It's now officially official-- you can buy an iMac for $29.99 a month. (Before it was only just "official," since while it had been confirmed by a representative of the Apple Consumer Loan program, it hadn't yet been announced in a press release.) More details on the program are now available, and there are some really neat things about this loan program. For instance, you can walk into CompUSA, apply for the loan via the web, become approved while you wait, and waltz out of the store with your brand-spanking-new iMac having not paid a dime. If you prefer never leaving your house, you can also apply and buy via the Apple Store site. With no money down and no payments due for 120 days, it really is a pretty easy way to grab an iMac for the holidays without having to make any kind of financial outlay until, say, March-- at which point you would hopefully be over the pinch of paying for all the other holiday gifts you went out and bought. That's the good news.

There is, as always, some complementary bad news, just to keep things karmically balanced. That Gateway/Your:)Ware-style 14.89% interest rate is still in effect, despite rumors that the rate would drop to about 8% when the program was officially announced. Yes, you pay only $29.99 a month, but because of the interest accrued, you pay that $29.99 a month for over five and a half years. In essence, you'd be paying $2000 for your $1299 iMac. Whoa! So much for the concept of a low-cost consumer machine. Sure, this program may make the iMac "the most affordable"-- $29.99 a month is pretty darn easy to afford, by most standards-- but it sure doesn't make it the least expensive.

But then again, the other other side of the coin is that you can pay off the loan early with no penalty. And lots of people are willing to pay interest for the privilege of getting a great computer with no money down and easy-to-meet payments over time. And maybe lots more don't even think about things like interest and just live in the now-- the statistics on credit card debt in the U.S. would certainly imply that. The bottom line is, while the whole "pay lots more money over a longer period of time" gives us the heebie-jeebies, we're very likely in the minority on that issue, and we're all just going to have to wait and see whether this program catches on with the public. Heck, Your:)Ware sure seems to be doing alright. (If you're interested in learning more, Apple's pushing the program on its web site.)