Scheduled for a Tuesday delivery, I was surprised this morning when my 23" ACD showed up. My mini wont be with me until at least Monday, so this first impressions is based on a few minutes of windows use and my general feelings.
Initially I was speechless. The box is huge, with a giant picture of the display on the front. Then I noticed 'actual size' written next to the aforementioned giant picture. I scratched my head and went back to bed.
A few hours later, with a bit of sleep under my belt, I started unpacking the thing. Wow, Apple has nice packaging. It doesn't stop there though - the plastics, and generally all the materials, used in the adapters, cables, assembly etc all have such a wonderful quality to them. Everything was extremely well packed away with a multitude of sticky plastic protecting all those lovely shiney surfaces.
So, to check for dead pixes, I plonked the thing on my desk next to my three Dell 2001FP LCD monitors. Three because one's hooked up to my old Dell, and two are hooked up to my Precision. Woah do my Dell's feel inadiquate now. Firstly, the real estate you get on the 23" ACD is mindblowing. I think I'd almost rather have just one 23" ACD than both the 20" Dell 2001FP's to be honest. Design wise? I love my Dell monitors and I know a lot of other people do too, but they just looked so cheap side-by-side with the Apple. SO cheap. Before this arrived I almost wondered if I'd done the right thing, given that everybody talks up the 'superior Dell's' that cost less. Oh, believe me, if you've considered an ACD but tightened your financial belt on the face of perceived value then my heart goes out for you right now.
There's only one word that can describe this monitor and it's Beautiful. When my mini arrives it's going to be one hell of a setup - you can see on the attached picture just where the mini is going to sit, hiding the mass of wires.
One minor annouance though - the connector for the power is integrated into the single cable leaving the monitor. Lovely I thought at first. However, most people have the mini on their desk, and the power cable extension out of the main lead simply isn't long enough to reach from the floor to the work surface. I've had to stand my ACD power adapter, which is quite small fortunately, behind the back of the ACD stand. At least it's hidden, but still a bit silly.
Anyway, I'll post more about my first-ever-Apple experiences when the mini arrives - hopefully it's going to make an awesome media hub with EyeTV!
(picture taken on the Sony Ericsson W900i, resized due to forum file size limits)
Initially I was speechless. The box is huge, with a giant picture of the display on the front. Then I noticed 'actual size' written next to the aforementioned giant picture. I scratched my head and went back to bed.
A few hours later, with a bit of sleep under my belt, I started unpacking the thing. Wow, Apple has nice packaging. It doesn't stop there though - the plastics, and generally all the materials, used in the adapters, cables, assembly etc all have such a wonderful quality to them. Everything was extremely well packed away with a multitude of sticky plastic protecting all those lovely shiney surfaces.
So, to check for dead pixes, I plonked the thing on my desk next to my three Dell 2001FP LCD monitors. Three because one's hooked up to my old Dell, and two are hooked up to my Precision. Woah do my Dell's feel inadiquate now. Firstly, the real estate you get on the 23" ACD is mindblowing. I think I'd almost rather have just one 23" ACD than both the 20" Dell 2001FP's to be honest. Design wise? I love my Dell monitors and I know a lot of other people do too, but they just looked so cheap side-by-side with the Apple. SO cheap. Before this arrived I almost wondered if I'd done the right thing, given that everybody talks up the 'superior Dell's' that cost less. Oh, believe me, if you've considered an ACD but tightened your financial belt on the face of perceived value then my heart goes out for you right now.
There's only one word that can describe this monitor and it's Beautiful. When my mini arrives it's going to be one hell of a setup - you can see on the attached picture just where the mini is going to sit, hiding the mass of wires.
One minor annouance though - the connector for the power is integrated into the single cable leaving the monitor. Lovely I thought at first. However, most people have the mini on their desk, and the power cable extension out of the main lead simply isn't long enough to reach from the floor to the work surface. I've had to stand my ACD power adapter, which is quite small fortunately, behind the back of the ACD stand. At least it's hidden, but still a bit silly.
Anyway, I'll post more about my first-ever-Apple experiences when the mini arrives - hopefully it's going to make an awesome media hub with EyeTV!
(picture taken on the Sony Ericsson W900i, resized due to forum file size limits)
