Ok. Before you buy an iMAC, here are some things you might want to consider. This is more of an editorial rather than a personal experience, so take it for what you will.

1. I don't like iMAC commercials. They lie. Jeff Goldblum stands up there and tells us we only have to plug in 2 things and its ready to go.
Guess what. The iMAC only has one less plug than the PC. The only difference is that there is no monitor cable since it is all one piece. you still have to plug in the mouse, keyboard, modem (to the wall) and computer. That's more than 2 plugs. . . Oh, yeah. That leads me to my next point. . .

2. No Floppy? Sure. You can buy a zip drive or an external super disk, but be careful. . .you might have to plug that in too. Crud, I also forgot that you have to plug in a printer and/or scanner if you get one. Man, that is a LOT more than 2 things to plug in. And about the speakers, you don't have to plug them in because. . .

3. Speakers are integrated. WOOHOO! Now we can get such robust sound as that from a laptop! ( <--- sarcasm) And while we are talking about integration. . .

4. How easy do you think it will be to send in your monitor for repairs when it breaks? Oops. Guess you'll be out the rest of your computer while they fix it at the shop. And what if your CD ROM goes kaput? It is probably not real easy to get to (having dealt with all-in-one compaq models before, I have seen this). And speaking of already done. . .

5. Going back to the lies in the commercial. I do recall that sometime before the iMAC appeared. Sony had released their lavendar and grey systems, IBM released the black series of computers with a remote tower, and NEC was making their servers and business workstations in nice shades of cobalt. Soooo, I guess iMAC was NOT the first computer to throw off the beige stigma.

6. No lead in for this one. When the iMAC first appeared, it claimed to clock faster than any pentium PC around to date. More lies. PC Computing did a test pitting the fastest shipping iMAC (233MHz motorolla chip w/32 MB RAM) with a 400 MHz Celeron (32MB RAM) and a 400 MHz PII (32 MB RAM). BOTH PC configurations beat the iMAC. Even when 32MB RAM were added to the iMAC, it creeped in faster than the celeron, but the PII 400 still blew it away in every arena by almost 50%.

7. Oh yeah. The mouse sucks too. It is about the size of a silver dollar, and worth less. Very uncomfortable to use.

I know I am leaving something out, and I will say that I am biased towards PCs because by the time I was of age to purchase a computer, PCs had pretty much taken over. Only poor high school systems still used MACs and Radio Shack TRS80s. Even today, if you walk into a CompUSA or Best Buy or Circuit City, you will find primary support and focus on the PC.

I feel sorry for anyone suckered in to buying an iMAC because it is so "Easy" or "Cute". Fact is, all computers are easy to hook up. It's like playing with legos or tinker toys. Tab A to Slot B. The poster they include on the top of 99% of all PCs pretty much spell it out. Even if you are illiterate you can still follow the pretty pictures ;) And I've yet to see a "Cute" computer. The iMAC actually looks like a hideous mass of recycled plastic from the 70's. Like that cheap looking junk Target is trying to pawn off as cool now.

To sum up:
Buy an iMAC if you are not interested in upgrading or can afford to live without your computer for a while if it breaks, otherwise jump on the bandwagon and buy a PC based system (use Linux if you are fed up with Windows and Bill Gates). Macintosh dug themselves a huge hole when they did not allow cloning of their systems, and they are going to do it again. Have you seen an iMAC clone yet? Hmmmm, me neither. You'd think they would learn from their mistakes the first time they about went under.

Hope you make the right decision.



Recommended: No