[murbot]

If no one else does, I should be able to hook you up later today...

*crosses fingers*

[Cory Bauer]

Simon,

I can't give you any benchmark figures, but I can tell you from personal experience that you'd certainly miss having that second processor. When I'm working in Final Cut Pro on a Dual Processor Mac (800Mhz or better), I can hit "Render" and go do other things on the computer while I'm waiting without even noticing a speed decrease. With the single-processor iMac, if I hit "Render" there's no point in even trying to multitask - it's incredibly unresponsive.

Now, if you don't do anything that processor intensive then you won't miss the second processor, but if that's the case you should have never got a Powermac in the first place

[FishDoc]

at the xbench web site

http://ladd.dyndns.org/xbench/csi.xh...chineTypeID=14

A quick look shows the new 1 ghz iMacs getting around 85 or so, while the dual 867 machine is running from 100-110 or so.

I have no idea how accurately these bencghmarks reflect real-world use, but it is a starting point.


Fish

[disneyfan1313]

Well I finally got my 1ghz 17inch iMac today and boy was I excited. It took me until now to get it and I ordered the day after it came out.. but I ordered through the education store and I chose to have one 512 meg DIMM installed.

I am a "Adder".. I am keeping my PC's for a few games that I play on a regular basis that are only PC based.. (Ultima Online and Toontown Online). The last Apple computer I had was an Apple IIGS which I had for many years and I loved dearly.. It's good to have a computer which is innovative again.. ..

A quick funny story that y'all can probably appreciate.. After I set up my computer hurridly this morning before I had to go to work (no time to read the manual of course) I noticed this small hole in the lower left hand corner of the screen.. Looked like the perfect place for an LED..but nothing was lighting up.. I started to panic thinking it was a moniter status light that I had never noticed in the apple store before and it wasnt working..and I tried to find a way to get it to light up.. I finally was told by my already iMac owning friend that it was the Microphone.. boy did I feel stupid

BTW: are there any good sites that have info on filesharing between macs and multiple PC's.. I found some info by googling but no good setup techniques..

Thanks!

Reed

[Anand]

Welcome back to the mac community. I have a 800 iMac and love it. I also have a 1 Ghz powerbook so I have an idea how the new iMAc will run. According to xbench the new iMac is similar to a 933 G4 (Quicksilver).

I still believe that the Apple IIGS is the computer that should have been made in place of the origianl Mac. Think about it, Apple had a platform with over 10,000 titles and a complete market dominace. And they droped it. If they had just stuck with that and developed that, they would be where microsoft is now.

[Simon]

Thanks very much for all the replies guys.

I went to the xBench site and was happy to see that the iMac got scores up to 90 and my home machine (the 867 MDD) got scores of up top 110. I think this means that for a machine not getting pushed to the limits the "downgrade" would be OK. I'm going to the store today again to check how the new iMac feels, i.e. perceived speed/snappiness, etc...

I listened to a new FW800 MDD yesterday at the store. Damn, even though the store was noisy I could still here the whine, exactly like our MDD at home. Either this was just a lemon and I get to hear a much less whiny MDD at the store today (a different store, one that actually has a quiet back room which is better for noise testing) or I will buy the iMac. It's a home machine after all and I'm not ready to put up with the noise. The iMac seemed very quiet.

What do you guys think about the iMac's noise? I mean I wouldn't sleep next to the machine, but I'd like to be able to read a yard away from the machine and not be distracted by a constant whiiiiiiine. What do you iMac owners think (especially those with a 1GHz model)?

[meducus]

Originally posted by Centris650:
That's an idea! My iBook SE (FW), though it's only 2 years old, is a sloth. (Plus iMovie 3 doesn't work on it. I could use another iBook. (Yeah, like my wife, the penny pincher, would let me do that! )



Have you done a lot of designing on the iMac? How does it handle Photoshop and multiple opened programs? How were the colors on the LCD? I guess you all have just about swayed me.

Now I just need to find a large and fast HD. Any suggestions anyone?

Doesn't the new 1ghz imac come with a 80 gig hard drive at 7000 rpm.......????.......isn't that large and fast?

[Johnnyboysmac]

"I went to the xBench sit e and was happy to see that the iMac got scores up to 90 and my home machine (the 867 MDD) got scores of up top 110. I think this means that for a machine not getting pushed to the limits the "downgrade" would be OK. I'm going to the store today again to check how the new iMac feels, i.e. perceived speed/snappiness, etc...

I listened to a new FW800 MDD yesterday at the store. Damn, even though the store was noisy I could still here the whine, exactly like our MDD at home. Either this was just a lemon and I get to hear a much less whiny MDD at the store today (a different store, one that actually has a quiet back room which is better for noise testing) or I will buy the iMac. It's a home machine after all and I'm not ready to put up with the noise. The iMac seemed very quiet.

What do you guys think about the iMac's noise? I mean I wouldn't sleep next to the machine, but I'd like to be able to read a yard away from the machine and not be distracted by a constant whiiiiiiine. What do you iMac owners think (especially those with a 1GHz model)? "

Simon, noise is one of the main annoyances/queries with me as well, of having a computer in a quiet home environment. Actually, I think? you also considered this at the time of your original purchase, IIRC from some of your earlier postings.

Now that the new updates are here, I'm finally about to jump in with my first Mac. As yet, there are no new demo models here in the stores, however the 800mhz Imac is as quiet as it gets IMHO excluding the second generation convection cooled Imac, and the cube. Like you, I'm particularly irritated by background noise when working, so I've gone to some trouble to assess the Imac in the quietest shops I can find, and I doubt that I'd be able to find anything better in that regard.

Certainly, whilst I can't quote truly scientific evidence to back up my thoughts, it strikes me as being a very thermally efficient design.

The logic board is at the bottom, then the optical drive, HD, and the power supply (two piece) on top of that, with a medium size relatively slow rpm moderate velocity fan right on the top, just under the exit holes.

As the whole thing is an inverted cone, and hot air rises, it strikes me as being very efficient in it's thermal properties re exiting the heat, hence not needing a multitude of high rpm whinniiiinnng fans.

And yes, I admit, being a little less powerful CPU wise etc, would probably help there as well compared to Dual CPU towers.

So I'm personally very well satisfied with the noise factor of the Imac, unlike the towers, albeit I have yet to hear the new 1ghz tower, which'd be my option to the Imac given my budget restrictions etc.

I cant really see the new 1Ghz Imac being any noisier than the 800 mhz model, although it's always possible, but unlikely IMHO.

Nonetheless I too am concerned about snappiness, and would value your impressions when you've had a play, as the machines are still around a week to ten days away here, at teh earliest, and I'm going through 'pain' trying to find out all the relevant info, and make a decision - 1ghz Imac, or 1ghz tower.

So yeah, I think for the noise side of it, one is going to have to be very lucky to find a quieter current computer over the current Imac IMHO.

Hope this helps,

Peace to All,

Johnboi...

[Simon]

Originally posted by Johnnyboysmac:
Actually, I think? you also considered this at the time of your original purchase, IIRC from some of your earlier postings.

Yes, absolutely. And stupid me resisted to all the warnings about the MDDs being loud since in the store it seemed quite OK. Yeah, great f***ing stupid idea. In the store evey machine will seem quiet if the store is right next to a freeway. Honestly I am pretty angry at myself for being too "numbed" by the dual proc to realize I was buying a headache. This is where twenty years of Apple experience got me... LOL.

however the 800mhz Imac is as quiet as it gets IMHO excluding the second generation convection cooled Imac

I had a convection cooled iMac and I'd say that was silence. The iMac G4 I saw yesterday seemed fairly close - not silence, but very very quiet. At least it was much closer to silence than the eMac standing right next to it (which I first had to put to sleep to even try to hear the iMac) and the MDDs (old and new) standing about five feet away on another table. You can here the iMac G4 when you put your ear right up to it, but not when you're a yard away. That's a huge difference to our MDD at home - I can here that sucker even if I'm on the porch...

Nonetheless I too am concerned about snappiness, and would value your impressions when you've had a play, as the machines are still around a week to ten days away here, at teh earliest, and I'm going through 'pain' trying to find out all the relevant info, and make a decision - 1ghz Imac, or 1ghz tower.

I will go and have a look at a more quiet shop in three hours. I'll try to do an xBench, do a little Safari, Mail.app and Office or AW. Of course the stupid dealers always leave the machines with the base RAM (which should be punished like a capital crime ), but at least I'll be able to see how it feels to some extent. If it feels OK, then it will even feel better with an additional 512MB RAM and I'll buy at once. I am really so fed up with this whole noise crap on the MDDs.

I'll report this evening, as soon as I've had the oportunity to test the new iMac and the dual 1.25GHz (new FW800 model) side by side.

Viva el iMac.

[disneyfan1313]

I actually do sleep right next to my iMac and it doesn't bother me at all. It is quite silent .. the only freaky thing is the pulsing white LED.. that almost kept me up last night!

[Centris650]

Originally posted by meducus:
Doesn't the new 1ghz imac come with a 80 gig hard drive at 7000 rpm.......????.......isn't that large and fast?

Well it's been my experience that when I get a new mac I look at the HD and exclaim "WOW! I'll never use all of that space!" Then 2 years later I'm wondering what I need to trash to make some room. Please don't think I've got several gigs of MP3s or ancient files I never back up on my Mac. I don't. But Mac OS gets bigger every upgrade. Photoshop and Freehand get bigger. The files are larger now than they were 10 years ago. I just want to be able to have a modest amount of disk space left if I need it.

Currently my Clamshell iBook's 10 gig HD is about 65% full. Not bad. But I have some large files that I need to back to an external HD and not burning it to CD. (These are files that are accessed occasionally and finding the CD and popping it in, waiting for it to load is just a pain.)

Anyway, Yes. 80 gigs is big. But my Centris 650 has an 80 MEG HD! (Wow.) My iMac Rev A has a 2 gig HD and my iBook has 10gigs. I'm sure next year we'll have 200+ gig hds in the powermacs and the iMacs will probably have 120 gigs. I'm just looking to the future needs of my Mac.

[Anand]

Originally posted by meducus:
"Doesn't the new 1ghz imac come with a 80 gig hard drive at 7000 rpm.......????.......isn't that large and fast? "

Not large enough. After you have loaded on your mp3, photos and start making movies, those 80 gigs start going fast. An 80 gig hard drive is not enough now adays. The iMac should have had a 120 GB hard drive and an ATA 133 controler.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Simon:
I'll report this evening, as soon as I've had the oportunity to test the new iMac and the dual 1.25GHz (new FW800 model) side by side.

OK, guys, I just came back and bought the iMac 1Ghz 17" with SuperDrive. This machine is awesome. Even with only the base RAM I got an xBench of 90 without special tweaks. My MDD normally gets 108 at max. But this iMac is very very quiet. If you're a yard away it's silent. The new MDD however is still far away from quiet. The whine is still there although it is a bit less noisy than before. But, if I stood away from the MDD about five yards I could still tell blindly when it was put to sleep and when it was woken - and this in a store that is quiet, but not as quiet as my computer room at home (which is also my library, so it should be quiet!). It's just too whiny. Too bad. To me a total deal stopper. The salesman understood the decission and he said I wasn't the first guy to do so...

I am looking forward very much to getting my new iMac on Friday. It will come with an additional 512MB DIMM and with an external LaCie 120GB 7200RPM FireWire disk for backups and some DVDs...

I can't wait!

[gwyn ap nudd]

hello ppl

i' ve been following this forum lately and i'm really longing to see some performance test from any of you when you receive your IMAC 1ghz DVD 4x...

i find myself in a position close to simon's, hesitating between a double processor unit, and this new baby.

i plan to do intensive photoshop/scan/edit work with my IMAC/1ghz/1Gb RAM/4x DVD; just don't need the comp to block on the task and i can't do anything else.

i'm currently writing from an IBOOK/600Mhz/384Mb RAM/combo, which is going to my dad on his birthday in a month.

i'm 24hrs logged on the internet DLing/ULing, and i can't do much with the comp without compromising data or getting frozen (yes, i'm still on OS 9.2.2 waiting to go OS X on the IMAC i'd like to buy).

i've seen the post where you say working with Final Cut Pro will suck all your machine power and i'm scared about it, precisely.

do you think i'll be able to do 24hrs DL/UL + photoshop scan/edit + burning DVDs from a firwire HD connected to the machine and still have decent ressouces available in the comp to do anything else on the fly ?

i REALLY need to do all these together; and i'm thinking, maybe photoshop is not hungry as Final Cut Pro, since photo files are around 30Mb tops and i understand 1Gb RAM would do the job.

i hope you all get your comps as soon as possible and will share your experience with the rest of us; if any of you guys got similar needs, please leave a note here.



PS - anyone got any problem burning 4x DVDs while doing other stuff with the machine ?
i currently can't burn and use the comp, and i've seen threads in forums about problems with burning so...

thx all of you for your posts anyway;
cya,

[Johnnyboysmac]

OOOoooooh!!! - Simon, CONGRATULATIONS, and man I sure envy you. 1) because of the machine, and 2) that it was obviously clear cut, as you were able to make an virtually on the spot decision!

V/pleased to hear the new Imac is still very very quiet.

As a matter of interest, as you point out the new towers are an improvement over the 'older' MDD's, but still a bit on the noisy side; did that include the new 1ghz single processor model, or only applied to the duals?

I'm assuming the power supply, fans etc would be the same in all of the towers, so would expect the noise factor to be indentical, regardless of which model (ie single or dual processor) tower it was. Would I be right in that assumption?

Lastly, being a 'noob' I don't quite understand the X bench tests as in what it relates to in the real world.

So, like, how was the 'snappiness' with the Imac re opening apps, window resizing, web surfin' etc? Did it lag much behind the dual 1.25, or your existing 867DP at home? Blown away by the duals, or fairly close?

I think for me, noise, and overall system snappiness/responsiveness, especially doing the day to day stuff like email, chat, iphoto etc etc, is somewhat crucial, as I can neither stand a sluggish/unresponsive machine on those simpler tasks, nor can I deal with an overly noisy machine in a home environment.

Hence the Imac is ideal re the noise, I just need to get some reassurance re the snappiness. Basically I guess, an objective/subjective opinion on the speed/responsiveness issue.

Hope you can help out with that re your considered opinion...


Man, you are so lucky, and I wish you all the best with your new 'baby' !

Meantime, I think I'm going to give up reading all my Mac brochures, and take a Valium...... only kidding, but the suspense is 'killing' me

Cheers,

Peace to All,

Johnboi....

[zorn]

Well looks like my iMac is having a sleep-over party with US Customs, for the second night in a row no less.

SERENITY NOW!!!!

[Simon]

Originally posted by gwyn ap nudd:
do you think i'll be able to do 24hrs DL/UL + photoshop scan/edit + burning DVDs from a firwire HD connected to the machine and still have decent ressouces available in the comp to do anything else on the fly

Seeing that you want to do a lot of stuff side by side I'd really recommend you get the dual PowerMac. On the other hand, if the PowerMac is fast in doing everything, but you can't stand sitting in front of it, because the PSF whine is driving you apesh�t, I'd say you're not going to get any work done.

So, forget xBench and all the crap you can read on the net including the stuff I wrote. Drive to a store and take a look at the machines. If the MDD seems quiet enough to you, buy it. If not, live with the lag - if it comes up once in a while on an iMac. Go to the store when there's not many people there and be sure to not forget that at home all the noise will be at least twice as bad as in the store, i.e. if at the store you can hear the MDD from 10 feet away, you will be able to hear it at your home from another room... Don't forget that or it will be a very expensive pleasure (like it was for me).

[Simon]

Originally posted by Johnnyboysmac:
OOOoooooh!!! - Simon, CONGRATULATIONS, and man I sure envy you. 1) because of the machine, and 2) that it was obviously clear cut, as you were able to make an virtually on the spot decision!

Thanks. Yeah, I went into the store, sent all the PowerMacs and eMacs to sleep and heard only the 1.25GHz MDD (new FW800 model). That was enough for me to decide at once. It was more quiet than the previous MDDs, but it still had the whine which was well audible ten feet away. Tough luck Apple. The iMac felt very well and as long as I wasn't trying to do 20 things at a time it competed well with my dual 867 MDD at home.

So, I decided I'd rather wait a tad longer in those scarce moments where I try to do 20 things at a time, but on the other hand get a machine that can be on 24/7 and which I will enjoy sitting in front of.

I'm looking forward to getting it on Friday! I'll post my initial experience when I get it.

V/pleased to hear the new Imac is still very very quiet.

Yes, it is still very quiet. I couldn't hear a difference between the new 1GHz iMac and the old 15" iMac in terms of noise. But in terms of performance there was a huge difference.

As a matter of interest, as you point out the new towers are an improvement over the 'older' MDD's, but still a bit on the noisy side; did that include the new 1ghz single processor model, or only applied to the duals?

Sorry, but I couldn't test that since they only had a dual 1.25GHz new MDD. I have heard that the single 1GHz is much more quiet than the new dual MDDs, but I have also heard that it is much louder than the previous MDDs. I don't know what to believe. I personally think it's probably just like the other new MDDs in normal operating conditions. Not anymore as loud as before but still too loud and too whiny.
I think all that can help you here is to go to a shop and see/hear for yourself. And don't forget: The noise in the store is going to get at least twice as bad when you're at you home in a quiet room.

Lastly, being a 'noob' I don't quite understand the X bench tests as in what it relates to in the real world.

Not much. First of all it depends heavily on who does the tests, i.e. how they are performed. I use tests I myself did under similar conditions to compare between machines, but I'd hardly compare tests Joe Sixpack did on a store machine to tests I did at home.

What's nice about xBench is it gives you an idea why a machine feels especially slow or fast. It has different tests that stress different parts of your machine. For example you can distinguish a Radeon 9000 from an GF4 when you look at results of the OpenGL tests done by xBench.

But all in all, xBench does not make up for the fact that you should test a machine in person and get a "feeling" for the machine. That's the best thing you can do. Go to the shop, try to do some of the stuff you normally would do with that machine and see how it responds. Look at the monitor picture quality. See if the machine "feels" and sounds right.

And don't forget the lesson that just costed me a $1000 to learn even though I have been using and buying Macs since 1984: A computer is more than the sum of its specs.

So, like, how was the 'snappiness' with the Imac re opening apps, window resizing, web surfin' etc? Did it lag much behind the dual 1.25, or your existing 867DP at home? Blown away by the duals, or fairly close?

Well, I can't do such a good comparison here. My home dual 867 has 768MB RAM and the store 1GHz iMac had only the base 256. But, it was clear that as long as I didn't try to have it do 20 things at once it felt about as snappy as my dual 867 did. A difference was Finder window resizing. Here the iMac felt slower. But not by much. Maybe also a RAM issue because the iMac's GPU is the same as my MDD's, but the iMac has more vid RAM. Don't know. Safari/Chimera felt just as good as on the MDD. The Finder felt good too.

I liked the iMac and it felt nice and quick. Actually, I expected it to not come that close to my dual. But maybe that's also because I don't normally try to do a zillion things at once. I never listen to iTunes, play UT, burn a DVD, do a complete backup to another drive and try to do Final Cut Pro at the same time. It's more like, Mail running, iTunes playing and me browsing the net or writing code in emacs. I guess for this kind of work the iMac is just as good.

[Johnnyboysmac]

Simon, firstly may I just thank you for your detailed and objective analysis of the towers and the Imac. I know how time consuming it can be, even for a reasonably speedy typist to type up such a detailed 'report' and I found it very informative and helpful, as I'm sure others would've found as well.

Secondly, I really hope that you will have a much more positive computing experience overall with the new Imac, as I know how much time you put into your original choice before going with the dual MDD tower, and it must have been very disappointing for you to have the ongoing irritation with the noise.

Quote: "I personally think it's probably just like the other new MDDs in normal operating conditions. Not anymore as loud as before but still too loud and too whiny.
I think all that can help you here is to go to a shop and see/hear for yourself. And don't forget: The noise in the store is going to get at least twice as bad when you're at you home in a quiet room. "

Thanks for your insight here. Yeah, I thought the towers would pretty much all have the same power supply/fans etc, parts standardisation I would think, and consequently have the same noise'(s) across the line.

I will be going to have a listen for myself, but at the moment, the only new machines here, as of 5 days ago when I went to a store to check, were the older models; new ones are still a week or so away they tell me. Hence your observations are very helpful in the absence of being able to hear them myself just at the moment, in terms of where I should be heading with my purchase decision. As my apartment is small, and very quiet, I will most certainly bear in mind the difference between listening in store, and in the quiet of a home environment.

Quote: "My home dual 867 has 768MB RAM and the store 1GHz iMac had only the base 256. But, it was clear that as long as I didn't try to have it do 20 things at once it felt about as snappy as my dual 867 did. A difference was Finder window resizing. Here the iMac felt slower. But not by much. Maybe also a RAM issue because the iMac's GPU is the same as my MDD's, but the iMac has more vid RAM. Don't know. Safari/Chimera felt just as good as on the MDD. The Finder felt good too.

I liked the iMac and it felt nice and quick. Actually, I expected it to not come that close to my dual. But maybe that's also because I don't normally try to do a zillion things at once. I never listen to iTunes, play UT, burn a DVD, do a complete backup to another drive and try to do Final Cut Pro at the same time. It's more like, Mail running, iTunes playing and me browsing the net or writing code in emacs. I guess for this kind of work the iMac is just as good. "

OOOooooooh, this has to be the best news I've heard since they released the update to the Imacs a few weeks back.

When I went to the store last week, they had a dual 867 MDD with the new 20" LCD display, and a 800mzh 17" Imac.

I just opened and closed apps, resized windows etc, did some basic web browsing on both, using IE, and Safari (BTW, very impressed with Safari, never having seen it before) but yeah, whilst it was like, OK, the Imac just felt that wee bit disappointingly 'sluggish' compared to the 867 MDD/20" display, which had a real snappy responsive feel, which is pretty much what I want/expect in a new machine. My 266Mhz P11 is slow, but the Imac didn't seem like a HUGE lot faster, (sorry, no offence meant to Imac owners) especially considering the price, and not as fast as a friends P111 900mhz Celeron. Certainly the 867 dual had the snap/responsiveness I was looking/hoping for, and I guess to some degree expecting, but the noise,,,,, groan...

I appreciate that in times ahead, if I start getting into the likes of photoshop, which I would like, but otherwise have no experience, and also editing video, and/or editing music, which also may well happen in the future, as they're growing, albeit relatively new interests as far as digital/computing creativity is concerned, THEN I may find the Imac a little slow and frustrating.

However it may well take me a year or more before I get to that level, and hence be a more appropriate time to buy the latest hopefully much more powerful and quieter tower then.

As long as the Imac is quick and snappy for the day to day things I'll be doing NOW, I think I'm going to be very happy with it indeed.

I'd love a Dual, but not the noise, and couldn't really take advantage of all it offers, not having the skills to run the sort of apps it's built for, and besides couldn't afford a new monitor with it, either.

The single processor tower is within my reach, BUT only if I continue to use my existing old and getting clapped out 17" CRT, or buy a new 19" CRT, which I'd rather not do as I prefer the Studio LCD, generally, for reasons of space saving, and eye strain. Unfortunately however, the 17" Studio LCD is pretty much out of my budget if I purchased it in conjunction with the 1ghz tower. And struggling on with my existing monitor until I could afford the better display doesn't sit well with me, as my budget will be almost completely blown with this purchase, so could be many months before being able to get a new display 'later'

So you can imagine how delighted I am to hear from an experienced user as to how the new Imac performs, especially even against a tower which is higher performing again than the 1ghz machine I was considering ie the 1.25GHz dual you tried in the store v's the 1ghz Imac, and of course your own 867 dual at home.

Yay, ! I'm just so excited, as my main concern about the Imac being 'sluggish' appears to have been remedied with the update, at last. And no need to contemplate a possibly noisy tower, to get more performance.

Incidentally, both machines (867 dual, and 800mhz Imac) I tried last week at the store, had the base 256 Ram.

Hehheh, it's real funny now that I think of it, that I could just find that out so easy on the Mac, being almost totally unfamiliar with them, whereas, on my Windoze box, I'd have to have a bit of a think/explore to find out where the system tells me how much ram its running.

I mean, Apple menu, ah, "About this Mac" I mean, how simple, straightforward and logical.

Anyway, like you, I mostly have like Eudora, Mozilla, maybe Trillian running at once, but that's about it; besides anymore apps open and this windoze box goes out for lunch usually, sigh/groan..

Quote: " A computer is more than the sum of its specs."

Simon, I have to say that is one of the more insightful truths I've read in a while re computing. Just playing with the Macs in store told me that, and I'm so excited about getting my first ever mac, and somehow I don't think I'll ever be going back. The product, people on the forums, support, community,, amazing...

Anyway, I must stop raving - but I know that when I finally get to play with one myself in the next week or so, that if it's as snappy as the 867 dual I tried the other day, then I'll be ordering!!

Simon, and all the others who write in and help with so many things, as a switcher to be, all I can say is a huge thanks, and I'll be staying in touch also to let you know my further findings etc. Also Simon, I'll be looking forward to your forthcoming mini 'review' when your mac arrives over the next few days, and you have it all set up in it's new home.

Take Care all, and thanx for listening to one excited switcheroo to be

Peace to All,

Johnboi

[Simon]

Johnny, it's nice to an excited switcher next to all the complaints about Macs we get to see here lately. I hope you can switch soon and you really enjoy your new Mac.

Originally posted by Johnnyboysmac:

When I went to the store last week, they had a dual 867 MDD with the new 20" LCD display, and a 800mzh 17" Imac.

I just opened and closed apps, resized windows etc, did some basic web browsing on both, using IE, and Safari (BTW, very impressed with Safari, never having seen it before) but yeah, whilst it was like, OK, the Imac just felt that wee bit disappointingly 'sluggish' compared to the 867 MDD/20" display, which had a real snappy responsive feel, which is pretty much what I want/expect in a new machine.

Well then, I played with an old 800MHz iMac too and I can assure you, while the difference between it and the dual 867 MDD is quite large (precisely the "sluggish" part), the difference between the 1GHz iMac and the dual 867M MDD was considerably smaller, so I think you can really look forward to your first tests.

I think I could sum it up in a chart:

- "Soft" multi-tasking: MDD and 1GHz iMac both seem snappy and all is fine; 800MHz iMac is ok when enough RAM around

- Heavy-duty multi-tasking: MDD is fine, 1GHz iMac needs lots of RAM and maybe some lags from time to time, 800MHz iMac is a no-go.

So, as long as somebody doesn't rely heavily on multi-tasking CPU-intensive apps, the 1GHz iMac should be fine - especially if you give it lots of RAM.

What has become totally clear to me is that in most cases buying a single 1GHz MDD is a very very bad decision. If you don't need high-power but PCI slots (does that user group even exist?) or if you can't afford the iMac, but you have an old monitor at home to hook up to the PowerMac I could just barely understand, but otherwise those people who just buy an MDD and a screen for more $ than a iMac are simply crazy (only IMHO of course). You get the noise and just minor performance increase (it all boild down to the L3 missing on the iMac actually) but it even costs you more!

[gwyn ap nudd]

hello again !

i just forgot to say i'm in Paris/France, and i can't get ahold of the machine even for testing only; ordering is a worse nightmare, of course...

went to an apple retailer today and asked about Dual Macs and the new IMAC; he says i shouldn't be considering 24hrs power on and internet on the IMAC, since the machine is not built for that intensive use, and something is bound to to fail sooner or later; then again, it's pretty obvious, isn't it ?

i'm using my IBOOK 24hrs no-stop since 13 months ago and never had a problem though...
...what's your opinion on this point ?

the same guy says DVD burning is something to be done while running NO OTHER APPS, otherwise it fails on the IMAC; not the case on Dual Mac where it's possible (in theory), but not recommended...



did you try this on you DP 867 simon ?
BTW, thanks a lot for your quick answer to my previous post



...also, any of you can tell me if the old Dual Mac topping at 1.25Ghz support a 4x DVD Superdrive ?
i mean they were sold with the 2x Superdrive and i know Apple released a patch for the 800Mhz IMAC to burn 4x with the same Superdrive, so i'm wondering if the same patch works for the Dual 'old' generation Superdrives; and also if they can support a 4x Superdrive at all !!!
...i mean i could always by a refurbished/used old Dual 1.25 Combo and put a 4x Superdrive into it; couldn't i ?!?

well, lucky you for testing the new IMAC live, i'm waiting for your impressions as soon as you receive the babies...

cordially,
a.

[Simon]

Originally posted by gwyn ap nudd:
he says i shouldn't be considering 24hrs power on and internet on the IMAC, since the machine is not built for that intensive use, and something is bound to to fail sooner or later; then again, it's pretty obvious, isn't it ?

Bullshit. I have never had a Mac that went bad because of 24/7 use within the first two years (my usual upgrade cycle). That's a crappy statement to get you to lay down more cash. Tell Steve that the guy said that and he can say goodbye to his job... That guy is a nut.

the same guy says DVD burning is something to be done while running NO OTHER APPS, otherwise it fails on the IMAC; not the case on Dual Mac where it's possible (in theory), but not recommended...

I have never burned a DVD before. I have no idea if that's true. But it sounds fishy. Looking at the other statement the guy made, I wouldn't believe it. As far as I'm concerned the guy is full of sh�t and just wants to sell a more expensive computer to make more dough.

[Anand]

Simon is right, that guy must be an idiot. I leave my iMac on 24 hours and day and only reboot with the software updates. The funny thing is that we just had our first kernal panic after one year of hard use.

Burning a DVD with no other apps? No problem, but it is best to let the DVD encode overnight. iDVD will take over all your processor time while it is encoding and make your system much less responsive. I can surf the net (with Safari) no problem but doing anything else is a real pain. This is with an iMac 800 with 768 Ram.

[MartyD]

Zorn,
Look familiar:

Scan Activity Date/Time Comments

Package status/ANCHORAGE AK 02/18/2003 16:28 Regulatory Agency
Clearance Delay

Package status/ANCHORAGE AK 02/17/2003 17:28 Regulatory Agency
Clearance Delay

Left FedEx Ramp/C.K.S. INTL AIRPORT TW 02/15/2003 20:04

Package status/ANCHORAGE AK 02/15/2003 17:27 Regulatory Agency
Clearance Delay

Left FedEx Origin Location/TAOYUAN CITY TW 02/15/2003 14:30

Pickup status/TAOYUAN CITY TW 02/15/2003 14:23 Package received
after FedEx cutoff
time


Thats the status of my order. Still waiting.......

[zorn]

Originally posted by MartyD:
Thats the status of my order. Still waiting.......

Well I called and they said mine is aparently out of customs now, but missed the FedEx plane. She says it will be at my house tomorrow, although I find it doubtful. Tracker hasn't changed since last post. I'll prob keep an eye on it as I go to sleep and wake up to see if I am staying at home to take shippment.

[gwyn ap nudd]

THX guys, especially SIMON and ANAND.

you just confirmed what i thought about 24hrs power on DL/UL on the internet and MACs.

i just had the same positive results in years of activity with a powerbook 500Mhz before, and currently an IBOOK.

thx Anand, that's exactly what i wanted to hear; if you had those kind of results with an 800Mhz IMAC/768 RAM, i can expect the same or slightly better with 1Ghz/1Gb RAM model can't i ?!

i can stand surfing only while burning DVDs and leave the photoshop or other apps resources untouched for the 15mins or so it will take to burn a DVD; correct ?

BTW - can you locate a certain amount of memory to the DVD burning app or does it suck all she can while she can ?

did you ANAND or any of you guys had problems burning DVDs while doing other things ?

i mean fouled DVDs or something like that...

THX AGAIN

[Anand]

With OS X you don't really allocate memory anymore. It does it for you. I should re-emphasize that burning is not a big issue at all. It does not seem to use that much power. The encoding is what takes alot of umph. That is, open iDVD 3 and import start importing movies. They will start to decode in the background but will take a lot of processor time in doing so. Usually this is 90-100% usage. No problem though. I just encode it overnight.

[gwyn ap nudd]

i understand better now...

...ok, i'll do it overnight too then !



do you think i can DL/UL something like 60k or even 120k ( that would really be my top speed anyway on ADSL ) while it encodes ?

in case of any problem, do OS X just slows down the encoding or you loose DL/UL data and/or get DVD/CD fouled ?

many, MANY THANKS

[Simon]

Originally posted by gwyn ap nudd:
do you think i can DL/UL something like 60k or even 120k ( that would really be my top speed anyway on ADSL ) while it encodes ?

in case of any problem, do OS X just slows down the encoding or you loose DL/UL data and/or get DVD/CD fouled ?

As I said I don't know about DVD burning and encoding, but from my broadband experience I can tell you that uploads and downloads are no problem at all for any current Mac no matter what you do beside that. I have 512kb/s cable and I couldn't tell if it's downloading or uploading something if I don't look at my hub's blinking lights. The Mac won't let you "feel" the transfer.

Even if encoding before burning takes up a lot of CPU I can't imagine that downloading something at the same time could be a problem, because the download needs about 0.0000001% CPU.

BTW, about this encoding business. I don't have any experience, but if for some of you guys the machine gets too sluggish while encoding and you don't necessarily want to have to do it in the night, have you thought about re-nicing the encoding process? Re-nicing would take away priority from the encoding process so that other apps get more CPU power and thus are more responsive. Of course the encoding may take a tad longer that way, but your forground apps should perform better if you give the encoding less priority...

[andycroll]

Originally posted by gwyn ap nudd:

do you think i can DL/UL something like 60k or even 120k ( that would really be my top speed anyway on ADSL ) while it encodes ?

in case of any problem, do OS X just slows down the encoding or you loose DL/UL data and/or get DVD/CD fouled ?

Encoding = Compressing/Transforming video & sound into correct format
This will just use any (as much as it can) availible processor time to transform the video and sound.

Burning = Putting any files onto a DVD
This requires very little 'thinking' on the part of your Mac. It merely has to keep feeding the DVD data. Which ain't that hard.

There is no problem doing other things whilst burning a DVD, five years ago maybe, but on the new iMac. Je don't think so!

Andy

[Anand]

gwyn ap nudd, Simon and Andy are right. I have no problem surfing and doing stuff with Safiri while decoding. I have even played iTunes in the background while encoding. Hell, I have even played full screen visuals. It aint pretty but it works. Downloading something (over a cable modem) is fine while encoding. Just don't try to rip a CD while you are encoding and you will be fine.

[meducus]

Originally posted by Johnnyboysmac:
Simon, firstly may I just thank you for your detailed and objective analysis of the towers and the Imac. I know how time consuming it can be, even for a reasonably speedy typist to type up such a detailed 'report' and I found it very informative and helpful, as I'm sure others would've found as well.

Secondly, I really hope that you will have a much more positive computing experience overall with the new Imac, as I know how much time you put into your original choice before going with the dual MDD tower, and it must have been very disappointing for you to have the ongoing irritation with the noise.

Quote: "I personally think it's probably just like the other new MDDs in normal operating conditions. Not anymore as loud as before but still too loud and too whiny.
I think all that can help you here is to go to a shop and see/hear for yourself. And don't forget: The noise in the store is going to get at least twice as bad when you're at you home in a quiet room. "

Thanks for your insight here. Yeah, I thought the towers would pretty much all have the same power supply/fans etc, parts standardisation I would think, and consequently have the same noise'(s) across the line.

I will be going to have a listen for myself, but at the moment, the only new machines here, as of 5 days ago when I went to a store to check, were the older models; new ones are still a week or so away they tell me. Hence your observations are very helpful in the absence of being able to hear them myself just at the moment, in terms of where I should be heading with my purchase decision. As my apartment is small, and very quiet, I will most certainly bear in mind the difference between listening in store, and in the quiet of a home environment.

Quote: "My home dual 867 has 768MB RAM and the store 1GHz iMac had only the base 256. But, it was clear that as long as I didn't try to have it do 20 things at once it felt about as snappy as my dual 867 did. A difference was Finder window resizing. Here the iMac felt slower. But not by much. Maybe also a RAM issue because the iMac's GPU is the same as my MDD's, but the iMac has more vid RAM. Don't know. Safari/Chimera felt just as good as on the MDD. The Finder felt good too.

I liked the iMac and it felt nice and quick. Actually, I expected it to not come that close to my dual. But maybe that's also because I don't normally try to do a zillion things at once. I never listen to iTunes, play UT, burn a DVD, do a complete backup to another drive and try to do Final Cut Pro at the same time. It's more like, Mail running, iTunes playing and me browsing the net or writing code in emacs. I guess for this kind of work the iMac is just as good. "

OOOooooooh, this has to be the best news I've heard since they released the update to the Imacs a few weeks back.

When I went to the store last week, they had a dual 867 MDD with the new 20" LCD display, and a 800mzh 17" Imac.

I just opened and closed apps, resized windows etc, did some basic web browsing on both, using IE, and Safari (BTW, very impressed with Safari, never having seen it before) but yeah, whilst it was like, OK, the Imac just felt that wee bit disappointingly 'sluggish' compared to the 867 MDD/20" display, which had a real snappy responsive feel, which is pretty much what I want/expect in a new machine. My 266Mhz P11 is slow, but the Imac didn't seem like a HUGE lot faster, (sorry, no offence meant to Imac owners) especially considering the price, and not as fast as a friends P111 900mhz Celeron. Certainly the 867 dual had the snap/responsiveness I was looking/hoping for, and I guess to some degree expecting, but the noise,,,,, groan...

I appreciate that in times ahead, if I start getting into the likes of photoshop, which I would like, but otherwise have no experience, and also editing video, and/or editing music, which also may well happen in the future, as they're growing, albeit relatively new interests as far as digital/computing creativity is concerned, THEN I may find the Imac a little slow and frustrating.

However it may well take me a year or more before I get to that level, and hence be a more appropriate time to buy the latest hopefully much more powerful and quieter tower then.

As long as the Imac is quick and snappy for the day to day things I'll be doing NOW, I think I'm going to be very happy with it indeed.

I'd love a Dual, but not the noise, and couldn't really take advantage of all it offers, not having the skills to run the sort of apps it's built for, and besides couldn't afford a new monitor with it, either.

The single processor tower is within my reach, BUT only if I continue to use my existing old and getting clapped out 17" CRT, or buy a new 19" CRT, which I'd rather not do as I prefer the Studio LCD, generally, for reasons of space saving, and eye strain. Unfortunately however, the 17" Studio LCD is pretty much out of my budget if I purchased it in conjunction with the 1ghz tower. And struggling on with my existing monitor until I could afford the better display doesn't sit well with me, as my budget will be almost completely blown with this purchase, so could be many months before being able to get a new display 'later'

So you can imagine how delighted I am to hear from an experienced user as to how the new Imac performs, especially even against a tower which is higher performing again than the 1ghz machine I was considering ie the 1.25GHz dual you tried in the store v's the 1ghz Imac, and of course your own 867 dual at home.

Yay, ! I'm just so excited, as my main concern about the Imac being 'sluggish' appears to have been remedied with the update, at last. And no need to contemplate a possibly noisy tower, to get more performance.

Incidentally, both machines (867 dual, and 800mhz Imac) I tried last week at the store, had the base 256 Ram.

Hehheh, it's real funny now that I think of it, that I could just find that out so easy on the Mac, being almost totally unfamiliar with them, whereas, on my Windoze box, I'd have to have a bit of a think/explore to find out where the system tells me how much ram its running.

I mean, Apple menu, ah, "About this Mac" I mean, how simple, straightforward and logical.

Anyway, like you, I mostly have like Eudora, Mozilla, maybe Trillian running at once, but that's about it; besides anymore apps open and this windoze box goes out for lunch usually, sigh/groan..

Quote: " A computer is more than the sum of its specs."

Simon, I have to say that is one of the more insightful truths I've read in a while re computing. Just playing with the Macs in store told me that, and I'm so excited about getting my first ever mac, and somehow I don't think I'll ever be going back. The product, people on the forums, support, community,, amazing...

Anyway, I must stop raving - but I know that when I finally get to play with one myself in the next week or so, that if it's as snappy as the 867 dual I tried the other day, then I'll be ordering!!

Simon, and all the others who write in and help with so many things, as a switcher to be, all I can say is a huge thanks, and I'll be staying in touch also to let you know my further findings etc. Also Simon, I'll be looking forward to your forthcoming mini 'review' when your mac arrives over the next few days, and you have it all set up in it's new home.

Take Care all, and thanx for listening to one excited switcheroo to be

Peace to All,

Johnboi

OMG.....he wrote this much about just thinking of buying an imac....can you imagine how much he'll write once he actually gets it !!

[gwyn ap nudd]

hi !

thanks to you all for insghtful comments.
i was wondering...
...can i batch encode more than 1 DVD at a time ?

i mean can i go to sleep and tell iDVD or another DVD app. to encode several DVDs from HD data, then just burn them when i wake up the morning after ?

...or i have to encode one DVD at a time, then burn to be able to re-encode a second ?



waiting for your first hand reviews of the IMAC soon...



THX again !!!

[Simon]

I GOT IT

OK, this morning I went to the shop and fetched this new 1GHz iMac along with an extra 512MB RAM. What can I say? It's wonderful, it's fast, it's sleek and it's sooo quiet. I haven't missed my old MDD PowerMac one bit since. I'll give you some impressions I had when I unpacked and set up the machine and then I'll give you my xBench scores.

I first was amazed by the size of the box. It was much smaller than the box the Powermac had. But it clearly said iMac 17" so I took it and jumped into a cab. At home I first had to have a drink. The box is pretty heavy. On the box there was a sticker that said it left the Taiwan factory on February 6. I guess it must have been sitting in my dealer's warehouse for about a week.

I opened the box and was surprised to see that there was no "Designed by Apple in California" in large letters on the cover like with the new PowerBooks. Anyway, I lift away the cover and find the cables, manuals, mouse and the keyboard (now being put in the narrow way, not laid in the box as they used to). The white keyboard is a beauty. I am just wondering how I can keep it so white - baking soda anyone? I tossed the white mouse away because I bought a Logitech optical mouse with scroll wheel, which btw works really great. I was thinking why Apple couldn't let Logitech make these mice for them and just pop an Apple on the plastic and sell them as an add-on option with new Macs...

What puzzles me is why Apple decided not to deliver any speaker grills for the Pro Speakers. If you buy the Pro Speakers as an extra you get grills, but not on an iMac. Makes zero sense. The speaker grills cost like 0.3 cents. Who's speakers are more likely to get poked at - the home iMac's or the office PowerMac's? Right. So that at least was a stupid decision on Apple's behalf.

Along with the manuals and the cables you get a DVD-R and a CD-R. The CD-R is some Verbatim 48x certified disk, but the DVD-R has Apple written on it. It is certified 4x. Nice. A minor let-down was the set-up guide I got. It was crinkled (even a little bit ripped) and looked as if it had got a bit moist once. Don't know what that means. Maybe some poor sucker in the Taiwanese sweat shop where Apple lets the slaves build our computers let it fall on the ground and it perfectly hit the puddle... I just don't know why they didn't just throw it away and give me a proper one? Well, actually it doesn't matter, since the guide just tells the real newbs how to set up an iMac so I don't exactly need it.

Anyway, I lift the iMac out of the box and put it on the table. It is quite heavy, but that's fine - it will at least quiet those down that were so afraid about the iMac falling over... It seems actually very sturdy even though it has a very sleek appearance. I flipped it over on it's screen to get to the base to install the RAM. The base is beautiful, it's really a shame you almost never see it. It's polished metal and has an Apple logo with roughed-up surface engraved in the center. Very cool. The engineering is absolutely beautiful and much less plastic than you would think. To get to the SO-DIMM or the APX slot you need to loosen four screws in the base plate. Care for detail again here: The screws have something like little springs attached to them and the thread as well, thus you loosen the screws, but they don't fall out. Very beautiful. Installing the RAM was a snap and I suppose APX cards aren't harder. What's strange is that there is some plastic shield (actually it is some semi-transparent grey cheap looking PET) mounted on top of the board between APX and SO-DIMM slot so that your hands don't touch the board.

Did I mention yet how big the iMac base is? It is much larger than it looks. It has a diameter of 10.6 inches (27 cm). It is definitely wider than a G4 Cube. But it is not very tall and with a 17" screen I think the proportions look absolutely perfect. The screen is beautiful and big! I don't have a single stuck or dead pixel - checked it with PiXelCheck. Lucky me. It is very sharp and I really like it. However I think the vertical angle I have to look at to see the proper colors is smaller than with the 17" Studio Display I had before. If the screen is too low or too high or it is tilted in the wrong direction, I get too much or too little contrast on the top respectively bottom.

Ah, and a design flaw: If you use the stand for your keyboard so that it is tilted up towards the front and you put your keyboard right up to your iMac the CD door (not the black tray, but the white door) will hit the keyboard and block the tray. Not nice at all. The drive seems to be just too low so that it would come out above the keyboard. So either, don't tilt your keyboard or move your keyboard at least 2 inches away from the iMac or jack up your iMac by about an inch. A nasty flaw since it means that your iMac plus keyboard take up more space on your desk even though they're supposed to occupy only a small area...

Jaguar 10.2.3 and the system restore stuff all comes on one single DVD. Very nice! You pop in one disk and can walk away. It only took three minutes to shove all of the stuff off the DVD and onto the HD. Nice. Not so nice was the fact that the Apple registration server decided not to disconnect properly and the registration app obviously doesn't catch such events. I couldn't quit the program or force quit it. In the end I had to force-reboot the whole machine because of the stupid server. Imagine what newcomers would have done! Maybe waited forever just to stay stuck at the same stupid screen...? Apple should put some kind of time-out in that damn program.

Anyway, I managed to boot from the DVD, partition my disk and re-install a fresh Jaguar plus Developer stuff. It's strange. DiskUtility asks you if you want to put OS 9 drivers on your disk when you format it even though the machine can't boot 9. I don't know why. After all the startup disk panel in the system prefs also only lets you chose partitions with OS X on them to boot from... Anyhow, all went fine. Got back my user's homes and data as well as my apps from my external FireWire backup HD. Re-installed fink, Apple X11, Emacs and my HP printer drivers. Everything fine. My machine is back up and running great.

This machine is sooo quiet! It's incredible. I will never put this baby into deep sleep. I can't hear it if I'm three yards away even if I'm in total silence. There's no high-pitched whine or anything. Just a very quiet hum of air coming out the top. It is one hell of a great machine indeed. It is very fast. I can't feel the difference between this machine and my dual 867 MDD when doing normal everyday stuff like web, mail, writing code in Emacs, etc. What I realized is that it can't boot as quickly as the dual could, but fortunately booting is something I only do about four times a year. I also got a two-second spinning beach ball when I let Chimera open up twenty links in twenty different tabs in the same window, whereas on the MDD I would have one CPU go to full blast but the other would still idle, thus no spinning beach ball on that machine. I have been wondering if maybe the reason I don't feel a difference when I'm not stressing SMP is because the extra 133MHz on the iMac's CPU clock are just making up for the missing 1MB L3 cache the MDD had. I don't know, just a guess. And window scrolling is definitely faster on the iMac than on the MDD! The iMac's GF4MX has 64MB RAM instead of the MDD's 32MB, but I didn't think that that could make such a difference. Anyhow the xBench specs (see below) give you a too bad impression of this machine when you don't rely on SMP. This is one hell of a great Mac. I would go as far as to say if you care about noise and don't need heavy-duty dual CPUs the iMac is a perfect machine. I love it and I don't think back about my MDD anymore at all (even though Apple today officially announced a noise-reduction fix for $20!).

[Edit: had to split the message because it was hitting the 10k character limit]

[Simon]

OK, and now my xBench scores:

Results 82.81
System Info
Xbench Version 1.0
System Version 10.2.4
Physical RAM 768 MB
Model PowerMac6,1
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 1.00 GHz
Version 7455 (Apollo) v3.3
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 256K @ 1000 MHz
Bus Frequency 134 MHz
Video Card GeForce4 MX
Drive Type ST380023A
CPU Test 94.61
GCD Recursion 92.35 3.61 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 107.21 361.39 Mflop/sec
AltiVec Basic 88.16 4.78 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 92.76 4.17 Mops/sec
Thread Test 56.97
Computation 56.31 453.65 Kops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 57.65 723.69 Klocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 80.24
System 67.58
Allocate 87.34 29.45 Kalloc/sec
Fill 66.43 380.91 MB/sec
Copy 55.90 279.49 MB/sec
Stream 98.75
Copy 99.78 436.32 MB/sec [altivec]
Scale 101.83 444.27 MB/sec [altivec]
Add 97.39 443.12 MB/sec [altivec]
Triad 96.21 422.75 MB/sec [altivec]
Quartz Graphics Test 99.22
Line 107.11 2.73 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 112.01 7.88 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 116.90 2.69 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 94.10 1.02 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 77.22 1.26 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 115.06
Spinning Squares 115.06 80.52 frames/sec
User Interface Test 70.69
Elements 70.69 24.05 refresh/sec
Disk Test 90.65
Sequential 102.23
Uncached Write 95.06 41.48 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 101.95 41.48 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 117.68 18.54 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 97.06 41.87 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 81.42
Uncached Write 56.31 0.85 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 87.59 20.09 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 97.00 0.63 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 103.70 20.33 MB/sec [256K blocks]


If anybody has questions feel free to ask. And if you have been thinking about getting an iMac, can't decide and have trouble making up your mind all i can say is:
Stop waiting and get the damn iMac - it is just too cool!

[Centris650]

Originally posted by Simon:
I GOT IT

Ah, and a design flaw: If you use the stand for your keyboard so that it is tilted up towards the front and you put your keyboard right up to your iMac the CD door (not the black tray, but the white door) will hit the keyboard and block the tray. Not nice at all. The drive seems to be just too low so that it would come out above the keyboard. So either, don't tilt your keyboard or move your keyboard at least 2 inches away from the iMac or jack up your iMac by about an inch. A nasty flaw since it means that your iMac plus keyboard take up more space on your desk even though they're supposed to occupy only a small area...

Congrats! I heard about this design flaw in other threads and which spawned the mis-rumor that this iMac would sport a slot optical drive. This isn't a concern for me since my desk has an elevated platform for the monitor. I'm assuming that when I get mine it should fit fine.

Simon, have you tried any multitasking? If so what kind of programs and doing what? I usually have Photoshop, freehand and maybe one other program or so open at any given time.

Very cool. I'm soooo envious.
(I have to say this is my favorite thread in any forum. I love these stories. Keep em coming!)

[zorn]

No review yet, cept to say this thing rocks!!! I posted pics of the unwrapping process. Enjoy!

Will post a full review later in the weekend after I've had a chance to play.

Currently posting in forums + watching Monsters Inc (1/2) in the corner + iChat list in theupper corner .. man i love this widescreen

[reip]

Simon, what did you mean when you said you tossed the white Apple mouse away? Anyway, congratulations with your purchase. Mine is still being assembled cause I ordered it with built-in bluetooth.

[Centris650]

Originally posted by zorn:
No review yet, cept to say this thing rocks!!! I posted pics of the unwrapping process. Enjoy!

Will post a full review later in the weekend after I've had a chance to play.

Currently posting in forums + watching Monsters Inc (1/2) in the corner + iChat list in theupper corner .. man i love this widescreen

Cool pics Zorn! (Funny I just finished watching Monsters Inc with my son.) Looking forward to your post this weekend!

[Simon]

Originally posted by Centris650:
Simon, have you tried any multitasking? If so what kind of programs and doing what? I usually have Photoshop, freehand and maybe one other program or so open at any given time.

Well yeah. I don't have Photoshop or Freehand, but yesterday I had quite a lot going on: I was installing Apple X11, Emacs and my HP drivers while copying 2GB of games back from by Backup Disk, listening to iTunes, scrolling around in the Finder to find something and letting DropStuff make a sit out of IE (so that I can ditch it and it can't show up in the browser list anymore ) - and all of this of course while Mail was checking my pop account and Chimera was loading some web pages. All felt fine to me. It didn't start to feel laggy or like molasses - even then when CPU Monitor (in my dock) was showing no idle time and top was telling me that the system had started to page-out stuff...

Honestly, I myself am amazed how well this machine competes with my dual G4 PowerMac. It's really a pleasure.

Very cool. I'm soooo envious.
(I have to say this is my favorite thread in any forum. I love these stories. Keep em coming!)

It's my favorite too. There's nothing like bragging to other Mac geeks about your new baby.

[Simon]

Zorn, great pics. Hell, you showed em all the stuff I was writing about - I could have saved an hour!

I looked at your PowerMac pictures. It's funny, we have the same iMac, the same MDD and the same screen next to our MDD.

BTW, huge difference before and after you cleaned up the desk for the iMac. LOL.

[Simon]

Originally posted by reip:
Simon, what did you mean when you said you tossed the white Apple mouse away?

I meant I took it, ran up to the third floor of my house, opened the window, stepped back and threw it right out of the window onto the street and watched it break in three million pieces... Just kidding.

No, what I meant was that I just left it in the box and don't use it.

[Simon]

BTW, In my little review I forgot two things that I wanted to mention.

First, Apple obviously has got some humor. If you flip to the last page on the new iMac user manual you see all the disclaimers. The title they put in big letters on that page is "And this is the small print".

And secondly, I forgot to mention that they now include some kind of felt cloth to clean your flat screen with I suppose. You can see a picture of it in Zorn's iMac pic collection.

[eddiecatflap]

..exc news simon !

..the imac is grate , ain't it?

..speed is one thing , but silence is much better..

..imho the 17" imac is the best mac ever !

[eddiecatflap]

..the felt cloth is grate two.. i use it to clean my glasses and i just bought a tv for the front room - and i use the cloth to clean that too!

..its a bang & olufsen avant 32 dvd - so you have to treat it with reel tlc - just like a mac..

[Simon]

Originally posted by eddiecatflap:
imho the 17" imac is the best mac ever!

It's a little early for me to judge (I've had it now for 24h), but I think that you could be onto something there...

[Centris650]

Originally posted by zorn:
I ordered a custom config 1 Gig 17" model: (1) 512 MB RAM Chip, Airport, Bluetooth and it's suppost to be shipped by Apple on or before 2/13. Very excited

Zorn, I was reading some back posts and saw that you had gotten the BT upgrade. If you don't mind me asking...Why? I was thinking about getting it but at the moment I don't have the need. I do see me getting a BT phone soon (we will be moving and changing cell services and I plan on getting a phone that is BT) Also, I'm hoping Apple will come out with a wireless keyboard and I want to be ready.

Well, enjoy your iMac.

[rotomas]

Originally posted by Simon:
I GOT IT


Anyway, I managed to boot from the DVD, partition my disk and re-install a fresh Jaguar plus Developer stuff. It's strange. DiskUtility asks you if you want to put OS 9 drivers on your disk when you format it even though the machine can't boot 9. I don't know why. After all the startup disk panel in the system prefs also only lets you chose partitions with OS X on them to boot from... Anyhow, all went fine. Got back my user's homes and data as well as my apps from my external FireWire backup HD. Re-installed fink, Apple X11, Emacs and my HP printer drivers. Everything fine. My machine is back up and running great.

Hi Simon,

I am a newbie switcher, I have my iMac 1 GHz on the way and I can't wait to get my hands on this beautiful machine. I am a little confused about partitioning my disk. I am getting the stock 80 GB hard drive and I was wondering if you had any advice on how to go about doing this or any links that explain how to partition. I've read through this report: hard drive partitioning, but it doesn't really go into how exactely to do it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Agent69]

Centris650:

It's probably not a bad idea to get Bluetooth if you have money to burn. Although MacOS X with Bluetooth does not currently support wireless keyboards and mice, it probably will eventually and I personally think that it would be nice to not have adapters hanging off an iMac.

Also, PDAs and Cellphones are starting to support Bluetooth as well.

[Simon]

Originally posted by rotomas:
I am getting the stock 80 GB hard drive and I was wondering if you had any advice on how to go about doing this or any links that explain how to partition.

The "how" is actually quite simple. You get your new Mac, boot from the system DVD and when it gives you the Installer screen you go to the menu and select open Disk Utility. There you select the partition tab and that's it. Select the number of partitions, set their names and size and let it partition. Afterwards you'll have to re-install Jaguar onto one of the new partitions but that takes only a couple of minutes. It's very simple to do the partitioning.

I think the larger problem is what to partition. There have been many holy battles on this subject. There are those who want system, apps and files all on their own partitions, others who just want a work and a swap partition and even others who want multimedia content (MP3s, movies, etc.) on a dedicated partition. Then there are those that would never partition, etc. You get the idea. Endless debates. But, once you have decided what partitions you want doing it is very simple.