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typerlover · Jan 17, 2006, 10:10 PM

Just came into the bookstore today, went and picked up a 20" iMAC Intel with only the 256meg VRAM upgrade. Education discount helped make this a real nice priced system.

First impressions:

The system is fast, but not AS FAST as I was expecting. It is faster than my 15" 1.5gighz Powerbook, but when trying to open multiple programs there is some slow down. I am currently using the stock 512 Ram so I think that is holding me back.

Took a little less than 2 hours to transfer everything from my PB, but Photoshop CS2 will not load at all for me. It just says error and crashes, asking to reopen or report the problem. Logitech drivers do not work at all in this system, so I am unable to program the buttons.

Other than that, it is a new system. It is fun, and will work. Here are a whole bunch of pics of it and the external 2405FPW that I'm running with it.

If anyone can tell me how to span the top Menu bar across both displays, I would appreciate it.

jaydon34 · Jan 17, 2006, 10:21 PM

nice system. I have my credit card ready but Im not gonna make the purchase till after I test out the 2 new offerings.

chrisutley · Jan 17, 2006, 10:59 PM

Great combo there...

1) Once you startup multi apps the 512MB is for your going to hold you back. Get 1GB or more of RAM in there and you will be a happy camper.

2) You cannot span the menu bar.

Question: How does the Dell display compare to the iMac? Do you see a big difference in terms of whites? Brightness? Anything else?

typerlover · Jan 17, 2006, 11:25 PM

The iMac screen is Excellent compared to the 2405FPW. No doubt calibration makes a difference, but the smallers size is much sharper and has better colors on the 20" iMac. However, the 2405FPW is absolutely Huge. Visual screen area is larger I would say than the whole 20" iMac unit.

HattoriHanzo · Jan 18, 2006, 03:12 AM

Thats really nice - I've always wanted to see what the 24inch looks like next to the 20inch imac (as im considering getting one) and it looks great, im really impressed with it.

From what ive read the colour and brightness should be better on the 24inch than the imac - the black should be richer too.

can i ask one favour? please post a photo with the dell in portrait mode (with something open in it) that would really help me out - thanks

videian28 · Jan 20, 2006, 03:25 PM

couple questions for yah (I have the same monitor)

Do you have the option of making the external screen the primary? I have the 17" and would like to use that as my "other" and the 20" as the primary

icruise · Jan 20, 2006, 03:29 PM

Sure, you can make the external screen the main one. You just have to drag the menu bar over there in the "monitors" preference pane.

Eug Wanker · Jan 20, 2006, 03:34 PM

Originally Posted by typerlover

The system is fast, but not AS FAST as I was expecting. It is faster than my 15" 1.5gighz Powerbook, but when trying to open multiple programs there is some slow down. I am currently using the stock 512 Ram so I think that is holding me back.

Add another 1 GB now.

Photoshop CS2 will not load at all for me. It just says error and crashes, asking to reopen or report the problem.

Hmmm... Worrisome, but it might be useful to do a reinstall of Photoshop and see what happens.

Here are a whole bunch of pics of it and the external 2405FPW that I'm running with it.

I almost bought one of those yesterday because of a one day Dell sale. It was only CAD$899 (US$775), but I decided I didn't really have enough space for it.

How fast is Exposé spanned on the two monitors, when you have lots of windows open? Have you tried running GPU intensive applications like Aperture?

EDIT:

I guess not, since you only have 512 MB RAM.

typerlover · Jan 20, 2006, 04:28 PM

Photoshop CS2 is working now for me. Not fast, but its working. Expose has a bit of lag the first time I press it across the two monitors, but after that first time every time after is fast. More Ram I think is crucial for this system, especially driving these two screens.

Microsoft Entourage is quite a bit slower than the G4 powerbook, so I'm waiting for the Office components to be optimized.

typerlover · Jan 20, 2006, 04:54 PM

Originally Posted by Icruise

Sure, you can make the external screen the main one. You just have to drag the menu bar over there in the "monitors" preference pane.

Can you elaborate on this please?

typerlover · Jan 20, 2006, 04:58 PM

Nvrmind, figured it out. Just go to display, arrangement. In there, drag the white bar that is on top of the first box across onto the second box representing the other display.

bernt · Jan 20, 2006, 07:31 PM

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

How fast is Exposé spanned on the two monitors, when you have lots of windows open? Have you tried running GPU intensive applications like Aperture?

From www.apple.com/rosetta: "Pro applications from Apple — including Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Aperture, Logic Pro, Logic Express, Shake and Final Cut Express — are not supported by Rosetta." So think we have to wait until March before we can say anything about Aperture on the Intel Macs...

icruise · Jan 20, 2006, 07:37 PM

This is from the Macintouch review of the Intel iMac:

Some other applications are less usable running on the Intel translator. Apple's own new Aperture application makes heavy use of animation in the user interface, and this cripples it under Rosetta; it visibly stutters, as it tries to slide photos around the screen. (We saw better performance on a three-year old, unsupported PowerBook G4.) It's very slow to create image thumbnails, and photos take a long time to load into the viewer.
Yet, to our great surprise, when we exported a set of Canon EOS 300D RAW images to 16-bit TIFF files, Aperture under Rosetta lagged a 2.1 GHz iMac G5 by only 20%. When exporting to JPEG, it lagged by just 10%!
In both cases, Aperture used both cores of the CPU to do the job, so it appears to make up for the loss of speed from translation with the Core Duo's extra CPU — an example of the usefulness of that duo core, and a tribute to the work Apple and Transitive put into Rosetta's emulation.
(Apple does not support Aperture or any of its Pro applications under Rosetta. We had to hack our copy of Aperture to make it run on the Core Duo.)

bernt · Jan 20, 2006, 07:54 PM

Ah, my bad then. I thought by not supported it meant not working (which is halfway true since they had to hack Aperture to get it working). But we have to wait until march before we can say anything about how Aperture runs *natively* on the Intel iMac

Eug Wanker · Jan 21, 2006, 12:13 AM

Actually, I had momentarily forgotten Aperture isn't supposed to run on it.

Mini-stroke I guess, cuz I was even telling people this last week.

It's interesting though to see that it (the hacked version that is) does indeed work under Rosetta, despite Apple's G4/G5 requirement.

mjames · Jan 21, 2006, 12:29 AM

http://web.mac.com/mnjames/iWeb/Site/Library.html

20" Core Duo and older 1.25 Ghz PB G4. Heaven!

rhashem · Jan 21, 2006, 05:24 AM

Originally Posted by typerlover

The iMac screen is Excellent compared to the 2405FPW. No doubt calibration makes a difference, but the smallers size is much sharper and has better colors on the 20" iMac. However, the 2405FPW is absolutely Huge. Visual screen area is larger I would say than the whole 20" iMac unit.

If you have a 2405FPW connected to a Mac, don't use the default profile. It'll appear very washed out. Use either the 2405FPW ICCM profile (supplied with OS X), or the sRGB profile.

Eug Wanker · Jan 21, 2006, 09:53 AM

So is iMovie snappy? Try loading up some of the default themes and through some movies or pictures in the drop zones and tell us how jumpy it is (or isn't).

Please.

Simon · Jan 21, 2006, 10:27 AM

For starters, check out this iMovie benchmark

It's from http://www.barefeats.com/imcd.html

typerlover · Jan 21, 2006, 10:33 AM

Loaded it up, seems to work pretty fast running through iMovie. Didn't notice much jumping around at all.

jcee · Jan 21, 2006, 12:44 PM

Give us videos of its power!