[ixus_123]

Hello,

I'm thinking of buying a 24 inch imac and was wondering the collective wisdom here could answer some questions to help me make my decision?

I own 5 computers:
a G3 iBook that was acting as a webserver
a 1Ghz mini-itx that is the new webserver
a PIII / 128mb RAM breakbox
AMD Desktop PC for PVR tasks and main workhorse
a macbook 2Ghz / 2.5GB RAM / 200GB

That's far too many to have. Since buying the macbook, I mainly use that. However, I'd like to consolidate the rest. I was going to build a PC but this added up to almost the cost of an imac. I figured I'd rather pay the little bit extra and be able to run aperture and other mac apps. The plan is to have the mac running the webserver as a virtual machine and running 24/7 acting as a PVR with eyetv.

So, in no order, can anyone answer the following:

1. How hard is it to swap the hard disk? I can't find a take apart guide anywhere. Mean time to failure on SATA disks is a bit rubbish and if the internal doesn't fail in the first month then I can't really see it lasting more than 18 months / 2 years. Not a big deal for me - as long as I can replace it myself.

2. I'm not familiar with ATI graphics, having always used nvidia thanks to them providing linux drivers. What's the equivalent nvidia to this and will this card be happy running pro apps like aperture and the odd game. Only playing WOW now but a FPS might be nice at some point

3. is there any way to share an account between macs? I guess that's more software than imac specific but working across a desktop and macbook some auto-syncing would be nice.

4. What are noise levels like at idle and 100% CPU. I plan for this to live in the bedroom and sometimes it will be at 100% cpu for 8+ hours. Hopefully not as loud as the macbook when under load so I can get some sleep

[mike868y]

@ question #3: Not sure but I believe this is possible with .mac?

[ghporter]

#4-in an otherwise completely silent room, my 20" aluminum iMac is barely audible. I've never gotten it up to anywhere near 100% CPU, but I don't run stuff like Aperture or games...

[mduell]

Originally Posted by ixus_123 

1. How hard is it to swap the hard disk? I can't find a take apart guide anywhere. Mean time to failure on SATA disks is a bit rubbish and if the internal doesn't fail in the first month then I can't really see it lasting more than 18 months / 2 years. Not a big deal for me - as long as I can replace it myself.

ifixit has the guide to take it apart. 3.5" SATA drives have MBTFs in the ~100 year range.

Originally Posted by ixus_123 

2. I'm not familiar with ATI graphics, having always used nvidia thanks to them providing linux drivers. What's the equivalent nvidia to this and will this card be happy running pro apps like aperture and the odd game. Only playing WOW now but a FPS might be nice at some point

The equivlaent nVidia is something in the 8600M range, maybe the G or GS models. Yes it will run the pro apps, although it won't be terribly speedy for Aperture/Motion.

[ixus_123]

Thanks for all the replies guys :-)

I couldn't find a take apart guide for intel imac anywhere in ifixit - do you have a specific link?

I did find this for the old white intel imacs
http://home.comcast.net/~woojo/DFFA5...sassembly.html

Looks straight forward enough. Should be able to get a 1TB disk in there

As for failure rates - for domestic use, I tend to recycle disks after 4-5 years. I work in a data center so we get to see many disks fail be they SAS, SATA, SCSI or even IDE. If it doesn't break in a month it's probably going to last years.

I went to the apple store today and fell in love with the 24" imac. As soon as I get paid I'm going to get one. Seeing my photos at that high a resolution was excellent - I think I can handle the beachball in aperture for a bit.

As for syning macs - I haven't tried it yet (as I need another mac) but iFolder from Novell looks like exactly what I'm after.
FAQ - iFolder

[ghporter]

Something that must be pointed out at this point is that Apple considers NOTHING except the RAM to be user accessible in an aluminum iMac, so opening it up at all will void your warranty. Just sayin'...

[mduell]

Huh, ifixit doesn't have iMac guides.

[ghporter]

I saw 'em too, so we're not all hallucinating about this. And someone posted a link to them, or at least some of the instructions. Now if I could just remember anything else about those posts...

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by ixus_123 

3. is there any way to share an account between macs? I guess that's more software than imac specific but working across a desktop and macbook some auto-syncing would be nice.

I don't know of any easy way to do this.

Even .Mac syncing will only sync bookmarks and Safari prefs, address book and Mail prefs, but that's it.

For bookmarks syncing across my Macs, I use BookIt.

Address Book syncing can be done via a Yahoo account in Leopard.

-t