24″ iMac Review

I’ve been using my big, beautiful 24″ iMac for over a week now and I’ve got to say, it’s nothing less then stunning.

Setting up the computer only took about 15 minutes: 10 to clear the old computer off the desk and 5 to plug the iMac’s one cable in and run through the set up wizard. The wizard was pretty simple and pretty much just had me enter my information, take a picture using the built in iSight camera, and get the built in 802.11g 802.11n AirPort to recognize my secure wireless network. After that, it took about 4 hours to transfer over all of my important files from my former computer. Wile I did that, I realized that the iMac, despite the size, runs completely silent — no hard drive noise, no fan noise, silent. Considering my former custom built tower had two 120mm fans that whispered and a hard drive that constantly spun, the silence was a nice new feature.

Over the week+ I’ve been using OSX I’ve learned all the little keyboard shortcuts, played with some really great third-party software, and pretty much wondered why I haven’t been using OSX all along. Everything seems to be geared toward creativity. Seemingly all the third-party apps are customizable and expandable. I’ve even got a third-party program that uses the iSight camera as a barcode reader to catalogue DVDs. How cool is that?

I’ve also bit the bullet and installed BootCamp to run WindowsXP. I’ve probably spent about 5 to 10 hours in XP since switching to the iMac. A majority of that time has been to play PC games that I never was able to on my former system. Running a video game like Half-Life 2 Episode 1 or Dreamfall: The Longest Journey at 1920×1200 and the highest quality settings pretty much speaks for itself. There is a level of detail that is just amazing that I have never seen before.

The rest of my XP time was spent actually installing XP. While I was installing my former operating system of choice, I realized just how much better OSX is then XP. Apple claims that in OSX everything just works, and they are actually right. I just had to plug in my printer, digital camera, iPod, etc and they all started to function properly, no software, no drivers, nothing. My cell phone connected via Bluetooth seamlessly and my Bluetooth keyboard and mouse worked from the moment I turned on the iMac. While I was installing XP (the first time) I was using my standard Apple Bluetooth keyboard and Mighty Mouse. During the DOS based setup the computer had no problem using these Bluetooth devices. When it reboot into XP for the first time, they stopped working. I had to install a driver for Bluetooth in order to get them to work. How DOS was ok with them but XP wasn’t I’ll never know. I also know that every time I boot into XP to play a game, it forgets my Mighty Mouses configuration. I have to turn off the mouse and turn it back on in order for XP to recognize it. Like I said, in OSX everything just works and there is something to be said for that.

Anyway, I love my new iMac and will be a Mac user for life now I believe. I would be able to give up XP completely if it weren’t for my video game addiction. To give you one little glimpse at what I get to play with, I’ve attached a screen shot. Click the thumbnail to see the full size image. And, in case you’re interested, a comparison between my new iMac and my former system. The numbers pretty much speak for themselves.

	Home Built Desktop	24″ iMac	Change
CPU	AMD 2400+ Athlon XP	Intel Core 2 Duo
Core 1 Clock Speed	2.0 GHz	2.0 GHz	Twice the CPU Cores
Core 2 Clock Speed	—	2.0 GHz
FSB	266 MHz	667 MHz	2.5 Times the FSB
L2 Cache	256 KBs	4 MBs	15.6 Times L2 Cache
RAM	2x 512 MB DDR	2x 1 GB DDR2	Twice the RAM
GPU	ATi 9200 SE 128 MB DDR	Nvidia 7600 GT 256 MB GDDR3	Twice the GPU RAM
GPU Bus	8x AGP	PCI-e
Monitor	17″ CRT	24″ Widescreen LCD
Display	1280 x 1024	1920 x 1200	1 Million More Pixels
HDD	2x 120 GB ATA 7200 RPM	1x 500 GB sATA 7200 RPM	Twice the HDD Space
Optical Drive(s)	48x CD-R/RW w/ 8x DVD-Rom 8x DVD+/-R/RW	8x DL DVD SuperDrive
Network	10/100 Ethernet	10/100/1000 Ethernet 802.11g WiFi Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
Ports	4 USB 2.0 2 USB 1.1	3 USB 2.0 1 FireWire 400 1 FireWire 800
Web Cam	—	Built in iSight