macxpress
This was my very first Mac. I was begging my parents for a new Mac and back then, Macs were expensive (go figure!)...like still $1,500-2,000+ so they weren't exactly affordable, especially considering that you needed to purchase a display as well. When this iMac came out I finally convinced my dad to get one since it was $1299 for the entire thing. They were awesome looking computers. Remember, back then everything was beige with a hint of beige. It was just so different looking. I can't say how much faster it was versus other computers because I didn't have any other computer. I don't remember it being slow though. We purchased it from MacWarehouse and they had a deal where it came with 32MB of RAM for free so it had a total of 64MB of RAM. We got the Imation SuperDisk Drive so I could use either a regular floppy or the LS120 SuperDisk that held I think it was 120MB which was pretty cool. I had an Apple StyleWriter II printer given to me by a friend which needed an adapter to convert it from the old Serial interface to USB (Yes, we had dongles back then too!).
My dad liked it so much that he wanted his own Mac so he bought another iMac which was the ones that had colors so I took the new iMac (Blueberry) and he took the old Bondi Blue one. I had this iMac for quite some time, used it with the Mac OS X Public Beta, then later Mac OS X (10.0-10.2) until I got a 17" 1GHz iMac G4 as a College graduation present. I used that for a couple of years until I purchased my own 1.8GHz 17" iMac G5 (original model) after I got my first job and had that until I got I think it was a PowerMac G5. I didn't trust the original iMac G5 as it always got extremely hot, even when doing the most basic tasks so I didn't keep that very long.
I've had a few other Macs since then but it was the original Bondi Blue iMac that started it all with the Mac! I still love the Mac to this day and wouldn't consider switching to anything else. I'm the Administrator of Apple Services at the school I work in and provide IT support for both Macs and Windows PC's, along with iOS devices. I was the one who started it all in the district I work in for Apple products in 2009. We were strictly a Windows shop and then we purchased some white MacBook's and an iMac lab and students loved them! So, we just kept them updated through the years with new purchases. Its nice and not as expensive as some think because when you're ready to upgrade, you can turn them back into Apple for a credit on your Apple account and that comes off the cost any new purchases. Its only the initial investment that is expensive. They seem to last forever too. Were STILL using those original 2009 white MacBook's as student spares that they can sign out and our oldest Mac lab are 2011 iMacs and they're still going strong. We've had very little issues with any of them with I think it's maybe 5 that needed to be sent back to Apple for repair and one iMac had a hard drive failure (I order all Macs today with flash storage).
I do wish Apple would redesign the iMac. Like
