Fabby said:
As stated b4, i am currently running Intel Pentium 4 2.93 Ghz Processor, PCI Express RV370 128mb Video Card, Windows XP Pro, 17" LCD Monitor, 2.1 Speaker System, DVD-RW Super multi Drive, 160 Gb Hdd for web design, using Dreamweaver as software.
IMac 17" Intel Core Duo has been recommended as an equal to my machine. Except for the Dual Core processor, most other specs are similar to my pc. However, i dont understand what the differences are or why they are different. I have tried looking up IMac Core Duo site, but dont understand it. Can any1 help?
If any1 knows of a site to get pricelist as well, i would be most greatful
They are only sort of equal; after Intel decided that the p4-method of increasing clock speed at the cost of having ever longer execution paths (how long it takes for a given operation to get through the chip) and realised that all that branch-prediction was making its chips huge and hot (a bad bad thing), it made a laptop-oriented processor called the Pentium M. The M had maybe 1/2 the clock speed, but was a more powerful chip.
An analogy would be, Honda makes 4 cylinder engines that can rev to 10,000 RPM without a problem. Audi makes a 12 cylinder engine that goes far faster, and accelerates more quickly, but probably never goes about 6,500 RPM. Clockspeed (that number that is in GHz) is the RPM.
Anyway, so after the M did really well, Intel decided to take THAT approach, and apply it to a new line of chips; those are the Core ___ chips.
Along the way, dual core (two processors on one chip) became popular. Intel released the Core Solo, a M-style chip that was newer, faster and a bit more powerful. It also released the Core Duo; basically two of those Solos in one chip.
All this means is that the iMac Core Duo can probably thrash your P4. So they are different.
The iMac has a better video card (I think, what the hell is an RV370? Its no Nvidia or ATI product I've heard of).
If you are asking about hardware differences, there you have it; the iMac is better. It is better for other reasons; it has EFI (target-mode booting, a feature of Macs for quite some time, is a revelation.) which is a replacement for the decades-old BIOS, which your current computer (and all Windows PCs) are still stuck with (because Microsoft won't have EFI support until Vista is released).
Now if you are asking about software availability differences, well first let us look at similarities:
If you must use Dreamweaver, it is available for the Mac (and has been forever). The current version (V8.0?) was released for both around the same time, last year wasn't it?
Microsoft Office is available for the Mac. While it is still a power-pc only release, the rosetta JIT-emulation is fast enough that every review says that other than an extra second on launch, it runs fine (it takes a second for Rosetta to translate the executable from one architecture to the other). A "Universal" Office version should be released in a few months; I'd imagine it will be a free downloaded update to the current version.
If you are asking what the difference is between Win XP and Apple OS X, well...
That is a long answer. The short version is OS X is immune to current viruses (the newspaper stories described a potential weakness for a worm, not a virus, and the user had to execute it to make it work (in other words, you would have to run the worm to have it attack the computer, otherwise OS X is immune to it as well)), is immune to current spyware, crashes less, multitasks better and doesn't suffer from Windows' "bit rot" (the tendency to need to reinstall every 6 months or have strange performance degredations and files abruptly go missing).
If you were asking a question I haven't covered... write without using AOL slang! "b4", "any1", really, are you being charged by the keystroke?
It is astonishing how much clearer your writing will be when you actually use English.
