Updated Aluminum iMac Now $899 for Educational Institutions

In usual Apple manner, the Mac maker has quietly announced that updated aluminum iMacs are now available for educational facilities at special prices. Particularly, the 20-inch model, previously believed to be the 17-inch plastic version, can be acquired for $899 by qualified educational institutions.

AppleInsider reports that Apple will begin to sell the aluminum 20-inch iMac configuration to qualified educational institutions for just $899, putting rumors of the 17-inch legacy iMac to rest. Apple introduced the new $899 configuration of the 17-inch iMac as “designed specifically for education customers.”

The 17-inch iMac and its complete line of products and solutions for education were showcased at the National Educational Computing Conference in San Diego, California, from July 5-7, 2006. Apple had sold the now-outdated system to institutions that weren't doing so well financially, but still needed to acquire Macs.

According to AppleInsider, those authorized to make purchases for their educational institution can now start pre-ordering the new aluminum systems, while they are said to arrive in about a month's time.

Best of all, the education-priced iMacs pack new-generation graphics (the NVIDIA 9400M introduced with the unibody family of MacBooks last year), a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, only 1GB of memory, a 160GB hard drive, and an 8x double-layer SuperDrive.

The site goes to note that the move comes less than a month after Apple issued an eNews letter promoting updates to 17-inch iMacs for education, suggesting that, in the meanwhile, something or someone prompted the Mac maker to offer newer systems to educational institutions. Needless to point out, the news also confirms that Apple's plastic iMac (introduced in 2004) should be excluded from any Apple special offering from now on.

According to the same source, certified buyers can now order the new $899 iMac from the Apple Store. However, individual educational buyers or students with access to the Apple Store for Education cannot order the systems themselves.