I love the look of the new iMacs, and am trying desperately to justify purchasing one. It would look killer on my black glass desk. Is that reason enough to buy?Originally Posted by isoS
The last iMac I bought was a G4 with the swivel screen and round base. Still a fantastic and convenient design.
Wait until the second week of January, if you're looking at an iMac. New CPUs and GPUs, and probably a faster bus speed.
My momma had twin babies on one sweet summer day;
She beat one in the head, and I'm the one that got away.
Good call. New Mac Pros then as well, I would assume.
Despite the problems people are having, I really like the Netflix player beta. It is much easier compared to the Windows version which made me want to kill myself whenever I wanted to skip ahead or go back in the movie.
Anyone have any idea of how much better they'll be? My imac G4 is really frustrating... I think we've milked it as long as we can and now it's really just an internet machine (and not a great one at that).
The wife is finally fed up enough that she's on board for getting another one, but I fear if I don't act soon, she won't be as into the idea.
Ouch. Any iMac that Apple sells right now will feel like mainlining cocaine compared to that G4.
CPU performance will be negligible, perhaps a 5-10% realized speed improvement. Grafx performance will be much, much better. The new processors use quite a bit less power, and therefore generate less heat and consume less electricity.
Traditionally RAM-stingy Apple has also really stepped up stock memory installation, with 2GB standard in many of their new machines.
Of course, next-gen machines usually come in with additional features for less money, as well. Expect an updated iLife '09 suite to come bundled with the iMac.
However, if you're jonesing now, you can buy a refurb iMac for pretty cheap. Just be sure to buy the Applecare package for $169.
My momma had twin babies on one sweet summer day;
She beat one in the head, and I'm the one that got away.
That is incredibly wrong. A G4 is 5-10% slower than a Core 2 Duo 2.33+??
I have owned a PowerBook (1.5GHz) and now own a Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro (2.33GHz) and the CPU speed increase alone is roughly 4 or 5 times faster (especially in things like photoshop or encoding video/audio).
I was referring to current production iMacs, versus next-gens.
My momma had twin babies on one sweet summer day;
She beat one in the head, and I'm the one that got away.
Ooooh! Sorry dood.
My only hesitation with all this is that the next version of OS X (Snow Leopard) will likely harness the new/hot GPUs for general processing. This is kind of the new thing in computing: graphics processors can be used for tasks other than graphics, and have the potential to make everything run much faster. So at the moment, you might be like, "Eh, I don't play games on my Mac, I don't need a faster graphics card," but in a year you might be like, "Shucks, now I'm being left in the dust because I don't have the dope shit GPU." Then again, this is a bigger deal with MacBooks than iMacs, since the last gen MacBook's graphics are pathetic in comparison to the new one (in fact, the old graphics card is integrated into the Intel chipset -- it doesn't even have a dedicated graphics card).
But yeah, the current gen iMac is plenty fast, esp. compared to a G4. And the refurb deals on apple.com are pretty nice.
Or you can go the Amazon.com route for a new one. They often have rebates, good pricing, free shipping and potentially no sales tax. This is what I did on my iMac about six months ago and I got a brand new one for just barely more than the refurb would have been with tax.
Good call. I've been looking more at MacBooks, and I think refurbs have the edge there right now (last-gen I mean).
thanks for the advice.
looking on Amazon is confusing me up... almost all the 20 inches that I'm looking at are 2Gb ram... waste of ram sticks... I guess it still ends up being cheaper buying the computer with the lousy 2GB then buying two 2 gig sticks seperately.
refurb seems to be the same deal... is there not an option to upgrade the amount of ram when buying directly from apple with a refurbished model? strange.
I shall continue to sniff around, but I will likely need to act soon.
OK folks, here's a MacBook update for anyone thinking of ordering one.
Got my new MacBook 2.0 ghz today. It's immediately impressive. The build quality is very solid. The specs show it as about half a pound lighter than my white MacBook, and a little thinner. I wasn't sure that would be noticeable, but it is. As soon as I picked it up, I could tell it was lighter and thinner. I showed it to a friend, and she immediately noticed the difference as well. The screen is great; very bright and sharp. The trackpad has a great slick and solid feel, and the buttonless configuration really doesn't take any time to get used to. You can use it just like the old one, or turn on more features. You don't lose any functionality, and only gain it.
On the "bad news" side... Migration Assistant is refusing to work properly. It's always been prefect in all my previous migrations, so this is disappointing. I'm working around it, but it's too bad it doesn't work right in my case.
Is that because of the lack of FireWire or what? Does it even claim to work over USB, or do they suggest you use Ethernet?
By all accounts, including from The Steve Himself, it's supposed to work flawlessly via Ethernet or wireless. No mention of USB. And I would imagine it does - for most people. But apparently, there must be a bug that prevents it from working for everyone, including me. An update was supposed to address this, but it doesn't help for my situation. Nothing in the process seems to indicate the issue is related to lack of firewire, or use of ethernet, but who knows.
I've read numerous reviews online where the ethernet cable migration has worked great, so I was quite surprised when it didn't. When launching Migration Assistant, it doesn't even give you an option of what to use. (With models that have firewire, it lets you choose from firewire or ethernet of course.) I think it uses whatever it finds, whether it's wireless network or Mac-to-Mac ethernet. I followed some tips online to make sure ethernet was enabled in the prefs, and made sure wifi was turned off. Also, for anyone who remembers having to use a "crossover" cable to connect two Macs without router, this is no longer necessary; a regular patch cable does it.
The specifics of my issue, for your inner (or outer) geek: The old Mac sees the new one just fine when launching Migration Assistant on both of them. The new computer produces a code to enter in the old computer's Migration software. I enter that code, and they both say "gathering info," then the old computer asks for the code again. I enter it, then it reverts back to "looking for computers," which is the first step again. And that's where it sits. Eventually, the new on times out after a few minutes. I've read one account of getting it to work by updating the old computer to Leopard (instead of Tiger) but I don't have a retail Leopard disk, and it would be insane to have that be an actual requirement for migrating to a new computer. And I'm sure if more people had an issue with it, it would be way bigger news on the Mac sites.
Meanwhile, I now have all my stuff copied to the new machine via the ethernet patch cable method. It worked perfectly and was pretty fast, so the connection itself is not a problem. I'll do a fresh install of my main software (Office, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, etc.) from the disks, but that's no big deal.
Migration Assistant is amazing and very helpful/useful, but it does rob you of the geeky pleasure of setting up a new computer like in the old days. Also, it encourages saving a bunch of old crap you probably don't need and will never use on the new machine. I think I have some OS 9 junk on my current computer just because it was carried over.
All Migration Assistant really does is copy your home directory (computer > users > you), and put a pretty face on it (and simultaneously register the machine with Apple). If you don't use it, and copy selectively, you can leave out all the legacy stuff you'll never use again.
You can do the same thing with an Ethernet crossover cable. If you've got an Air you'll need the USB-to-Enet dongle, too. But it does suck that Apple is seemingly abandoning 1394, after all that work. If they just wouldn't have demanded the 25˘/port royalty, 1394 would own consumer mass storage and hi-speed peripherals.
My momma had twin babies on one sweet summer day;
She beat one in the head, and I'm the one that got away.
You don't even need a crossover anymore. Just a patch cable does it, and it's pretty speedy.
Posting Permissions
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote