Apple’s New Education-Only iMacs Are Cheaper, But Much Less Powerful
Shelly Palmer
Going all the way back to the venerable eMac, Apple has produced a low-price version of its iMac for educational institutions. This year is no different. Apple is now offering a new education-only version of the all-in-one featuring many of the improvements from 2012’s model, but at $1,099 it costs $200 less than the entry-level model available to the general public. You will give up quite a bit of hardware to save that money, though. Compared to the $1,299 model, the list of downgrades runs thusly: You get a dual-core 3.3GHz Core i3 CPU, instead of a quad-core 2.5GHz Core i5 CPU. You get 4GB of RAM spread across two 2GB sticks, instead of 8GB of RAM in two 4GB sticks. You get an integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics processor, instead of the dedicated Nvidia GeForce 640M. You get a 500GB 5400RPM hard drive, instead of a 1TB 5400RPM hard drive.
