I’ve been mulling over which Mac to buy. I think it’s going to be the iMac 20″ Core Duo.

Originally I was eyeing up the 17″ MacBook Pro, as one of the things I’ll be using it for is lugging into the living room to watch movies on. Then Si steered me towards the Intel iMacs. So this 20″ iMac is basically as powerful as the MBP, with a bigger screen, and just over half the price? Sounds good to me! Sure it’s not quite as light as a MBP at 22 pounds / 10kg (what do they put in these things?), but hey, I could do with some weight training! 😉

Good old Apple, shoving everything in 1 box. I’d have a job lugging my tower and 19″ CRT display around quite so gracefully.

So I can feel the pull of my credit card in my wallet, enticing me to part with my AUD $3.5k on the Apple Store, when Si brings up this “Rev A” thing. Allegedly, Apple’s first generation (“Revision A”, or Rev A) of any new bit of hardware is dodgy as anything, and you’re better off waiting for a Rev B, at which point they’ll have ironed out all the bugs that were in the Rev A machines.

So how true is this theory? It’s certainly a hotly debated topic. And things like this scare me a bit too, especially as I plan to be watching movies a lot. But the truth is, you never know what’s going to happen do you – Rev Bs might be worse than Rev As!

The best advice I’ve heard is, if you see something that’s right for you now, then get it. Actually the MacRumors Buyer’s Guide is a great help as it tells you how far through the release cycle a particular Mac’s likely to be, along with advice to buy or hold off (ooh it’s like the stock market isn’t it!). I see my iMac (“my iMac” – I’m already sold!) is 2/3 of the way through its cycle, so a good time to buy.

Apart from the aforementioned Front Row problems (which were due to a software bug anyway), I haven’t heard of any serious issues with these new Intel iMacs. So I reckon they’re a good bet.

Now where’s that credit card got to!