mr_indiana's Full Review: Apple iMac 15 in. (M8535LL/B) Mac Desktop
The iMac. It has been somewhat of an icon since it's introduction, giving the latest round of flat-panel systems quite a reputation to live up to. Does this new machine come into the ring fighting or does it cower in fear from the competition? I'll let you decide.
I purchased the 17 inch iMac 800 for my parents in November of 2002 to replace their painfully outdated Packard Bell 200mhz machine running Windows 95. I took them to the Apple Store in Indy to get my iBook fixed with the ulterior motive of hoping they'd see something they liked. They did. My dad was drawn to the iMac like a moth to a flame. (He thought it look futuristic, and that?s all he needed.) They started talking to a sales person while I was in line that the genius bar and decided that they wanted one. We found out they were going to have a special sale in two days that would knock the price down $100, so we decided to go back and get it then.
When we got it home and sat it up, my family was apprehensive of it first. They took the old computer off the desk to make way for our snow white beauty, but the hooked the old machine up again in a few days. The reason: There's no solitaire on the Mac.
Now, that's probably enough back-story, let's get on to the task at hand.
Setup:
It took about five or ten minutes to get the thing out of the box and hooked up. All you have to do is plug the power cord into the back of the system and into the wall. Hookup a phone cord (included). Plug the keyboard into the back via USB and plug the optical USB mouse into the keyboard. There is also a set of Apple Pro Speakers included that plug into the back of the system.
This is one of the easiest computers I have ever setup. It would be incredibly hard to screw up doing this. I've helped several people set their systems up in the past (most were color coded and they still couldn't figure them out), but with so few things to plug in, it should be a breeze.
Specs:
While not the fastest computer ever made, this system has plenty of speed. The iMac line has recently been updated to include 1 ghz processors, so the newest ones are even faster than the one I?m writing about.
The best (albeit vaguest) way to describe the speed of the system is "peppy". It's no hot rod, but it's not a mini van either. Files and programs are generally quick to open, and there is no problem running multiple programs at once. However, there is some system lag when waking the computer up. At other times, the system will apparently stop to think or something and a spinning colored disk will appear. This can be a pain. I've mostly noticed it when using Internet Explorer.
Our system has the 17 in wide screen LCD with a resolution of 1440 x 900 which is wonderful. I can't stress this point enough. This is the BEST screen I have ever used. Our screen has an always white pixel near the bottom that I can almost always point out for people, but what can you do?
The system came with 256 mg of ram that we doubled to 512 mg for $40 or something like that. I advise everyone to get more ram if you can when you purchase the system. It can never hurt.
We have an 80 gig hard drive which sound huge, but it's not. It's actually closer to 75 gig so I think Apply should send me a free 5 gig iPod to make up the difference, but I doubt that will happen :) The drive is big enough to hold a few iMove / iDVD projects at once, but you'll run out of space faster than you think you would.
Then there's the SuperDrive, Apple's ace in the hole. While you can now but PCs with DVD burners, you still can't get a system on par with the iMac for the same price. The newest iMacs have 4x SuperDrives which are probably great. Ours is a 2x and takes about 3 hours to burn a 60 minute DVD. (Yes, I did say 3 hours.)
Software:
OSX. Is it as good as all the hype? Yes and no. The system is stable, stable, stable. Sometimes. When we first set the computer up, we had an external floppy drive hooked up to it. When we would wake to system up from sleep mode, we always got this bizarre message in several languages that said the computer needed to restart. I had no idea why, but soon realized that it was because of the floppy drive. After unhooking it, but problem was solved. (I realize that this technically isn't a problem with the OS, but a restart is a restart in my book.) Other than that, I have had zero, count them, ZERO problems with the system going down. Internet Explorer has it's moments (again, it's IE that's the problem!) but other than that everything here is peachy.
What don't I like about OSX? After all it's fun, pretty, clean, stable, and....confusing. don't get me wrong, it's not hard to use, it's just difficult to find things sometimes. Everything is nested in folders and the only quick way that I know of to find things fast is to either put them on the desktop or in the dock. But i really don't was 10,000 shortcuts on my desktop! Instead I have to sort though a bunch of windows to find what I need. Again, no big deal.
Another issue I have is saving and opening files. This must prove that I'm an idiot or something, but I always have trouble doing this. I'm used to Windows and OS 9 and I feel like OSX is punishing me for that. In both Windows and OS 9 the file structure is vertical. When you click on a folder, it opens new folders below that one. Simple, elegant, understood. When you open a folder in OSX, the new folder opens to the right side of it. And if you open another one, everything in the right window moves to the left and is replace on the right by the new folders contents. (I know that was probably confusing, but I don't know how else to describe it!)
Also included with the system is AppleWorks which is Apple's version of Office. I don't know why, but I've never really cared for AppleWorks all that much. There's just something about it....
IMovie, ITunes, IDVD and iPhoto are also pre-installed on most Macs. (iDVD comes only with SuperDrive equipped systems.) All of the programs are topnotch. iTunes is by far my single favorite program on any computer platform in the world and of all time. I love it. It's so easy to use even monkeys could burn CDs if they wanted to.
IMovie, on the other hand, is a little sketchy. iMovie 3 that is. It apparently wasn't finished when Apple released the iLife update bundle (which I ran right out and bought.) It?s still a great program, but it has a few bugs that need worked out.
iDVD, iPhoto, iMovie and iTunes are all integrated to work together so that anyone can create great multimedia projects, and they're all free.
I do think this is a great system, especially for someone who is just starting out, or who wants to edit home video and work with digital pictures. It's also great for students because you literally get a computer and a great entertainment center with itunes and the DVD player. (Plus, your roommates will all be jealous of the LCD screen, trust me!)
The pros, for me, considerably outweigh the cons for this one, and I would recommend this system in a heartbeat. Happy computing!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1799 Operating System: Macintosh Processor speed: 701-800 RAM: More than 256 Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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