[moowriece]

I am in a dilemma right now: I have to get a new mac (using it for DV editing and DVD burning) but have to choose between an iMac 17" or a PowerMac 1Ghz or dual 1.25 GHZ.

I am worried about the 970 introduction later this year, that will make the current PowerMacs obsolete. Isn't it therefore wiser to buy a 17" iMac now (reasonable priced) and later sell it to buy a 970 PowerMac or just go ahead and buy a PowerMac right now(1 Ghz or 1.25 Ghz, which has the best price/performance ratio?) and a LCD TFT monitor (costing some serious money).

It's still a lot of money, and I would like to spend it wisely and not spend too much.

Does anyone have some advice for me?

[BrunoBruin]

I was going to point out that the whole 970 Power Mac thing is still just a RUMOR, but you know that already, right?

Between the current 1GHz tower and the iMac, I'd be really tempted to go for the iMac. Compact, quiet, and the price/feature set is good. The tower with SuperDrive and a 17-inch display is going to run you about $700 more, but gives you expandability options down the road. The L3 cache in the tower helps, but the system bus and drive speed is the same.

The 17-inch display on the iMac gives up vertical real estate to the standalone display, but for video editing I think I'd want more width anyway, for timelines and such, so the iMac display might work well.

The dual-1.25GHz tower is in a whole 'nother class, as far as I'm concerned. But then you're also talking about almost twice as much money as the iMac.

[zorn]

I myself just had this issue and went with the iMac. I am happy with the decision since this is a Mac for my bedroom (less noise, less deskspace). I do mainly web development stuff on it (occatioally video/cocoa) and it holds up ver well comparativly to my dual gig tower at work.

If you are using this machine for video & dvd stuff every day you have to go for a dual tower .. the video render and encoding time will be so much faster. If it's just casual work, the iMac will work fine.

the 970 is a rumor and even if it does come out it will be a revA product .. I alsways steer clear of revA if at all possible.

my iMac rocks .. i love her!

[Kenneth]

I faced that situation right after the updated iMac introduced. I went to the dealer (not AppleStore) last weekend and saw those new 17" iMac again. This time I was somewhat disappointed by the widescreen. Personally, I do love widescreen. In fact, that 1440 x 900 just doesn't give me a woo waa factor anymore. I walked out the store with the dual 1.25Ghz PowerMac and the "real" 17" studio display.

I have never owned a PowerMac in my life until now.. my previous Macs are Performa, iMac CRT, iBook, and Titanium. The tower is kind of heavy and huge to me. The heat sink along is big and heavy already. Meanwhile, I love the extra HD and RAM slots for me. This is my story.

[derekn]

moowriece if you're going to be doing heavy duty DV editing, a PowerMac may be your best option. You can replace the iMacs hard drive with a bigger one or use external FW enclosures but the PowerMacs have room for up to 4 hard drives internally. They're a breeze to install but the iMacs requires taking out the motherboard and optical drive. The iMac is nice looking but in terms of expansion, PowerMac is the way to go.

[superfula]

I recently was deciding between an imac or powermac. In the end, the future uprade possibilities easily wins over the imac. I've only had my pmac for about a month, and I've already expanded way past the possibilites the imac had.

You get more ram, more hd, another optical drive, possible sound card, firewire/usb card, and further in the future, a cpu upgrade.

The 970 WILL NOT come out this year. IBM isnt even start the fab process until August, and it will take a few months just to get any processors out the door. Jan 2004 at the absolute earliest. But when those come out, who knows if Apple will use them, or if they will only go in the xserves first or what. I'd expect to see at least 2 more G4 revisions out of the pmac line. Motorola has a couple more chipset releases in their lineup.

PMac is the way to go here. No matter what app you are using, OSX will take major use of the dual processors. They are exponentially better than one processor.

[GlobalNomad]

Originally posted by zorn:
my iMac rocks .. i love her! [/B]

I hope you are just joking. Trys to picture Zorn 'riding' his iMac.


Oh NOOOO now I have this horrible image stuck in my head! (Almost as bad as cowboyneal trying to catch a bus pulling away, "run Scotty run!")

[Orion27]

Went to the Apple store in Charlotte. I wasintent on buyint the iMac for the same reasons you speak of. Walked in the store and went immediately to the G4 Towers just to look. The new 20" cinema was impressive but I was looking for the iMac. Went over to the iMacs, and while nice, ikept being drawn over to the 20"cinema. Back over to the iMacs, the 17" screen was beginning to look a little small. I do some web page design, and I began to think a little more real estate might be nice. The 1.25 box was about the same as an iMac. The 20"
cinema would last a few box upgrades. I stayed 4hrs in the apple store before finally walking out with the tower and 20"display. it was a hard decision for me to justify the extra cash, but I don't regret it for a minute. And the two extra USB ports on the back of the display was a surprise when I got it home. How did I ever get all that work done on my iMac?

[danengel]

I faced the same question recently, now I got the Dual 1.25 on my desk. Main reasons were:

- it's expandable

- it's faster

- better graphics card

- I can reuse the monitor later