iMac G5 Survey

[mikus]

My iMac G5

Received my long (2 months after I paid money... rrr) iMac G5 20" with 256 Mb RAM @ 18.01.2005.
Now I'm very happy with them . Added a 2 x 512 Mb additional memory from crucial (great service - in 25 hours my RAM from UK traveled to my home in Riga, Latvia) and will upgrade to paired 2x512 next month...
So... my impressions:

1. All was OK as out_of_box, but I going further and calibrated mu monitor using GretagMacbeth’s Eye-One (www.i1color.com) color management system (software+hardware). Now I have really good and true color on my IMac G5. The only difficulty in this process was the monitor dimming (after a relatively short time).... i can't discover, how I can disable this. hmm.. feature (?)... none of energy/screen savers prefs let me do such a thing... (ok, it's my first LCD - forgive me ).
->Plz. See P.S. for a changing this setting via terminal.

2. Sound. The built-in speakeers are like ok for every_day work needs.. but, if you wanna immerse in Hi-quality movie or audio - go for external system or headphones.

3. Fan. Thanks god, all is as it should be according Apple's claim - my iMac is running realy quiet. The sound level is acceptable also by "high" performance settings by processsing & HD - intensive work. A little scarry "airplane" sound you can only enjoy in single-user mode or by CD - boot - in this cases, the cooler management system is disabled and the Fans are running their full speed regardless of intensivity of work.

4. Speed. Very acceptable. Depends of amount of RAM 256 is not enought - yes, you can do office work, surfing, little games and so on, but it's not good to feel, that you have such serious bottleneck in your ssystem.. I think, 2x256 matched_pair should be considered as minimum, still enought for plenty of users, don't playing games or making graphic/video. 768 is OK for budget-meaning people, 2x512 matched paair should be the optimum for most users (without cardinal pricedrops of 1 Gb-Sticks). yes, with 2 Gb matched pair you can achieve from your iMac maximum, but for me and, i think, for many other people - investing additional 650 US $ (yes, in EU we have VAT too..) is very problematic question, considering, that you bought a consumer-class Mac for non_profesional (no one will pay for your RAM..) Home use.
If you wanna Motion, Maya and other hi-end stuff done - go Dual Power G5 - iMac is not for you..

5. Graphic. OK - I don't expected a high-end graphic performance from 64 Mb 5200 Ultra. The graphic is the weakest part of your iMac, if we are speaking about Future-proofness. But, from the other hand, I run Warcraft III with native 1680x1050 @ 32 bits reolution at "middle" settings very good, and with all_settings_to_high it was still playable, until you have alot of acction on your screen.. sorry, no framerates at yet (I will update my post this evening).
Ghost Recon - OK, Call Of Duty - OK. Nanosaur2 - OK.
I don't have very decent games like World of Warcraft, Doom III and so on, but, I think, with moderate/lower settings and enought of RAM.

6. Ease of taking apaart and installing parts. OUTSTANDING It's a breeze - only 3 sself-captive screws, and you have outstanding access to all system-hw_inside. 2 minutes or less. I installed my RAM without any probs..
but, ok - maybe I not the right people for such tests, since i have build alot PC's (installing MB, CPU and all other parts) from zero and changed HD or other HW in classic iMacs (much heavier to handle) without probs...


7. Disappointments. In Generally - none. I had a little probs with Calibration (LCD-dimming, see p. 1) and with keychains (i transfered my Old eMac user-account via Target-Disk-mode. I don't changed username or passw, but was unable to unlock or repair login keychain without tricky workarounds..

So, again - I'm very happy with my iMac 20". Have seen the 17" model too, and the LCD of 20" seems to be better (i can't make side-bby-side comparission). According the info about 20"=previous 20"Cinema and 17"=iMac G4, it could be true.

Mix_

P.S.
And, yes, about the dimming of LCD.. Thus can be managed via pmset command in terminal (you must run it as root), so, "sudo pmset -a dim 5" will set this setting to be 5 minutes. The flag -a is for all powersources.. Details: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/pmset.1.html

 

[TIGERmac]

Please forgive me if this post is a little out of place, but with so many other iMac owners viewing it appears the best venue to ask. (And it could identify any normal situations to expect?)

Does printing documents seems particularly taxing on your iMac? When sending relatively large jobs (mostly text documents) to my Canon iP4000, the fans on my iMac ramp up dramatically. I originally thought it to be one of those conditions where the temperature monitor doesn't respond and the fans go into full speed mode. However, I've felt the back of the iMac and it is much warmer than usual. Does anyone else have this issue?

Also, when importing songs into iTunes from my existing CD collection iTunes reports that it's importing anywhere between 9x and 15x. Is this typical?

Finally, I'm experiencing a clicking noise on the lower left (facing the screen) side of my iMac. I assume it's the hard drive making it's normal noise (as the sound is intermittent). I don't recall hearing the hard drive on my PC as frequently, but when it did make noise it was pretty loud.

Just checking to see if my experiences are shared with other iMac users.

Thanks to all who respond.

 

[Synapple]

Bought my wife a 1.8 17" back in October. Works perfect in every way. Powermacs, ibooks, ipods, etc. all are going to have a few bad 'apples' in the lot, but that is what the warranty is for. Pick the machine you like and go for it, you'll love whatever you get...

Lol.. "a few bad apples" is an euphemism.. ever checked out apple discussion forums on this?
My advice is just to wait for Rev. B.. couldn't hurt, could it?

 

[daveL]

My wife has had a 20" since mid-October. After the first week, the display failed. Apple sent replacement parts overnight, and I installed them. Since then it has been great, with virtually no noise. She loves it (she's a switcher).

 

[sjpetry]

Fans

Another question.

Do the fan in your iMac G5 run at all times (even at idle)?

 

[TIGERmac]

Another question.

Do the fan in your iMac G5 run at all times (even at idle)?

By idle, do you mean no programs open or sleep mode?

With no programs open, the fans spin fairly slowly (little noise). You have to remember, that's a blazing fast G5 in there! 😀

When it's in sleep mode, the computer is absolutely silent. Only the pulsing white light lets you know it's on. I'm still amazed at how quickly it wakes from sleep, and how happy it is to get working again! 😉

My iMac is my friend. 😎

 

[micvog]

I have a 17" iMac 1.8GHz purchased in 10/2004. I was planning to up it to 2GB RAM, but ended up settling for 1GB paired RAM.

* I have the buzzing noise (per various forums, it appears to be a defective sleeve-bearing on the processor fan). Apple has replaced the mid-plane assembly to no avail (presumably a batch of processor fans were defective); like many others I am waiting for a solution from Apple. Currently I just play iTunes constantly. To a previous poster's comment, it is whisper quiet, but a very annoying whisper (I have no problem with the noise from my grandfather's eMac by comparison).

* 20" screen is definitely a better quality screen and worth the money. I bought the model I did only because it was the only model in stock at the Apple Store (shortly after launch) and I had just sold my PowerBook. That being said my 17" has no dead/stuck pixels (yes, I ran a program to check) and looks great when using the iMac; I only notice the quality difference in terms of the viewing angle.

* Internal speakers sound good and fill my office nicely at 2/3rds volume (menu tray icon has only 2 of the 3 arcs)... and I was drawn to the iMac by its design and lack of cables (i.e. external speakers are not an option for me).

* This is probably just a coincidence, but I have a seen a number of people who posted that their iMac G5s "slowed down" over the months. I have that same perception. Apparently doing a clean install solves the issue but it has not been severe enough for me to be worth the effort (I will be pre-ordering Tiger). Perhaps a bug in one of the updates.

I don't mean for this post to seem negative. Overall I love my iMac and would buy it again.

 

[rainman::|:|]

17" iMac G5. No issues so far, had it since Thanksgiving... It's not loud at all during normal operation, when it's cranking on Photoshop or encoding a video or something it can be a bit noisy but I'm not sure that's unusual... Overall I *highly*recommend* this machine, the price/performance is excellent and the industrial design is amazing.

 

[Etrain]

. . . My advice is just to wait for Rev. B.. couldn't hurt, could it?

I will be buying in April or at the latest early May. I am selling my current Gateway machine for $550 so the 20" would only cost me $1250 after EDU discount. That's not bad at all for a new computer. I really hope they update by then though. I can only wait so long though and either way it sounds like I am getting one hell of a nice machine. 😀

Thank you all for your wonderful comments! Please keep them coming as they are very helpful.

 

[panphage]

I had a 20" with the bluetooth bundle and 512MB ram. Absolutely loved it. Great, beautiful, with a huge marvelous screen. Mine was completely silent, it was even remarkably quiet when burning a DVD. And that's saying something coming from me, my previous machine was a cube!

 

[oldpismo]

I've got a 20" 1.8, and had no problems at all (apart from trying to mount it on the wall, but that's another story).

 

[iGary]

I convinced our publisher to get me a 17" 1.8 with SuperDrive in October. Not one problem.

I would, however, reccomend at least a gig of RAM to take full advantage of the processor. 768 doesn't seem to cut it all the time.

Good luck.

 

[Benj]

20"

Fine - no problems at all.

Would recommend to anyone.

 

[Dave00]

I have a 20" iMac and it has a moderate model-airplane like buzzing sound that comes from the CPU fan. I have tolerated it for a few months but it is starting to get annoying. I find myself firing up iTunes just to try and drown the noise. If people are finding their new iMacs don't have a droning noise, then perhaps its time I called Apple. That said, the computer is superb! No dead pixels, and the screen is fantastic. I have only been able to burn DVDs at 2x, but I gathered this is likely due to the lower cost discs I bought.

I've also been wondering about the sound of my 3 month old iMac. It's by no means silent, but also not screaming like some have described. Most of the time it has the background sound of like when you have the air conditioner on low in the car. When I'm doing some heavy photo editing, I get the airplane sound. I'm wondering from any of the others with an iMac - is it truly silent? Or, perhaps a better question, if you were sitting across the room and there were no other sounds, would you know it was on?

Dave

 

[Stpauleboy]

I have had my 20" imac with 1gig ram, for about 4 months now. Haven't had any problems with excessive noise, dead pixels or any other hardware concerns. The built-in speakers are a little tinny sounding, but then I am having to compare that sound against my Logitech Z680 5.1 system that I use with my PM 2.5 DP. I would have to say the Imac G5 speakers are way better than the stock one in the PM G5 though.

 

[wdlove]

My fan is always running and is noisy. It has 1.25Gb of Ram.

Should I call Apple?

Are you running your iMac 24/7? The fan noise could be related to folding. My dual 450 runs 24/7 along with the fan. Just to be safe I would recommend calling Apple though. I'm thinking about an iMac myself.

 

[slu]

17'' iMac G5 1.8 GHz, 768 MB RAM, 160 GB HDD, Superdrive owner here. I ordered this machine the day they were announced at MacWorld Paris and have had it since Sept, and I have had zero issues. Mime is quiet expect for when it is doing processor intensive work. I have no issues with the screen at all.

I did notice (or perhaps I just thought) that the iMac did get slower, but 10.3.8 seems to have fixed any issues that I thought I may have had. So I blame 10.3.7.

This is my first Mac, and I recommend this to everyone who will listen.

My only regret is that I didn't go for the 20'', but I couldn't afford it. If I were you, I'd try to pick up a referb 20''. I see them from time to time in the apple special deals section.

 

[Smallville]

I got a 17" in November and there's nothing wrong with it. I want my money back! 😀

The only small annoyances are the optical drive when playing a DVD and the speaker - it's just not as loud as I want it. My wife and I prefer watching DVDs on the iMac because the picture is better than our 27" TV, but the sound could be better. I'm saving up for speakers now.

Also, I bought a USB 2.0 hub because I was tired of turning the computer around every time I wanted to hook up my camera or flash drive or iPod shuffle or printer. There's not enough ports for all my stuff!