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From: fransson@blake.u.washington.edu (Larry Fransson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: General Mac questions
Keywords: new user to Mac
Message-ID: <14673@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 18 Jan 91 08:48:01 GMT
References: <2508@westmark.WESTMARK.COM>
Sender: news@milton.u.washington.edu
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 58

In article <2508@westmark.WESTMARK.COM> billy@westmark.WESTMARK.COM (Bill D'Augustine) writes:
>I am contimplating getting myself a Mac Classic computer, and have
>some questions I an curious about.
>
>First, I settled on the Classic, cause its cheap, and it does what
>I would want it too do. In my opinion, anything above an SE, would
>be overkill for me (altho colour would be nice, but I can do with
>out it)

I recently placed an order for the Classic for the same reasons (plus the fact
that my 7-year-old //e just doesn't cut it for engineering-type applications...
I'm being called a traitor by ][ fans for wanting to sell it).

>Anyways, on the Classic model, there are two varities: one with no
>hard drive for about $900 and one with a 40mb drive for about $1400.
>$500 for a 40mb drive is quite a lot of money, so I am wondering,
>if I get the one without the hard drive, can I later add a hard
>drive too it?

Wow...someone's doing some funky pricing there.  The University Bookstore here
(University of Washington) has them for $999 and $1299 for the 1Meg and the
2/40, respectively.  For that reason, I'm buying the 2/40.  In your case, it
*may* be less expensive to buy the 1 Meg Classic without the hard drive and
buy the hard drive separately.  You can, in fact, add an internal hard drive
after the fact.  I'm not sure what that would involve, but you can bet there
would be a charge for some service person to install it.  I had considered this
route (I have a friend who works in Apple's corporate office not far from here
who works as the equipment manager, and could easily do this for me...he told me
I should look into that possibility), but it is difficult to find a good hard
drive for less than $400 that I've seen, so I chose to go for the 2/40.  It
should be noted that the hard drive installed at the factory is a Quantum hard
drive.  Other brands *could* void the warranty.  (Of course, if the warranty has
expired, I guess nobody cares too much.)

Another consideration in thinking about which to buy is how much memory you
want.  If 1 Meg will work for you, fine.  But if you are going to want more
than that, you will have to buy the memory expansion card (you see, that's
likely part of the $500 difference between the two).  Once you've got 2 MB,
it is relatively simple and cheap to expand the memory farther.  I have seen
mail order Simms chips for as low as $45 per MB.  (If I remember correctly, they
are user-installable, but you will want to check that to be sure.)  So, then,
for $90 plus shipping, you have yourself a 4MB Mac (that's as far as it goes).

I recommend checking the classified ads and various Mac/computer-oriented
publications for hard drives and memory.  Find out what it is likely to cost you
to upgrade later.  Once you have a good idea of what it may cost later, you may
find it is cheaper to buy it now (I did, anyway).

Good luck.

                                        -Larry

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-   Larry L. Fransson      ||    UW Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics -
- Naval Nuclear Aviator    ||             fransson@u.washington.edu            -
-   Aircraft Designer      ||  It's really handy to have friends who work for  -
-    Extraordinaire        ||  Apple...even if we're not roommates anymore...  -
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