[CaseCom]

(If a review thread already exists, point me to it, but I couldn't find one, and with holiday shopping upon us I thought it would be useful to some)

I've been playing with my iMac G5 for about four days now ... it's a 17-inch 1.8 GHz with SuperDrive, AirPort Extreme card, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, 1 GB of RAM.

Setup: The Setup Assistant that moved my old data from my old iMac G3 (using FireWire target disk mode) worked really well. I highly recommend it if your old Mac has built-in FireWire. Only glitch was that Classic choked on my old OS 9 System Folder, but installing Classic from the Additional Software disk fixed that. Besides, I hardly ever use Classic.

Screen/Video: It looks good. Only gripe is that I start to see a yellowish color shift pretty quickly if I'm not head-on looking at the screen, well within the 120-degree horizontal viewing angle listed by Apple. I'd love to have the better specs of the 20-inch screen, but I really don't need the extra real estate. The 17-inch is just the right size for my workspace. All in all, something I can live with.

I bought the Return of the King videogame with the iMac, and it looked pretty good (although shadows were turned off by default, I noticed). The game was kind of lame, though.

I haven't played many DVDs yet, but I watched some QuickTime LOTR trailers and they looked much better than on my old CRT iMac.

Sound: I was skeptical of the speaker setup in the bottom of the unit, but the speakers really do work well -- although like my old iMac I wouldn't count on it to fill a room with sound. Sitting at the desk, though, I was impressed -- especially after I hooked up my old USB iSub (it still works!).

I know there's been a lot of comment about noisy units, and my iMac is definitely not silent. I don't think it's the hard drive, which is very quiet. Rather it's a faintly audible electric buzz that I can hear only when the rest of the room is quiet. It's there whenever the computer is on -- it may be a fan because it gets slightly louder when there's heavy CPU usage. It doesn't bother me.

Other: I'm glad I got the wireless keyboard/mouse. It's worked without a glitch and I like having fewer wires. I just checked and after four days without switching them off, they both still have a full charge, so that's promising. Do most people leave them on all the time as I have? [edit: not long after I posted this I developed a problem: A loss of Bluetooth, apparently because of a conflict with USB devices. See separate thread.]

I gave iDVD a whirl for the first time last night, burning an old 7-minute iMovie I made a few years ago. Very impressed. The DVD took longer to burn than I was expecting, but it played fine on my DVD player and looked great. The menu themes look great.

If you have an iMac G5, post your review!

[siflippant]

here's one...

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?threadid=230110

[PBG4 User]

I picked up a 20" iMac G5 back in September and so far I'm really digging it.

I replaced the 256MB RAM with 2x1GB RAM that I picked up from newegg.com for $330. The RAM runs in 128 bit goodness which is supposedly better but I haven't done any benchmarking to see if this is the case. There was a greatly noticeable speedup from the 256MB it came with as 256 is barely enough for OS X, never mind running stuff on top of it. With the 2GB my computer hasn't skipped a beat.

The "fan noise" issue. I had a whiny fan, not loud, but at an irritating frequency. Or at least I did, until the 10.3.6 update. It must've spun down the irritating fan because I only hear that sound after playing Quake III: Arena or Diablo II or Nanosaur II. Once the computer cools down a bit this sound again goes away. My iMac is definitely whisper quiet now.

This computer is noticeably faster than my just over a year old 1.25GHz 15" AlBook. I did some test renders in Blender and the iMac is 20-25% faster in rendering times. A render that takes 5 minutes on my PowerBook just right around 4 minutes on the iMac.

Working with Canon .RAW files is faster. Also with 2GB RAM I can work on tons of photos at the same time with no slowdowns.

The screen is excellent, IMO. I have the LCD at <1/2 brightness and it's still almost too bright. I have no complaints about this screen, all the pixels work and the picture quality is (again, IMO) excellent.

I wouldn't want sound to be produced by just the internal speakers alone. They do get a good range of sound, but sound almost "muffled" compared to my Altec Lansing speakers.

I didn't go with wireless mouse/keyboard because 1)I would've had to wait and 2) I don't need more devices pooping out dead batteries every few months. Give me a rechargeable setup, like my iPod or my Canon 300D and I will reconsider.

All in all I'm digging my new iMac. My wife, the computer phobe, likes the new iMac too. She finds it quite easy to use but I find it can sometimes be difficult to get her off the computer now!

[scaught]

does the setup assistant copy over just the apps, prefs, and other stuff that you need or does it replicate your entire directory over to the new machine? im thinking about getting a 20" soon. looking at this 12" screen on my ibook for years makes me feel cramped. i need to be FREE!

[biposto]

Originally posted by scaught:
does the setup assistant copy over just the apps, prefs, and other stuff that you need or does it replicate your entire directory over to the new machine? im thinking about getting a 20" soon. looking at this 12" screen on my ibook for years makes me feel cramped. i need to be FREE!

Get a PM with 30inch screen feeling cramped will be gone for a while.

[supernovamac]

Originally posted by PBG4 User:
I picked up a 20" iMac G5 back in September and so far I'm really digging it.

I replaced the 256MB RAM with 2x1GB RAM that I picked up from newegg.com for $330. The RAM runs in 128 bit goodness which is supposedly better but I haven't done any benchmarking to see if this is the case. There was a greatly noticeable speedup from the 256MB it came with as 256 is barely enough for OS X, never mind running stuff on top of it. With the 2GB my computer hasn't skipped a beat.

The "fan noise" issue. I had a whiny fan, not loud, but at an irritating frequency. Or at least I did, until the 10.3.6 update. It must've spun down the irritating fan because I only hear that sound after playing Quake III: Arena or Diablo II or Nanosaur II. Once the computer cools down a bit this sound again goes away. My iMac is definitely whisper quiet now.

This computer is noticeably faster than my just over a year old 1.25GHz 15" AlBook. I did some test renders in Blender and the iMac is 20-25% faster in rendering times. A render that takes 5 minutes on my PowerBook just right around 4 minutes on the iMac.

Working with Canon .RAW files is faster. Also with 2GB RAM I can work on tons of photos at the same time with no slowdowns.

The screen is excellent, IMO. I have the LCD at <1/2 brightness and it's still almost too bright. I have no complaints about this screen, all the pixels work and the picture quality is (again, IMO) excellent.

I wouldn't want sound to be produced by just the internal speakers alone. They do get a good range of sound, but sound almost "muffled" compared to my Altec Lansing speakers.

I didn't go with wireless mouse/keyboard because 1)I would've had to wait and 2) I don't need more devices pooping out dead batteries every few months. Give me a rechargeable setup, like my iPod or my Canon 300D and I will reconsider.

All in all I'm digging my new iMac. My wife, the computer phobe, likes the new iMac too. She finds it quite easy to use but I find it can sometimes be difficult to get her off the computer now!

I tried a Imac 1.8 Ghz with 256 mb ram. And used itunes to convert to AAC High quality from a cd. And it worked at 5,6x. And my ibook 500 Mhz does it at 3.0x. Wow 2,6x difference is not much. But can you tell me if it is faster when you have 2Gb ram?

[nJm]

I would have thought drive speeds would be more important with importing to iTunes?

I'm just about to head out the door to get a 1.6 iMac. I'll let you know if it does it any faster than my 1Ghz iBook.

[nJm]

Well I've got it! A base model iMac G5. Will definately get some ram for it this week. Other than that, noticed two things. The fans are noisy, and little things like emptying the trash makes them go faster/louder. Also the screen has some dark blotches about 1cm high running along the bottom of the screen. Uneven backlighting I guess?

[CaseCom]

Originally posted by nJm:
I would have thought drive speeds would be more important with importing to iTunes?

It's mostly the processor. My PowerBook (867 MHz G4, 4200 rpm) imports faster than my iMac DV (400 MHz G3, 7200 rpm drive) did. I don't think RAM would make much of a difference either.

[nJm]

Sorry, I was thinking about CD-ROM drive speeds.

[CaseCom]

Originally posted by scaught:
does the setup assistant copy over just the apps, prefs, and other stuff that you need or does it replicate your entire directory over to the new machine? im thinking about getting a 20" soon. looking at this 12" screen on my ibook for years makes me feel cramped. i need to be FREE!

All of it, although it is customizable: You can choose to transfer your files and folders but not your apps, or vice versa. I did the whole thing, and it worked great. The only thing it loused up was my Cisco VPN client; I'll have to reinstall that.

I like having the widescreen, although it's not quite big enough to have two full-size windows open side by side; the 20-inch would be better for that. DVDs look great though.