Hello everyone,
An IMac 12.2 landed at my place yesterday extremely unexpectedly. I was allowed to pick up my new work laptop (Dell XPS 17, I7, 32 GB RAM, NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 4070, 1TB SSD...quite okay for a Windows computer ;-) ).
I had a little chat with my colleagues while handing over the laptop. At some point we talked about the IMac, which had been sitting unused in their office for about 2 years.
The IT colleagues told me that the computer had been used for MDM and had not had an operating system installed after the hard drive had been replaced. They had now given up and the "thing" was going to be thrown away.
They then asked me if I wanted it as a gift.... Yes, I did.
About 35 minutes after arriving at my home, MacOS 10.11.6 was running on the IMac. About two hours and several PRAM resets later, MacOS 14.3.1 was running ;-)
View attachment 2354728
View attachment 2354729
Wonderful story and even more wonderful thing to be gifted!
It’s not too dissimilar from how I was gifted a late 2013 21.5-inch iMac i5 2.9 a few years ago.
I was helping a friend pack up their apartment, because they were going to move closer to their sister and their niblings several provinces away. In March 2020, they were one of the earliest people around here to contract a severe case of COVID. Then long COVID followed. All the work on their Ph.D. came to a halt. By moving nearby their sister, they could help to teach her kids for the duration of schooling-from-home and video classes, and also to have family close by to look after them as they made their slow recovery from long COVID.
As I helped to disassemble their IKEA furniture, I noticed an iMac on the floor, with the disconnected power cord resting over its top edge. It was tucked away near the wall and looked like it hadn’t been used for a while. I asked them about it, and they said they already had the computing setup they needed (a gaming-oriented desktop and also a laptop). They also said it was their only dalliance into the world of Macs and it left them unsatisfied for what they needed. They said, “You’ve been helping me to pack up, and it’s helping me a lot. If you want the Mac and can bring it home, consider it yours.”
I expressed my gratitude, but I replied how I‘d be willing to be the iMac’s custodian until they returned to the city. They were OK with that. So I was able to fit it in my messenger bag for my bike ride home. To this day, they are still living out west. And at the moment, that iMac is on a nearby desk, doing some encoding with Handbrake. I still consider myself its custodian, not its owner.
Hope you get many years of enjoyment from your generous display on the highly versatile Sandy Bridge iMac!