It's slow, and it doesn't have Thunderbolt, but if you're buying thousands at a time, the $1,000 iMac is a bargain

Apple has today made available a low-specced, slightly cheaper iMac to the educational market. The 21.5-inch model costs $1000, $200 less than the regular entry-level iMac of the same size.

However, for that relatively small saving you get a lot less Mac. The processor is a dual-core Core i3 running at 3.1GHz, against the quad-core Core i5 at 2.5GHz, RAM is just 2GB instead of 4GB, the hard drive is a pathetic 250GB (Vs. 500GB) and the graphics — which use the same AMD Radeon HD 6750M processor — shrink their memory from 512MB to 256MB.

It also lacks a Thunderbolt port.

The educational iMac does get a keyboard with a numeric keypad, although you’re stuck with the Magic Mouse — there’s no free option for a trackpad.

For individual users, the $200 saving is clearly not worth it in exchange for last year’s tech — you’d be much better off buying a refurb from Apple and getting a bigger discount. For schools and colleges who don’t necessarily need to latest and best, and which buy in bulk, a $200 saving on, say, 50 machines is a lot of cash.

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2011) – Technical Specifications [Apple via Mac Rumors]

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