Daystar reduces iMac Flat Panel CPU upgrade pricing

Glad to see this. It was way to pricey when it first came out. I wish the Macnn article was right, it says the 700/800 mhz upgrade is $50 right now, when it's actually $450. $450 plus S&H vs a new mac mini and monitor... it's still a tough call.

We talked about it in the forums breifly: http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=262479

Interestingly, when you look at shipping options:

US Ground FREE [ADD $20.00]

That's the most expensive "FREE" I've ever seen.

Well, it's getting better, but it's still too expensive. I'd probably be willing to pay $250-$300 for this upgrade. But $450 is still too much.

After thinking about it, I don't think that $450 is too much. It is still a bit expensive, but we're talking about upgrading a machine that has an LCD built-in, which is the thing that always makes iMacs such a great value. If you spent that same money on a Mac mini instead, well, you'd have to buy one used, for starters. And it wouldn't come with a monitor, let alone an LCD on a sexy mechanical arm. You might not get a machine with as much RAM as you probably have installed in your iMac. (Because really, who has less than 512MB of RAM on their Mac?) You don't get a Superdrive in your Mac mini for that price. (Granted, you might not necessarily have a Superdrive in your iMac, but if you're like me, the Superdrive was one of the main selling points of the iMac G4.) You probably have a larger hard drive in your iMac than the 40GB you would get in the Mac mini. I mean, we're comparing the price, right? If you have an 800MHz G4 iMac, applying this upgrade for that money gives you a machine that is quite capable without any additional purchases and would raise the re-sale value of the machine by quite a bit.

All in all, I think it's actually a rather good price now.