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As an individual or as an educational institution? Note that the poster was talking about the cheap pricing you get it for as a school, not being some random person walking into the Apple store.

The Apple iMac a "toy" you say?

Well, let's see: it comes with Leopard, a fully certified Unix, a self-consistent GUI that's quite refined (perfect? No: there's no such thing) and doesn't need tweaking all the time: it just works, at least for the majority of the computing public. It's not merely hardware, but a combination of hardware and software that overall, works very well, and presents a good TUE. If you get Linux and install it on some random PC (or a Mac) you have to then worry about hardware drivers and software dependencies: the Mac OS has a consistent target to aim at, doesn't need umpteen different non-compatible package managers, and makes it easy as drag-n-drop for most application installation and removal. Oh, if you really want to get down and dirty with the shell, there's nothing missing there, either: you can do all you want there, and what's more, you can use things that are fully POSIX-compliant: Linux still isn't there yet, I can assure you.

Perhaps you're referring to the aesthetics of the iMac as being toy-like? Well, who says a computer must look like any particular pattern, such as the monitor separated from the rest of the motherboard, and keyboard? Who says a computer needs a typical keyboard? Computers can and should come in many different forms, and the iMac actually is (at least for most people, I'm sure there are exceptions) designed with good ergonomic factors in a standard setting. Or, are you referring to the real and/or perceived lack of expandability for hardware? Again, the majority of the computing public really doesn't need more than it provides: ok, granted, it doesn't come with the most whizz-bang 3D graphics hardware, but once again, for the majority of the computing public, they don't need that, because they're not eating away their hours using performance hog 3D FPS games: if you're doing 3D CAD, what's there is quite sufficient, especially if you expand the RAM to 4 GB, which is easy to do and doesn't require anyone really technical to do it: there's a single screw to unscrew, a few latches, remove the 2 sticks RAM that may be in it, and replace it with the new ones. For most people, 4 GB will be plenty, at least for awhile, though admittedly, it's not financially prudent to buy Apple's RAM, but then again, Compaq charges more for theirs if you buy expansion RAM If you want more hard drive space, no big deal: just attach Firewire or USB 2.0 drives to your heart's content. The only potential flaw that may be expensive long-term is if the screen itself dies: even then, worst-case scenario, you can still use an external monitor hooked up to it to boot and run. Oh, and once again, if you really feel like you need to run Linux, it won't stop you, and I'm sure it'll run just fine

I strongly feel that the best bet Linux has for making traction into the common computer user's mindspace is if there's a consistent user experience that's minimally complicated and works out of the box 100% of the time, and is sufficiently attractive to their aesthetics and working styles: this means that, due to driver issues and the associated complexities, what is needed to achieve general desktop use amongst non-tech geeks is a Linux version of an iMac solution, that comes with all desired software as-is. Since most software available for the platform is GPL, that should be a non-issue, right? Maybe, just maybe then, you'll get much wider general desktop use of Linux amongst those that aren't tech geeks, assuming they don't have file format interchange problems with the rest of the world, such as office documents and the like.

FYI, I'm not any single OS fan that's an extremist: I run several OS's on several different computers of my own choice, and my current employment has me working on a massively parallel processing database using Linux as the OS at work.

Or, are you referring to the real and/or perceived lack of expandability for hardware? Again, the majority of the computing public really doesn't need more than it provides
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but that is why we would think the imac is a toy.
Now the powermac on the other hand is the real deal. it is very expensive...the typical pc may not be as powerful but much cheaper and you can still expand it.