a must have
Written: Jan 20 '00 (Updated Jul 28 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: blazing fast, elegant design, easy set-up, MacOS 9
Cons: mediocre keyboard, terrible mouse
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| erik_kosberg's Full Review: Apple iMac Blue Dalmatian 15 in. (M8347LL/A) Mac D... |
Screaming fast, elegant, easy to set up, lots of great software -- what more could you want? A decent mouse. I'm sorry, as much as I love Macs (I’ve been using them for 15 years) and as much as I think that Apple has an outstanding record of product design, boy did they drop the ball on this one. The mouse is atrocious. Okay, got that off my chest, I feel better now.
Wow, this is a great computer. The iMac DV Special Edition is the top of the line of Apple’s iMac series. The basic iMac at $999 has a 350 megahertz G3 processor, 64 megs of RAM, a built-in 56k modem, a CD-ROM drive, Harmon Kardon speakers, dual USB ports, a 6 Gig drive, and a 10/100 Base-T Ethernet port. The iMac DV at $1299 substitutes a DVD drive for the CD-ROM, runs at 400 MHz, increases the hard drive to 10 Gigs and includes 2 Firewire ports. The iMac DV Special Edition has 128 MB of RAM (expandable to 256) and a 13 Gig drive. You won’t regret spending the extra money.
Setting up the iMac DV Special Edition is a piece of cake. Remove it from the box. Follow the instructions of how get it up and running (six numbered steps that are shown in photos, an illiterate person could do it) and then there’s a “wizard” that gets you set up for internet connection (if you already have an ISP, be sure to have the set-up information like DNS server name that your ISP requires).
This computer is very, very fast. After setting it up and surfing for a while I started running SETI@home’s software on it and went to bed. Seven hours later in the morning, it had completed 60% of a block of calculations. That may be a cryptic statistic if you’ve never run SETI@home, but those of you who have will recognize that as proof that this is one fast puppy.
Apple’s iMovie software used for digitally editing movies is included. Now if only I owned a digital camcorder...
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July, 2000 Update
Since this review was originally written, Apple has replaced that awful little round mouse with the Apple Pro Mouse (which uses and optical tracking mechanism), boosted the speed to 500 MHz, increased that hard drive to 30 Gigs and upgraded the iMovie software.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
erik_kosberg
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Location: Minneapolis, MN
Reviews written: 118
Trusted by: 262 members
About Me:
A science experiment with inconclusive results
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