I need some opinion on choosing between Macs. I have 24" IMac in my mind but I only have 2 years to finish my high school and I will be leaving for college.

This will be my first Mac. I budget is very tight. If I bought an 24" IMac and I won't be able to collect enough money to afford another portable Mac in 2 years time.

By the way, I don't really like either 20" or 17" IMac.

In defense of the other iMacs, clock for clock, the smaller screen iMacs will always be slightly faster than their larger screen counterparts. So if you need all the speed possible, the 20-inch model will be your best bet. Plus, you can add a few things like Office: Student edition and iWork to the 20-inch to make it the same price as the 24 inch model, but (of course) with several extra goodies.

I would get a macbook and a big monitor and keyboard / mouse. Same price as a 24" iMac or cheaper. You don't get the better graphics chip but you gain the portability.

If I were you dude, I would wait till the summer comes, cause Apple is going to creat 15 inch MacBook with a price above 1500$. It will have more reliable features than the 13 inch MacBooks and also you will fit in buying a case, a wireless mighty mouse, some soft stuff that you'd like (I would buy a nice game like WoW or an iWork 07 kit, that will come out this spring), an AirPort Express (Just cut a wire with your DSL, cool stuff, if you want to feel free in moving around) a .Mac account. That's a cool kit to start with! :-) And also, if you still have no iPod, you will have enought money to buy an iPod Shuffle.

Take care and be very careful while choosing, cause I still regret, that my first choice was PowerBook g4 instead of buying an iMac with Core Duo (you can intall XP natively on this machine) a year ago (I'm a gamer, but my most beloved games like Rome Total War and Dawn of War weren't adapted for Mac OS X (((((( )

get the most powerful mac mini you can + a decent sized screen.

right now before the MBP update the macbook is much cheaper compared to performance than the MBP.