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New iMac owners - opinions?
- Thread starter Memzee
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I'm interested to see if anyone has picked up one of the new iMacs and their experiences with it thus far - particularly the 24" 3.06GHz version.
Boot times? How loud are the fans? etc. etc.
MY new IMAC is scheduled to arrive on Friday ... I will let you know by then
Ordered mine yesterday
Got the 3.06 model with 4gb of ram and 500gb hdd
Should be here a week friday according to the estimate times on the site. Think it takes longer to deliver because i customised it a bit :/
Got the 3.06 model with 4gb of ram and 500gb hdd
Should be here a week friday according to the estimate times on the site. Think it takes longer to deliver because i customised it a bit :/
I didnt get to play with it too much last night. Installed Vista 32 bit, ran a few benchmarks, then let the migration utility move my data from my laptop onto the iMac. I plan to try out some Handbrake crunching tonight, and install a few games in vista (Orange Box, CoD4, World in Conflict) to see how they do. So far, the system has been very quiet, even when running 3dmark or xBench, I did not hear any fans. I used the Superdrive to install some software, and it sounded similar to my laptop, no surprise there
Ordered mine yesterday aswell, will post details although its going to probably be glowing considering im upgrading from a 2.08ght single core amd, 80 gig hdd with 512 mb ram shared with the integrated graphics card, running windows.
BTW its the 3.06 with the 8800 gs and 4 gb of ram.
BTW its the 3.06 with the 8800 gs and 4 gb of ram.
I'm interested to see if anyone has picked up one of the new iMacs and their experiences with it thus far - particularly the 24" 3.06GHz version.
Boot times? How loud are the fans? etc. etc.
I picked mine up yesterday. I have two Apple stores that are pretty close and they both had the new iMacs in stock. I wanted to get the 3.06 with the better graphics card and all, but that was just a bit out of my price range
So far, my overall impression/experience has been very positive. This is my first desktop mac, upgrading from a 12" Powerbook.
The one thing I noticed was there was no extra software installed on the system. No Quicken or Quickbooks, no games, not even a trial copy of iWorks. Just the OS and iLife '08. Both my laptops came with some additional software, and I thought the iMacs did as well. Is this the 1st model without the extra software? Wonder why, cost cutting measure?
I replaced a G4 iMac yesterday and the new one flies. The fans in that model are pretty quiet, but the speeds do go up when doing some intense stuff, but nothing out of the ordinary. I got a boot time of about 30 seconds after everything was set up, so it's a typical mac boot up.
I just set up my new 24" 3GHz iMac and so far so good. this thing is freakin' lightning quick! I can't wait to see what it does with 4GBs of memory.
From a processor sound standpoint, this system is extremely quiet. I have had the CPU running at over 90% User in Activity Monitor (running Handbrake, patching wow, letting time-machine do a network backup, surfing web, and chatting in Adium all at the same time). Proc temps using temperature monitor have been reading 162F on the chip and 135F on the CPU heat-sink. The back is warm, and theres definitely air coming out of the top in the back where the long section is allowing air out. At the same time, I am not hearing any fans at all. extremely quiet so far. Once wow is patched, I will go into game and see how it runs while handbrake continues to go. For reference, Handbrake is doing an average of 35 fps conversion so far and its about 1/2 way done. Estimate was 52 min to do a 95 min movie.
I don't really have much to compare it to, but the thing is seriously quick. I ripped a DVD in Handbrake with a setting of "iPod Hi-Rez" as a baseline then I cranked the bitrate to 2500. The audio was 160 kbps AAC. Time was right around 45 minutes. Not as quick as I thought it would be, but I'm thinking 2500 kbps is in the "diminishing returns" part of the scale. Might need to take it lower to get the time/quality tradeoff a bit more favorable.
I have not noticed any noise, but can report some serious heat at the top of the screen on the backside. I will take some laser temp readings when I get back home later in the week.
I was afraid I would not like the glassy screen, but it is a total non issue to me. Once the screen comes on, I can't see any glare at all.
I have not noticed any noise, but can report some serious heat at the top of the screen on the backside. I will take some laser temp readings when I get back home later in the week.
I was afraid I would not like the glassy screen, but it is a total non issue to me. Once the screen comes on, I can't see any glare at all.
I'm curious if the 20" iMac still has the glaringly obvious display problems as before. I'd read here and elsewhere about how apparent the color shift was, but when I saw it in person... well, frankly, I'm surprised Apple is selling any of these things. It would be a good to hear that they at least addressed that problem with this update.
I'd have to agree. I am looking at the 20" screen now, and it looks fantastic to me.
I ordered mine 2 nights ago, and I'm so anxious to get it (checking my order status once per hour will make me crazy eventually). And with all the positive news coming out about it (great benchmark numbers, great graphics card) from people who have their hands on one is making me even more excited.
To fuel up your excitement I will tell you that for the past 10 hours I was doing some rendering tests in Vue 6 and Poser 7 and I can honestly say that Apple finally made a iMac that now fulfills my in-house graphic projects needs in every aspect. Seriously I am impressed! Fast, quiet, no hickups, screen is great, faster memory, nVidia doing awesome job... I finally have a iMac that I do not feel like changing for something else as it covers my needs in every single way! Hard to believe lol.
Take a note that this comes from a full time graphic designer working every day on a Mac Pro loaded so bad that I could get a nice car for what it's worth.
*and to those that intend to jump on my opinion please take a note that this statement is based upon the 'whole package' deal. I'm aware of other posibilities but for this price there is no competition for me. No other Mac comes even close.
Are you judging that based on viewing many displays or just your own? Have you done a side-by-side comparison?
I went to our local Apple shop and looked at the 20" and 24" displays side-by-side and the difference was immediately obvious to me. I have a background in graphic design and print production but I've often been told by colleagues that I don't have very discerning eyes. Despite that, the problems on the 20" display jumped right out at me. I could clearly see a color shift across the screen from bottom to top.