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Core i7-Based 27" iMac Benchmarks Show Significant Improvements

neiltc13 said:
Nonsense! I just built a computer for a friend for £600. It has a Core i5 2.6GHz, 1GB ATi 5770 graphics card, 4GB RAM and a 500GB hard drive. Let's assume a decent monitor is another £200 on top (he had one already).

For the same level of performance from Apple, it costs me £1600. You end up paying double the price and get no better performance, an inability to upgrade, a significantly worse graphics card and in my opinion a worse operating system.

Remind me again why these systems are "very good value"?
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chedda said:
Your system has a registry and DLL ?
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How "worse" can one get?
 
neiltc13 said:
Nonsense! I just built a computer for a friend for £600. It has a Core i5 2.6GHz, 1GB ATi 5770 graphics card, 4GB RAM and a 500GB hard drive. Let's assume a decent monitor is another £200 on top (he had one already).

For the same level of performance from Apple, it costs me £1600. You end up paying double the price and get no better performance, an inability to upgrade, a significantly worse graphics card and in my opinion a worse operating system.

Remind me again why these systems are "very good value"?
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Someone thinking something is a good value is not nonsense. You should try having better manners next time.

And yes, we all know you can build a PC for less money. welcome to 1997. Try the wine (or in your case whine): it's delicious.

Value is all relative; I don't have to spec another Mac Pro for our marketing department now, as an i7 27" with FCP and CS will run just perfectly, and I can have plenty of coin left in the budget for another monitor. Does your system run FCP, supported by Apple with a warranty?
 
In the long run, the benefits of the i7 will become more clear.

These were the first impressions I was wanting to read about before I placed the order for mine, which I did this morning, eta Dec 4th.

It replaces my G5 iMac from more than 5 years ago, which is a long time for a PowerPC. I plan to keep the new one for as long, so it makes sense get a chip that programmers are going to be writing for in the future.

No, I'm not a gamer, it makes more sense to get a console for that kind of stuff.
 
Details Please?

greatcaffeine said:
My Core i7 iMac shows significant signs of DOA... now I'll probably have to wait another month to get a replacement. :mad:
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Is it DOA or not? What signs specifically?

Please provide details - Genius Bar, Apple Care, what are you doing about it?

Your statement is equivocal - A nostrum of the PC line.
 
Not sure how OS X is "worse" than Linux. I'm quite sure he meant Windows.
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It doesn't have penguins. It isn't free. It doesn't support as much hardware.

Also, you smell.


Is it DOA or not? What signs specifically?

Please provide details - Genius Bar, Apple Care, what are you doing about it?

Your statement is equivocal - A nostrum of the PC line.
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Snow leopard probably ate his user files, causing confusion.
 
neiltc13 said:
It took me about four hours to put together and was something which I really enjoyed doing. VAT is included in the price I quoted, as was a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium (£30 as he's a student).



But if it wasn't in the iMac, would anyone buy it? Who here really thinks that they need or can justify investing in a monitor of that size, especially when it's locked into a system which cannot be upgraded and will need to be replaced entirely at the end of its life?



I don't understand why everyone's so eager to buy an "all in one". He has plenty of space where he lives, and a little box under the desk isn't going to affect how he works or uses the computer at all. In fact, it's relieving to know that in a year or two when the graphics card is falling behind he can just swap it out for another one.

As for Apple "service and support", that's laughable. Every time I've tried to get them to do anything for me it has been a struggle. I either have to take the entire system to a store 100 miles away or I have to call up a customer care centre located somewhere in Asia (sorry, I don't know the specific location) and try to explain my issues to them. I'd imagine that would be particularly frustrating if a nonessential component was to fail. Can you imagine sending the entire system away just because an optical or hard drive failed?

He's not a video editor, so there really is no reason for him to run OS X. I've used the two extensively over the past few months and in terms of reliability and stability, Windows 7 is easily better than Snow Leopard. It has now been a long time since there was a valid reason for spending double the amount on a system just to get the other OS.
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:p - who would want a 27" beyond HD 16:9 monitor like the iMac? I am going to guess Apple did their homework on that one.

Apple did an amazing job with this new iMac lineup. You cannot buy the equivalent monitor for the cost of this all-in-one system - how did they do that? Then add i5 & i7, 1 TB or 2TB, expand out to 16 usable RAM. It seems like a week ago drives maxed out at 500 MB, RAM maxed out at 3Gb, and 1080P was a $10,000 proposition. I do not recall such a rapid evolution in boxes like 2009.
 
maxfan1 said:
Not all pcs run windows you know. Maybe he runs Linux
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fairplay and good call i welcome the olive branch linux is most welcome. I was insinuating 7 and Vista and the stable xp from 2001

when someone spouts "nonsense" i demand their OS otherwise fail with a capital L. Come on vista 32 bit sees 3 gb ram why boast about 4 ?

"wintard deep sea trolling fishermen of the year"

"bring out yer dead"
 
DMann said:
Core i7 + ATI 5700 = instant purchase here.
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Me too. I already have a committed buyer for my 24" with the 4850, but why would I want to go to 27" with the same 4850 I have now?

Update the GPU, Apple, and you have another sale.
 
Gasu E. said:
£600! Ha! I happen to own my own machine shop, silicon wafer factory, chip foundry, iron mine, steel mill, circuit board fab and a few other manufacturing facilities. I built my own wafers, chips, boards, cases, did all the assembly myself, and supplied most of the raw materials. Then I wrote the OS. The only only out-of-pocket expense was $3.27 for a plastic bucket to collect the beach sand to make the silicon wafers.
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Boy did you get ripped off on the bucket. Should have bought it from the dollar store:D
 
LagunaSol said:
Me too. I already have a committed buyer for my 24" with the 4850, but why would I want to go to 27" with the same 4850 I have now?

Update the GPU, Apple, and you have another sale.
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Mobility HD 5000 is still on track for Q1 2010.

I lived without a personal Mac for 5 months so I could get my MacBook Late 2007. I can't see a reason to replace it since Apple hasn't made a product worthy of my money since then.
 
PenguinPower said:
You obviously JUST don't understand it.
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My MacBook hasn't stopped working. I must blame Apple for that. :rolleyes:

Otherwise the new products are barely an improvement over what I already own. If I'm going to get real computing power I can get it for much less on my desktop. Apple is very competitive in the 13.3" notebook market but lacking elsewhere unless you want to make sacrifices that I'm not willing to make.
 
neiltc13 said:
This is a consumer machine - the 16:9 aspect ratio of the display leaves us with little doubt that it is designed for viewing content rather than creating it.
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So professionals can't use a 16:9 monitor? That's news to most professionals.

If you notice my join date, it's around the time when there really was a benefit to buying a Mac. In 2005/2006 OS X was massively better than Windows and the main reason for my "switching" (originally to an iMac, no less!) was because I couldn't bear the problems which Windows had.
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Macs were the best when you bought a Mac. Now that you're using Windows 7, Windows 7 is the best. I guess whatever you're into at the moment must be the best.

That was four years ago and times have really changed. You only have to use both operating systems to realise that Windows 7 now has the upper hand. I've been using the RC (and now the full version) since release and I was skeptical at first. However, I continue to be amazed by just how much of a turnaround this is for the series. Since installing it all those months ago I have had a single application crash - Street Fighter IV. Since then I haven't had any problems at all.
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I use both operating systems and I couldn't disagree more. Windows 7 is noticeably slower than Snow Leopard and the UI is still horrendous, but now with gratuitous, blurry semi-transparency all over the place. The control panel is still a mess, the start menu has become a mess and the "shake the window" gesture and auto tiling stuff are lame attempts at UI innovation. It has nothing that compares to Expose, Spotlight or Spaces and it still uses a crappy, fragment-happy file system (NTFS).

It now comes with almost no useful applications. Out of the box, about the only thing you can do with Win 7 is browse the internet. On a Mac, you can manage and edit your digital photos, make movies, burn DVDs, compose and record original music, read your email (!), use video chat and screen sharing with no configuration, manage your calendar and contacts, use the Mac as a remote controlled media center with Front Row, backup your system effortlessly and write applications with a full, free development stack.

I could go on and on about ease of use, hardware integration and so on. My point is that you're just voicing your personal opinion. You haven't discovered some kind of truth that applies to other people.

This is a stark contrast to my experience since installing Snow Leopard. Applications crash on me every single day and I have had to endure a "kernel panic" no less than five times, all when doing different things.
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Obviously you have a serious (maybe hardware-related) problem with your Mac, because that directly contradicts most people's experience with Snow Leopard. What did Apple say about it when you called them?

I reiterate - there was a time when I believed that there was an argument for spending a significant amount of extra money on a Mac, but I don't think anyone can really think that this is the case today, especially when we are talking about paying double for a less powerful system.
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Here we go again with the "significant amount of extra money" myth. Yeah, if you don't value a high quality monitor, built in bluetooth and WiFi, superior industrial design, a high quality web cam, the iLife suite or any of the other software that comes with OS X, then, sure, you're just paying "extra" money. If, on the other hand, you do value that stuff, then the Mac represents a better value than any wintel box.

I think you're making the difference between us quite clear here LTD. You seem to enjoy reading surveys and trust everything you read in the press. That's not how I make buying decisions - I use my own experience when buying systems for myself or helping friends.
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Stop pretending that you have some kind of superior reasoning skills. You're just another guy with an opinion who feels the inexplicable need to get other people to agree with it. Enjoy your Windows 7 but please leave the proselytizing to Microsoft's marketing department.
 
NSMonkey said:
Stop pretending that you have some kind of superior reasoning skills. You're just another guy with an opinion who feels the inexplicable need to get other people to agree with it. Enjoy your Windows 7 but please leave the proselytizing to Microsoft's marketing department.
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NSMonkey Slam! love it.
 
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