Thinking about buying an iMac...some questions.

[Cable86]

I currently use Linux (Ubuntu) and Windows XP Professional. While I love Ubuntu, I'm definitely ready to ditch Windows. I'm thinking about buying an iMac.

The model I'm looking at is the 24". I do a little gaming (mostly just World of Warcraft) and mostly work.

I do sound work in Adobe Audition and Propellerhead Reason along with some others, a little bit of Photoshop, and a few other things. I don't do anything crazy like working with massive images that require ridiculous amounts of RAM or anything, just your typical photo work/editing. My question pertaining to this is: would the 2.4GHz 24" iMac with 2GB of RAM suit my needs in terms of the above statements?

My second question deals with sound. I own a set of these speakers. This set of speakers uses 3 1/8" plugs and it appears that the iMac does not have this type of outputs. I really want to be able to use these speakers. How could I accomplish that? I stumbled upon this...would that do what I need it to?

Last, would you recommend buying a Mighty Mouse at all (I prefer wireless)? I already have a Logitech MX1000.

Thanks for any help. I'm anxious to figure stuff out so that I can get the ball rolling on this purchase.

 

[Tommy Tallarico]

The Mighty Mouse is the worst mouse on the planet. Stick with the bundled wired one, because you'll toss it within an hour and go back to your Logitech.

The iMac is fine for all of the programs you described. I can't help you with your speakers thing, though.

 

[flopticalcube]

I currently use Linux (Ubuntu) and Windows XP Professional. While I love Ubuntu, I'm definitely ready to ditch Windows. I'm thinking about buying an iMac.

The model I'm looking at is the 24". I do a little gaming (mostly just World of Warcraft) and mostly work.

I do sound work in Adobe Audition and Propellerhead Reason along with some others, a little bit of Photoshop, and a few other things. I don't do anything crazy like working with massive images that require ridiculous amounts of RAM or anything, just your typical photo work/editing. My question pertaining to this is: would the 2.4GHz 24" iMac with 2GB of RAM suit my needs in terms of the above statements?

My second question deals with sound. I own a set of these speakers. This set of speakers uses 3 1/8" plugs and it appears that the iMac does not have this type of outputs. I really want to be able to use these speakers. How could I accomplish that? I stumbled upon this...would that do what I need it to?

Last, would you recommend buying a Mighty Mouse at all (I prefer wireless)? I already have a Logitech MX1000.

Thanks for any help. I'm anxious to figure stuff out so that I can get the ball rolling on this purchase.

Try the wired MM that comes bundled with the iMac first. You may not like it that much to get the wireless one.

 

[Yuppi]

For Photoshop I had to enjoy the fun of losing an activation by running it in vmware fusion from my bootcamp partition. The problem is that when you run it in vmware the activation that I did in bootcamp was lost and as I have as second installation on my notebook I could not activate it again
So re-using the windows license of Photoshop is not an optimal situation as when you're booting to boot camp it is hard to get a good access to your files on the mac partition. If you install bootcamp I can only recommend you to format the disk as fat32 so that you at least will not have any trouble to access the windows data from mac.
WoW runs perfectly. And only the adobe activation is such a pain because they have found some 'clever' way of storing the activation in part of the disk that they thought would never be used. I really hate them for doing that.
Do the speaker have some way of digital input like fiber or wired-digital in? Because as far as I know the headphone plug of the iMacs has an optical digial out in 1/8" format. Never tried that one, just from what I had in mind.
So something like that http://www.sipedia.co.uk/HiFi/iMacDigitalSound.htm
I couldn't agree more on the mouse. Take the wired MM and enjoy your MX1000

 

[pcorajr]

Try the wired MM that comes bundled with the iMac first. You may not like it that much to get the wireless one.

i Agree, Try the wired first just in case you do not like it. My personal encounter with the MM was bad. The is to flat for me I use a MX revolution ad it is so much better. prior to the MX i used the Logitech LX3 it is a great simple mouse.

 

[Scannall]

World of Warcraft doesn't like the Mighty Mouse. My Logitech works just fine though.

 

[cyantist]

Get an MX Revolution and forget all about that MM..

 

[Eidorian]

Any USB mouse will work. The MX1000 is fine.

I use the Mighty Mouse for my machine at work. I've never had a problem with it in a work situation.

 

[Buttercookie]

I had a nice logitech mouse on my windows machine. it was so comfortable in my hand. Being newish to the mac I insisted on using the MM with it. Its still plugged in and working on my iMac. My husband bought me a macbook for our anniversary and I bought a Wireless MM. I love the MM. I know I'm alone in this love for my Mighty Mice.

 

[BlakTornado]

My mighty Mouse hurts my wrist and fingers.

Yay!

 

[theBB]

I really like Might Mouse, although I use it in the left-click only mode with the scroll boll acting as my third button mainly for opening links in a new tab in Safari and pasting in Terminal. You probably already know what I mean by "pasting" if you are familiar with Linux.

As I have not activated the right-click ability, I can press the whole button with all of my fingers or my palm. This is more comfortable overall for me even though I need to hit cntl-click to get the right click effect.

 

[Yuppi]

I would actually use the MM if it would have a better sensor. But the one build in is just ancient. You will know what I mean if you ever used a laser mouse. With the mighty mouse on a regular mousepad you have to hover the mouse like 3 or 4 times to get from one corner to the other in the normal setting. If you have a laser mouse you will just need half a mousepad AND you still have the accuracy during your way from one corner to the other. And a laser mouse works on glass desktops without mousepads (the very recent ones).
What I really liked about the MM was the scrolling ball. It feels great to scroll horizontal, unlike with any other mouse I used. Pressing the side button felt a bit odd to me. And I couldn't rest my thumb anywhere I had to hold it up for myself. But I'm a very hardcore user, for most regular users the MM might just do fine. Compared to the MX1000 the OP is using he will figure out how good his MX1000 actually is.

 

[theBB]

What I really liked about the MM was the scrolling ball. It feels great to scroll horizontal, unlike with any other mouse I used. Pressing the side button felt a bit odd to me.

I agree with the scroll ball. For some reason it feels better than scroll wheels.

The side buttons? I could never press both of them at the same time let alone using each one independently. It is asking for carpal tunnel.

 

[zepharus]

The Mighty Mouse is the worst mouse on the planet. Stick with the bundled wired one, because you'll toss it within an hour and go back to your Logitech

TOTALLY not true. It is a matter of preference. I went from my Logitech G7 Laser mouse to the Wireless MM(which is also laser) and I LOVE the thing. One you adjust to the scroll ball you with LOATHE a normal scroll wheel smooth as a babys ass...

 

[HLdan]

The mighty mouse is not a gaming mouse but I have agree the scroll ball alone makes it better than anything else on it's equal.

 

[Cable86]

Wow, lots of input on the mouse! Looks like people are pretty divided regarding that.

What I'm more concerned about now is being able to use my speakers with the iMac. Does anyone have any more input on that subject?

 

[JBat]

Wow, lots of input on the mouse! Looks like people are pretty divided regarding that.

What I'm more concerned about now is being able to use my speakers with the iMac. Does anyone have any more input on that subject?

I'd like some input on this as well. I have a Klipsch 4.1 system that I really hope I can use with my new iMac.

 

[swisspolo]

Cable86,

I don't know enough about these speakers to answer your question straight off but if you give me some details I can probably help.

On your PC do you connect the speakers to a sound card via separate cables running to each one from the PC(ie. one connection for left/right, one connection for surround left/right and one connection for sub woofer)?

Does that little volume control thing, control the whole system or just the sub woofer? if it's the whole system then does it have an input?

Cheers

Simon

ps. I'm the site owner of the site that Yuppi linked to in his first post, hopefully I can help

 

[Cable86]

swisspolo-

The way my speaker system works is as follows:
All speakers are run through a piece of equipment that is connected to the subwoofer (I'm assuming it's some sort of amplifier, it sure looks like one) via RCA cables. There are no additional plugs here, only plugs for each of the speakers (front left/right, center, rear left/right). The signal is received from the computer via 3 1/8" cables (front left/right, rear left/right, and center/sub woofer). The cable goes from the outputs of the sound card to the inputs on the amplifier.

The volume control controls the volume of the whole system, not just the sub woofer. It does not have an input, only an output for headphones.

If you need any other information just let me know. Also, if pictures would help I'd be happy to take some.

 

[swisspolo]

Cable86,

From what you say and from what i've read on websites selling this equipment it sounds like the system is purely analogue. This means that the 6 channels of sound are effectively sent as 3 pairs of stereo and just targeted to the right speakers via your cable selection. If you were to switch those cables around you could have the center/woofer sound coming from the rear left/right.

All the thinking and signal routing is done on your sound card and it sends the correct signals to the correct outputs which are then fed the the amplifier you spoke of. Unfortunately the iMac only has 1 of these 1/8 outputs and as such in analogue mode can only output 2 channels of sound.

It can use a digital output which you can select to be encoded in Dolby Surround Sound but you would need to have a piece of equipment between the iMac and the amplifier. This can be an AV Receiver or a specially designed product like the Griffin Firewave that you mentioned.

I read somewhere that these speakers could be used with a games console and that the was a special "gaming input", it is possible that your iMac could be plugged into such a port, although if it is an analogue input (I image it will be as the website mentioned a Game Cube and i don't think they have a digital sound output) then you would have a kind of botched surround sound effect that would sound no where near as good as a properly encoded signal, I believe it is done with some cleaver analogue filtering but i'm not entirely sure.

I hope this is of some help, it's all based on educated guess work and on what you've, and the web, has told me so hopefully it's correct.

 

[oduinnin]

Huh?

I would actually use the MM if it would have a better sensor. But the one build in is just ancient. You will know what I mean if you ever used a laser mouse. With the mighty mouse on a regular mousepad you have to hover the mouse like 3 or 4 times to get from one corner to the other in the normal setting. If you have a laser mouse you will just need half a mousepad AND you still have the accuracy during your way from one corner to the other. And a laser mouse works on glass desktops without mousepads (the very recent ones).
What I really liked about the MM was the scrolling ball. It feels great to scroll horizontal, unlike with any other mouse I used. Pressing the side button felt a bit odd to me. And I couldn't rest my thumb anywhere I had to hold it up for myself. But I'm a very hardcore user, for most regular users the MM might just do fine. Compared to the MX1000 the OP is using he will figure out how good his MX1000 actually is.

I have never used the "MX1000" mentioned here, so I can't compare, but I also don't have any MM problems mentioned above. My MM (came with my iMac), is very fast and accurate and I love the scroll ball. The scroll ball works so much smoother than any scroll wheel I've used.

The one thing that could be improved upon is the shape / feel of using right, left and combo mouse buttons. My fingers feel a little bit cramped after doing a lot of right button or both button clicking. I think this is more due to the shape then to button sensitivity.

BTW, my MM version is the BT wireless and it is laser guided.