By Monte Ferguson
About twice a decade I get to go out and get something I really want.
Which in my case is a new Mac. I gleefully tell folks I’m buying a new
toy. I’m not one of those folks who try to get all solemn about these
things. Recently some money came my way. And my wife, in one of those
“Will it make you happy?” conversations, said go ahead and get a new
computer. Truthfully I think she just wanted me to quit moping over how
slow my old one was getting slow at some tasks.
I bought my iMac Core2Duo as an Apple refurbished model. Which means I
saved some cash but you don’t get a fancy box. Inside the box is what
matters anyway. When my unit arrived I was impressed with how small a
box they come in nowadays. My Flat Panel iMac came in a box that would
have taken up twice as much volume. Upon opening the box you’re
presented with just a few items. Those include: keyboard, mighty mouse,
remote, a restore/software install dvd, and a power cord. There was also
some small welcome to Mac book. I looked through the book pretty fast.
Not much new to say. On to the fun stuff.
I had my new Mac delivered to my work place. Mainly so it could be kept
nice and warm. (So I could use it as soon as I got home.) But I will
admit there was another reason. To make the PC guys jealous. And let me
say they were all impressed with this unit.
First Impressions
After work I packed up and went home with my new
purchase. I carefully lifted the unit out of it’s enclosing protective
foam. Then I picked the model up by it’s aluminum base, which is quite a
bit stronger and heavier than it appears. After I had it situated it was
a simple matter to hook up power, ethernet, and the keyboard via usb.
Then I stepped back to check out the scene. The first thing I really
noticed was how big the display truly is. This is the first Mac I’ve
owned that had a display larger than 15”. The display feels very roomy.
It also seems brighter than my Flat Panel G4 iMac (700mhz).
I then went through the setup assistant. As usual a painless process to
get things setup. However this time I got to try something new, well new
to me. I had it invoke the Migration Assistant to move over all of my
stuff. The Migration Assistant moves all kinds of things, if you let it.
I let it move over all of my settings and files. About 2.5 hours later
70Gb of data had been moved over and setup just like it was on my old
computer. It was painless and I was up and running immediately after
that. No need to move things around. Oh sure I had to download some
updates but everything I cared about, including my music and photos,
were all moved over for me.
I’ve had a chance to use my iMac for a bit now and I can definitely say
it’s fast. There is no denying that. It’s hard to quantify how fast it
is. So I chose to download and install Seti@home. My old Mac, Flat Panel
G4 iMac (700mhz), could do about 50 work units a day on average. The
iMac Core2Duo is averaging 950 work units a day. Programs launch almost
immediately, at least if they’re universal binaries. Even older apps
launch quickly. I have yet to hear the fans kick in.
Pro’s
This is one heck of a jump up from my old iMac. The screen is
beautiful. It’s bright and crisp. It also has a wider viewing angle than
my old Mac. I can finally work in full screen edit mode with iPhoto.
And it’s a real pleasure to work with iPhoto full screen. Everything is
in real time. Boot time is darn quick, under 35 seconds compared to 90
seconds for my old Mac. These new SATA drives they ship with Mac’s are
fast and quiet. I’ve had to hold my head close to the iMac on several
occasions to make sure the drive was still spinning. The built in ram is
good but I’ll be getting more as soon as I can afford to. (See one of my
cons for a further explanation.) The built in wireless capabilities will
come in handy later. The Mighty Mouse is a joy to use. I immediately
programed it so a right press on the mouse acts like a right click, or
Control-Click. All in all I am extremely pleased with this Mac.
Cons
However there are a couple of things I can nit pick about. My
biggest frustration is that my iSub is not recognized by the iMac. Based
on forum feedback on the net I’m not the only one. I was surprised that
Quicken was not bundled with the Mac. It’s the first time I haven’t
gotten a “free” upgrade to Quicken when I bought a new Mac. I was also
disappointed that there is only a trial version of iWork included with
the iMac. I mean come on. Apple dropped Appleworks. So we’re left with
out a word processor, well you can use Text Edit. The least they could
do is include Pages for free. Rosetta, the technology that lets you run
your older PPC programs. is a marvel. But it eats up ram. I’ve seen all
of my Mac’s 1GB of ram used up pretty quickly when running a mixture of
PPC apps and universal ones. Of course the main complaint is your older
PPC programs run slower than they would on a PPC Mac. There’s no way to
get around that. However, since I didn’t move up from a G5 I can say
that’s less of an issue for me. Of course a ding for some folks is that
the Mac Intels won’t run Classic. So, if you’re still using some really
old apps you’re out of luck. In my case it’s not that big of a deal. In
fact I’m going to mess with a MacOS 9 emulator “in my spare time” and
see if I can get it going.
Front Row
This is a feature that doesn’t easily fit into the normal
discussion of my Mac experience. In fact at first I had avoided using
the feature. After all, where my Mac is placed is just a matter of a
couple of feet from my chair. I really do not need the remote to control
my Mac. However, I took Front Row for a spin on one of those days when
my toddler just wouldn’t stop fussing. It kept both of us amused. The
interface is pretty slick. I enjoyed watching movie trailers in Front
Row. Music playback was fun, though I’d like the Cover Flow feature to
make an appearance. The slideshow feature worked quite well but there
was a noticeable lag before the slideshow began. All in all a pretty
capable multimedia interface. In spite of myself I found that I liked
it. It’s one of those things you either really enjoy or find annoying.
Conclusion
Unlike some lucky souls I only get to upgrade about twice a
decade. But when I do it’s quite a jump. Such is the case with this iMac
Core2Duo. It’s a huge jump in performance vs my old system. If you are
similarly moving up from a pre G5 system you will find the upgrade an
extremely satisfactory one. Of course the experience will only get
better as more of my main stay programs are updated as universal
binaries. In the meantime Rosetta allows me to run all of my older
stuff. The big beautiful display makes my computing day so much easier.
I can finally view full scale versions of my digital pics without having
to scroll around. And I can have our newsletter open in Indesign with
two full sized facing pages at 100% magnification. I have only scratched
the surface on performance with this Mac. There is no question that this
is the best upgrade experience I’ve ever had. I would heartily recommend
this Mac to anyone who has similar needs to my own.
Posted: Saturday, March 31st, 2007 | 
