[chrisford]

I was just reading Macintouch, and saw that a few respondents were really quite damning about the screen on the 20" iMac:



Macintouch Reader Report

As I have one of these on order, can anyone confirm these reports?

[No Time 4 Love Dr. Jones]

I see general complaints, but nothing particularly "damning."

I've never understood gripes about viewing angle, either.

[chrisford]

Well,

The 24" display is obviously superior - the colors are deeper and richer. The two 20"s were, by comparison, washed out and over bright. I went back and forth, wondering if I could live with the 20", not really wanting the 24". I couldn't. The 20" is that bad.

and

However, when I finally got a closer look at the new boxes (I'd intended to buy the 20" $1,500 model), I found the screen was a disaster. I wouldn't be able to view anything on it unless my work area was completely blacked-out. On the model I saw in the store, the brightness control was set to the max, yet the screen was dim and washed-out. Very hard to see.

seem pretty damning to me. I was just wondering if anyone who had seen a 20" machine could give their opinion.

[Grrr]

I bought one yesterday.. A 20" 2.4ghz. Largely to replace my 1st gen G5 1.8ghz 20" iMac.

It has to be said, my 1st gen G5 iMac has the better screen. It can be viewed from any angle, and the colours and brightness don't change significantly. Not so the new metal iMac. Although it can still be viewed clearly from steep angles, the colours do distort.
However, neither is it so bad at all. And at the end of the day, it is not an expensive mac, and looks just fine when viewed more or less head on.
And just like my older iMac, the new one has no dead pixels either, which I am happy about.

Completely unrelated, but something I am very pleased with on the new iMac, is how quiet it is. Its just as quiet as Mr Jobs said the original G5 iMacs would be Only they were not especially quiet at all. New iMac is near enough completely silent, even during a work out.

Graphics performance for the new iMacs is pretty decent too. Take what the moaners say with a large pinch of salt..

All the best..

[CheesePuff]

Originally Posted by Grrr 

I bought one yesterday.. A 20" 2.4ghz. Largely to replace my 1st gen G5 1.8ghz 20" iMac.

It has to be said, my 1st gen G5 iMac has the better screen. It can be viewed from any angle, and the colours and brightness don't change significantly. Not so the new metal iMac. Although it can still be viewed clearly from steep angles, the colours do distort.
However, neither is it so bad at all. And at the end of the day, it is not an expensive mac, and looks just fine when viewed more or less head on.
And just like my older iMac, the new one has no dead pixels either, which I am happy about.

Completely unrelated, but something I am very pleased with on the new iMac, is how quiet it is. Its just as quiet as Mr Jobs said the original G5 iMacs would be Only they were not especially quiet at all. New iMac is near enough completely silent, even during a work out.

Graphics performance for the new iMacs is pretty decent too. Take what the moaners say with a large pinch of salt..

All the best..

How is the overall speed with the new machine in comparison with the iMac G5 you replaced it with?

[chrisford]

Thanks Grrr - that's really useful feedback. It's a toss-up for me whether to delay my order until I've seen them in the flesh, or go with the order and receive it earlier.

Thanks again for your response.

[Grrr]

Originally Posted by CheesePuff 

How is the overall speed with the new machine in comparison with the iMac G5 you replaced it with?

It rapes the old G5 iMac completely. Both have 1gb of ram at present, but the new one will get some more soon, even if it does seem to do quite well with a mere 1gb.
It really is massively faster
Don't flame me, but I installed XP on it last night, and today ran 'N Bench' to compare with my friends dual AMD 2ghz windows pc with a decent 256mb graphics card (dont recall the exact specs) plus 1gb of ram.
The iMac did well, and was something like 38% faster over all than the 'real' pc.

I also ran cinebench on it yesterday. I don't recall the exact scores (I can run it again if anyone really wants to know). But again, it did well, and compared well with another friends Mac Pro quad intel 2.66. Speed "per core" was near enough the same. But over all, the new iMac beat that too (marginally) on OpenGL performance, which was surprising I thought.
Early days yet, but im starting to wonder what all the fuss is about with people complaining about the graphics setup on these new iMacs. Its pretty good I think?
Tried a game of UT2004 on it briefly, with a demanding map, and where the old iMac got 25fps at best, the new one gets 60fps minimum, and often saw over 100. And thats with maxed settings on the new iMac too.
So if games are your thing, i'd expect it will play other Mac games (or even PC ones) pretty well too.

Rather vague tests, i know. But they are at least 'real world' user tests.

Hope that helps?

[nat]

Saw the new iMac's in Apple store in Bethesda. The glare is unreal. Looked at the stand alone monitor and then the iMac and it was, well, startling.

Look at the side of your iMac, the white casing, and see the reflection behind you (lights, windows...). Now imagine that across your screen. I can see the windows directly behind my computer but no reflection on the screen. With the new ones I would see that reflection (or have to move my computer).

I'd never really looked at a glossy before and, my two cents says it'll be awhile before I get one.

[ghporter]

1) No glare here (a little intelligent lighting arrangement helps a lot).
2) OMG, how can this ENORMOUS 20" screen not be big enough?
3) "rich colors" is a local setting. If your screen doesn't look as rich as you'd like then go to Preferences and adjust it to work in your environment. Sheesh!
4) Just for grins I downloaded some 1080p trailers - and holy crap! That was great! Great colors, motion was spectacular, it was all just great.

I haven't bothered with any games (unless you count Bejeweled), but if the graphics system works that well for movies, I can't see it being a problem for a well behaved game.

[nat]

good point. since my office is narrow with windows on 3 sides moving the computer won't help. guess i could either board up my windows or buy a new house.