I'm looking at picking up a 20" aluminium iMac, 2007 model, 2.4Ghz C2D with ATI Radeon 2600 Pro for $480. Price checks out with mac2sell. I just wanted to get the cheapest unit I could find that will be compatible with Mountain Lion which requires a 64-bit EFI. A bit of a snag though, apparently the Radeon 2600 Pro is not OpenCL compatible, I heard Mountain Lion requires OpenCL?

My eMac was donated to a family, I gave them instructions on how to boot into safe mode as there are leaking capacitors but it was still good for internet surfing and word processing. I need a new used Mac to replace. If it won't support Mountain Lion, I would rather get a cheaper white iMac for now and upgrade to a Mountain Lion compatible system later on. What do I do?

To further iterate, the only reason I'm so concerned about Mountain Lion really is the Messages program. Actually the iMessage part I don't 100% care about, it would be nice to FaceTime on the computer.

Perhaps by the time Mountain Lion is released, Messages will actually work. Sure, it's beta now and all, but it replaced iChat. Nowhere near ready.

Hm it seems that Facetime is a separate app on Mac anyway? We don't need Messages really, we have iPhones, but being able to Facetime on a bigger screen would be excellent.

Messages Beta will apparently stop working on Lion once Mountain Lion is out.

The Messages app lets you communicate via computer with iPhones, iPads, other computers.

Hm it seems that Facetime is a separate app on Mac anyway? We don't need Messages really, we have iPhones, but being able to Facetime on a bigger screen would be excellent.

Messages Beta will apparently stop working on Lion once Mountain Lion is out.

My other option is a 2006 C2D white iMac, 20", $350. As long as it runs Lion, I'm good.

Where are you finding all these great deals?

My other option is a 2006 C2D white iMac, 20", $350. As long as it runs Lion, I'm good.

Some of those are Core Duos which will not run Lion.

Some of those are Core Duos which will not run Lion.

Some "C2D"s are Core Duos??

Some "C2D"s are Core Duos??

Ha, missed that.

Lol.

johnnydee, Craigslist.

I have a few options at this point so I'm going to make decision soon...

Personally I would advise against a used iMac. I have worked on more iMacs than any other Mac and from the G5 models all the way to the 2010 27" is hardware I would never personally want to own new or used. Not saying they are all garbage but rather that the ones with issues are nothing but pain. Stay away if you can.

I would advise a new mini if you can deal with spending 120 more but in return you will get to run ML and maybe even the next 2 OS after it. It would be more than 120 extra of course if you don't have a decent LCD for it.

The mini has it's limitations but it carries none of the burdens that all in one computers do. AIO make me cringe when I think of longevity or healthy hardware environments. It's all crammed in behind a screen for no good reason but aesthetics.

I have a 2007 20" Aluminum 2.0GHz C2D iMac (Model 7,1), w/ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT 128 MB Graphics, 4GB RAM, and it will be Mountain Lion compatible. Strange that the machine you are looking into is one step above mine and supposedly will not run the next Mac OS. From my research, all the aluminum iMacs are compatible with 10.8. My machine actually sneaks in at the cutoff point for Mountain Lion. As far as reliability goes, I can only speak for my machine and say that it has been my main Mac for 4.5 years and has been nothing but impeccable. It runs Lion wonderfully and has been a workhorse from the day I got it. The model iMac you are referring to is listed as compatible.

Hardmac.com : Le "Macbidouille" in English - List of Mountain Lion Compatible Macs (http://www.hardmac.com/news/2012/02/20/list-of-mountain-lion-compatible-macs)

I think the pros outweigh the cons. I do have a 20" Samsung lcd I can use but I hate clutter and hate extra wires. My new house has a small home office but the eMac was much too big for it.

Dumpling, I may wait for the official announcement. Many report that Mountain Lion is ditching all OpenGL support in favour of going with OpenCL only and the ATI 2400/2600 only supports OpenGL, not OpenCL. The optional NVidia 8800 in the 24" Al iMacs have OpenCL support. I'd rather just get the cheapest Lion compatible iMac I can find and be done with that.

I had not heard of the graphics limitations preventing a Mountain Lion upgrade. Thanks for the information. Hopefully the original requirement of a machine's ability to boot into OS X's 64 bit kernel holds up and my machine sneaks in at the time of 10.8's release. Either way I am sure you will be happy with your choice.

Hello from my Mid-2006 C2D iMac 20". :) Works awesome. Couldn't get the wireless mighty mouse to work but I'll probably pick up a magic mouse.

zen.state, to add, my eMac blew a capacitor, so I very well know the disadvantages. What set it off was a game of Unreal Tournament 2004, the eMac was never the same again after that, so I'll avoid doing any intense gaming on this iMac and save that for my XBox 360.

I didn't realize I've had this computer for over a year now. It was a bit unstable for a bit as I used a fan control app to keep the CPU temperatures lower. This affected the stability of the machine dearly. I removed it just recently and my iMac is as stable as ever.

I am pondering selling my MBP and this iMac and getting a newer iMac. I don't need the MBP anymore and I prefer using the iMac, which is great, just a bit slow.

Why did you use the fan control in the first place?

I used to use fancontrol back in 10.5.x, but since 10.6.x it has not been stable.

CPU temps were higher than I wanted them. It took me 6+ months to realize that Fan Control was causing my system to crash and crash often. My system will still freeze every week or two but a lot better than before. Funny thing is, the CPU temperatures hasn't risen at all since I uninstalled Fan Control.

temps should reach 90c easily. at least it does on both my macbook and upgraded mac mini.

Lol the highest I see is maybe 75C in both my iMac and MacBook Pro. So really, Fan Control is just not necessary.

Lol the highest I see is maybe 75C in both my iMac and MacBook Pro. So really, Fan Control is just not necessary.

Ditto, my MBP 15" under full load with fans turning at 6200 rpm never goes over 75C either.

Yup, I typically see 49C-61C on the MBP and 52-65C on the iMac. Upto 75C only happens with CPU intensive processes.

I remember my old PC would start to crash when the CPU temperature soared past of 80C with that terrible stock heat sink and fan.