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so how are the new iMacs?

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Ambrose Chapel

Ambrose Chapel

macrumors 65816
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according to the 'official waiting for my iMac to ship' thread, it looks like people are slowly but surely getting theirs delivered. i'm very tempted to upgrade my 3 year old TiBook to a new 20" iMac, and am very interested in hearing the reactions of anyone who's gotten a Rev B and had a chance to take it for spin. how's the performance, in general and with Tiger? fan noise? did you add RAM, or upgrade to the 400GB drive? do tell...

🙂
 
Well this is my first Mac so I don't have anything to compare it to, but I LOVE it! The fan is not loud at all. You hear it but it is not really noticeable. The only time I hear it is when I am trying to hear it. Until I started writing this I didn't even notice the fan noise. I have not really done anything too intense. I did download and play with the NIN Garage Band file "The Hand that Feeds" and it works very well and that was a 70MB file! I have 512MB RAM and the auto setting.

Oh and the GPU is excellent for me! My PC had a NVIDIA GeForce MX 400 64MB and got around 30FPF in this roller coaster simulator I play. On my iMac I am getting over 80 consistently.

I adore it! 😀
 
VERY pleased with mine! Upgraded from a Mac Mini but I've only been a Mac owner for a few months now.

It is very quiet (compared to a PC), but not silent like the mini. Performance with Tiger is excellent...everything loads super quick and I'm rarely waiting for anything to happen - even with multiple users logged in using fast user switching.

The screen is lovely too, much better viewing angle than the RevAs from the ones I'd briefly used in the past.

..I bought the stock configuration and added my own 2Gb of RAM as it was about 1/3 the cost of buying it from Apple - kept the std 250Gb as I already had an external 250Gb FW drive.

Adam
 
thanks for the info. please keep em coming people!

monty77 said:
..I bought the stock configuration and added my own 2Gb of RAM as it was about 1/3 the cost of buying it from Apple - kept the std 250Gb as I already had an external 250Gb FW drive.

Adam
Click to expand...

where did you get RAM from? crucial?
 
Totally happy with my new 20" iMac. All standard except the wireless keyboard and mouse. This computer is awesome to say the least. I have been waiting since November to buy this computer. It was worth the wait.

Fan noise is very low. Not noticeable unless I try to hear it. Downloaded temp monitor and CPU is at ~ 110 F.

Still have lots to do!
 
all good with my 17. also quiet...do not hear it at all, as i have a noiser firewire hd that it is sitting on. handles everything i have thrown at it so far...and oh, to now be able to use the QT HD gallery...smooth as silk...awesome.

i will be maxing out the ram and putting in the dual superdrive with the next paycheck (standard 17 incher).

i had always poo-pooed the imacs as too consumer level. as noted in other threads, these revisions are giving the low end power mac a run for its money. no regrets at all!

sedge
 
I'll let you know in a few days . . . mine shipped today and I am so excited and anxious to receive it!! I got a lot of upgrades, including a 1GB stick from Crucial, plus iSight, .Mac, Final Cut Express HD, Apple Care, Airport Express, and a few others. 20-inches of sweet iMac coming to me soon!! 😀 😀
 
😀 Absolutely love my 17" 2.0. This is my first mac in over a decade, and I'm so glad I've switched back! The first one they sent had a bum hard drive, but I called Support and they overnighted me a new machine. As I said elsewhere, great folks over there (one guy not so much, but the other four were wonderful!)

I've used the original iMacs, complete with the hockey puck and OS 9 at an old job, and there is absolutely no comparison. This machine is a thing of beauty - a screaming fast, powerhouse of beauty. Definitely not my last Mac - there will be more. My mom asked me what I liked about it. I said, "Well, for starters, it works." (Which is more than I can say for XP)

I guess I'm sorta biased on the fan volume issue. I can barely hear myself think over the fans that are blasting on the overclocked PC (game machine), so the iMac appears blissfully silent. At night, we shut the PC down so we can sleep and the iMac just sits here silently sleeping and blinking. I'm still not sure how well the "Ambient Light Sensor" works. I've been meaning to wake up in the middle of the night to see if it really changes anything if it's pitch black, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. And there have been times when something has kicked on (I believe during the two times I shut it down or was updating or something) when it sounded like a Harrier jet taking off, but that didn't last long and stopped once it booted into the OS. 🙂
 
Upgraded from a Rev A to a Rev B iMac G5

So, went over to the Regent store today to pick up my rev B iMac to replace my rev A iMac G5, i bought a 10% Regent store discount card on Ebay for £12 so it was well worth the extra specs for just an extra £80 (£1080 with the discount).
Anyways, after eventually lugging the big bastad home all the way through from London to the lovely Weybridge suburbs i am well pleased. Haven't heard the slight buzzing that i heard before on my Rev A, it is ever so slightly quieter (even nicer), i have 0 dead pixels - i love it.

Performance wise: It is that bit faster faster than my old rev A (not really that much faster) and the bigger Hd is nice - also the graphics card upgrade (finally) has had a noticeable improvement on performance. I can play H.264 720p material flawlessly at 24fps and i can now play 1080p at near 23-24fps, before i couldn't play 1080p beyond 13/14fps. Games also play smoother, although i rarely play games.
i have noticed a few small outside changes over the Rev A's:
-I am sure the Apple in the front has gotten smaller as has the the iMac writing on the back
-Everything is finished off nicely, the power cable actually fits perfectly in the back unlike before when it would never go in all the way and a lot of small things like that.

-Also it seems as if they have improved venting within the iMac, before my rev A cpu ran at over 70 celsius and the hard drive often was more than 55 delsius. My rev B hd now runs below 50 celsius and the cpu rarely goes above 60 degress. Whether this is a matter of improved venting or perhaps more efficient G5's which are emitting less heat who knows - Powerbook G5 anyone 😉?
 
Ambrose Chapel said:
according to the 'official waiting for my iMac to ship' thread, it looks like people are slowly but surely getting theirs delivered. i'm very tempted to upgrade my 3 year old TiBook to a new 20" iMac, and am very interested in hearing the reactions of anyone who's gotten a Rev B and had a chance to take it for spin. how's the performance, in general and with Tiger? fan noise? did you add RAM, or upgrade to the 400GB drive? do tell...

🙂
Click to expand...
I am typing this on my old TiBook G4 DVI 800 while my wife is watching 'Return Of The King' on her brand new iMac G5 (2.0, 20", 400Gb, 1Gb ram + Applecare) - I am very jealous. I'm thinking of selling her the benefits of portability over power in the near future 😉

IMHO it is a fantastic machine, you will notice the difference immediately in performance - it has just shown me (in under a day) how much quicker i would get my work done if i didn't have to spend my time staring at beachballs!

No appreciable fan noise 😀

Tiger is much more responsive on the G5 (as you would expect)....and you can see the ripple effect!...and play modern games!!....and get a 400Gb HD 😛

Buy it you won't regret it, oh and go for the 20" if you can afford it - gorgeous display.
 
i just added a stock 17/1.8 iMac G5 to my Rev A 12 AlBook. All I can say is...it's the best Mac I've ever used in 15 years, except perhaps the dual 2.5 I use at school...

silent as hell

ambient light sensor is REAL cool, it is nice and dim when i sleep

fast fast fast..but of course im comparing to an 867 G4

lcd viewing angle is great, i wouldnt even want the 20 inch over the 17. i picked the 1.8Ghz to put more RAM in...

whatever, i could go on. it is sweet as fxck.
 
PBGPowerbook said:
i just added a stock 17/1.8 iMac G5 to my Rev A 12 AlBook. All I can say is...it's the best Mac I've ever used in 15 years, except perhaps the dual 2.5 I use at school...

silent as hell

ambient light sensor is REAL cool, it is nice and dim when i sleep

fast fast fast..but of course im comparing to an 867 G4

lcd viewing angle is great, i wouldnt even want the 20 inch over the 17. i picked the 1.8Ghz to put more RAM in...

whatever, i could go on. it is sweet as fxck.
Click to expand...

I second that, the ambient sensing light thingy is a big improvement, i have my iMac in my room and it was so bright sometimes it kept me up. Now it automatically adjust instantly so a very dim lighting up
 
Fredstar said:
So, went over to the Regent store today to pick up my rev B iMac to replace my rev A iMac G5, i bought a 10% Regent store discount card on Ebay for £12 so it was well worth the extra specs for just an extra £80 (£1080 with the discount).
Anyways, after eventually lugging the big bastad home all the way through from London to the lovely Weybridge suburbs i am well pleased. Haven't heard the slight buzzing that i heard before on my Rev A, it is ever so slightly quieter (even nicer), i have 0 dead pixels - i love it.
Click to expand...

damn you fred, what did you do with your old imac? that's not fair 😛

and what is this ambient light sensor you people speak of?

grrr, my IMAC IS SOOO LOUD AND NOISY. 🙁

/god damnit, i used caps 😱
 
asif786 said:
damn you fred, what did you do with your old imac? that's not fair 😛

and what is this ambient light sensor you people speak of?

grrr, my IMAC IS SOOO LOUD AND NOISY. 🙁

/god damnit, i used caps 😱
Click to expand...

Sold it for £1000 and bought le new one for £1080 with 10% discount thingy from the Store 😀, well worth it i think. My new iMac is so damn quiet, it is brill. And this ambient censor thingy is built in and kinda monitors the brightness off the room and adjusts the brightness of the light on the bottom right of the iMac (that flashes when it sleeps). So like when it is dark at night it is just light enough to see, and when in the morning it brightens to compensate for the extra light.
In all areas the Rev B has been an improbement, just better thought out 🙂
 
I've had my 20" for 10 days now. I was a bit worried if it would be quick enough to use for work but i've been doing hi-res photoshop etc and it just breezes through anything i throw at it.

I opted for the base model and added 500mb RAM from crucial.com. No problem to install and it saved me £55 plus about 5 days build time.

The 9600 purrs like a pussycat

10.4 runs just fine

Only problem; sometimes i have to restrain myself from licking the screen 😀 😀 😀
 
While i have found the fans to be even quieter, there is still a buzzing i can hear (slightly when at normal viewing distance but there none the less)- mainly on the bottom right of the screen. It was very similar to my Rev A iMac, so i just dunno.
Could it be my power supply or is it a general issue with the adapter box being built into the monitor instead of outside like the Mini?
Right now my iMac shares a extended 3 slot extended power cable with my Altec Lansings (that also make a audible buzz) and my MX1000 mouse recharger/base stations. Could it be a lack of power to each component? Would a better Powersupply splitter cable be beneficial?
 
Mine's great.

Fan noise is not really noticable.

Ambient light sensor works brilliantly, in the middle of the night chuck your light on, you'll see it brighten up.

Love mine, huge and big and fast, just make sure you set the processor performance to highest.

Bluetooth is great too.
 
thanks for the replies! i played with it at my apple store a little more and i really like it. i guess my only question is whether to upgrade to the 400 GB drive or not...
 
Ambrose Chapel said:
thanks for the replies! i played with it at my apple store a little more and i really like it. i guess my only question is whether to upgrade to the 400 GB drive or not...
Click to expand...

well if you have the cash i would get it, u can never complain if you have too much space. My 160Gb is nearly full...actually that reminds me need to do some spring cleaning.. 🙄
 
Ambrose Chapel said:
thanks for the replies! i played with it at my apple store a little more and i really like it. i guess my only question is whether to upgrade to the 400 GB drive or not...
Click to expand...

If I were buying a new iMac rev. B, which I plan on doing with the next revision (rev. C so i can save up the 2 grand for the 20") I would stick with the 250 gig. I bought a USB 2.0 160 gig external from walmart (was in a bind when i got my copy of Tiger and wanted to do a clean install but keep my old stuff just in case) for my current rev. C AlBook for like 160 with tax. That would make the HD space 410 GB and with an education discount still 20 bucks cheaper... but that's just me, what do you guys think?
 
Ambrose Chapel said:
thanks for the replies! i played with it at my apple store a little more and i really like it. i guess my only question is whether to upgrade to the 400 GB drive or not...
Click to expand...

Well you never get too much, if you have the money and want to spend it....but if you have money I would rather stick with the stock HDD and buy an External one as well...for backup etc. 🙄 😉
 
My baby's just four hours old now. She's a pretty much stock 1.8GHz 17 inch combo with a 250GB HD and the 512MB stick of RAM replaced with a full 1GB. 😀

I love her very much.

I chose to spend money on RAM and HD over screen size and a superdrive. No regrets here.
 
I recommend anyone getting an iMac wack 2 badboy 1Gb's in there, not only do u get the 128 bit memory bollucks but u also get no page outs and nothing ever stalls, i have forgotten what the ol Spinning beach ball thingy looks like. Besides they are so cheap now, i got my memory for £150 from Crucial which was the same price as getting 2 X 512 in November
 
I am returning mine!
I don't like it that much, 2 stuck pixels and annoying fan noise made me not want to keep it. The performance is great though, Apples HD galleries, ripping DVDs and stuff like Photoshop were no problem for this beast. And I really like Tiger, so I guess I will be happy with the 2x2 GHz PM and the 20" Cinema Display I will get instead. This one just doesn't feel right. It was worth a try but unfortunately it didn't turn out so good. Maybe I just had bad luck, I tend to have that when I buy computers. However, I actually don't think it looks all that good.
 
Rev B

Just got my iMac Rev B 2.0 20" yesterday. Everything is running smoothly EXCEPT for a problematic Superdrive. Very erratic. Would read some DVDs but refuses to eject the discs. Will try to get it exchanged for another iMac today 😡
 
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