After years of having my parents somehow infect their PC's with viruses, malware, and trojans doing the only thing they know how to do (check their yahoo mail and my dad looks at cars on ebay) i'm thinking we should just get them an apple so we can avoid the problem all together.

The machine would just be for browsing the web. So we don't need anything fancy...

I was gonna replace their machine with some slickdeals.com 399 dell or something when one came up but i'm thinking the extra price of the mac would be worth it to avoid the constant headaches i'm getting fixing thier current PC.

That being said, we don't want to spend a lot of money. Hell, if there are refurb's or good models we could pick up used I would consider that as an option as well.

So whats the most barebones mac money can buy and are there resellers or anything that you can get better deals on them rather than through apple.com?

 

I have three G4 eMacs for sale sitting in the storage of my office. $200 a pop + shipping, that would be a cheap way to go

 

If you want a warranty and AppleCare, which is probably a really good idea in this application, the Apple Refurbished Store is a good place to look for bargains.

There's this for $999. Should keep them going for 4+ years.

 

Thanks for the quick reply's guys. I remember those G4's... and while they would probably fit the bill I think I want to get a slightly newer generation and OS... The refurb store looks like that may be the perfect way to go!

 

You can also grab a Mac mini (Mac mini - Apple Store (U.S.)). These guys are cheap as far as Apples go but can definitely handle web browsing.

I actually read a cool piece on a shop that put a Mac mini in a guys car and hooked it up with a touch-screen interface for a totally custom in-car computer system

--eric

 

Refurbished is the best way to go. If you don't care about Apple care, check CL.