same one in the PowerMac g5) and a larger hard drive (80 GB instead of 40). Regardless of which one you go for, the eMac is an awesome value. This price for a new, complete Mac is almost unheard of.

For current pricing, see this week's best eMac deals. [Editor's note: We use the 1.25 GHz eMac as our main production machine at Low End Mac. It really is a lot of computer for the price.]

In the end, Macs are almost as diverse as our families, and every Mac really does have a different use. Going along with that, older Macs are never something to be forgotten, as they often become the lower part of "low end." (People must agree with me here, of course, since LEM would have no reader base without this key fact.)

One man's outdated computer is another man's mom's email machine.