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Advice on buying a secondhand Mac

Looking for a second-hand Mac desktop - what would you advise? New to Macs (much to my sister's disgust) and looking for one as a second computer. It won't be used for much more than surfing the web and word processing - in theory - but in reality if it did other fun or cool things (GarageBand?) then I suspect they would end up being used...

A desktop will give me much more bang for my buck, yes?

There's two things to balance here - (1) wanting it to be as cheap as possible and (2) wanting it to do as much as possible.

So where's the sweet spot, in your opinion? What should I be looking for and how much should I expect to pay? (I'm in the UK.) If my budget was say £300, would I get something worthwhile? £400?... Would it have to be more?

Bonus points for a set-up that will play nicely with my existing (and presumably Windows-centric) wireless router (Linksys WRT54GS) and printer (Epson C66).

Thanks Applephiles!

 

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