Input on buying new 24" iMac (Late 2006) vs. new Alu iMac

[garfield2002]

Greetings all,

I was wondering if anyone had greater insight into this choice. I have the option of buying a brand new 24" (Late 2006) model, the last one before the redesign to the aluminum form factor, for $1200. This price is for an upper end spec'd machine with a 2.16Ghz C2D. Given that the least expensive current iMac is $1200, with the least expensive 24" variant being $1800, is the price vs performance difference enough to go with the newer iMacs. Some things I've been considering:

1) Not going to be used for gaming. The new iMacs have greatly increased graphics horsepower. Comparison between the ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT 128MB GDDR3 vs the NVIDIA GeForce 7300GT with 128MB GDDR3.

2) 667Mhz vs 800Mhz system bus.

3) New form factor, keyboard, Leopard and iLife '08. Though I've already purchased the last two.

3) Geez, a beautiful 24" screen would be great.

4) More than enough savings for $169 AppleCare.

Overall the older iMac seems like a good deal. I just wanted some feedback from the board to help ease outlay of money. Please let me know if I've missed anything important. Thanks.

 

[Josheua]

What kind of work will you be doing?

If you are into graphic design or use any program that requires the GPU power (or plan to get into this anytime soon), I would bite the bullet and get the aluminum mac to ensure you have the horsepower to stay up to date with your software as that arena evolves. However, if you will be surfing the web, editing the ocassional photo in iPhoto, organizing a music library, and preping word documents, powerpoints, and other daily tasks, the 24-inch screen would be wonderful and provide plenty of screen space for multi-tasking (as well as a ram upgrade down the road). Overall it is a great machine (no doubt) and you would be able to get the slim aluminum keyboard later if you want (which, with white keys and a white mighty mouse wouldn't look out of place next to your iMac).

Personally, if what you need to do is what I mentioned above (instead of the graphics heavy work), get the white iMac and save yourself some green.

-Josh

 

[cmvsm]

You stated that you are not going to be running any graphics intensive games, etc., so realistically, you are not going to see a difference at all, except for what you see sitting on the table.

I have the previous generation 24" 2.16 and I wouldn't trade it for a new one. I don't really like the aluminum based iMacs in terms of appearance. The glossy screen is nice and contrasty on one hand, but has annoying reflections in a bright room on the other. My 7600GT card (top end) holds its own quite well against the new card, but for general application, you aren't going to see much of a bump in speed if any, even with the 7300GT versus the 2400XT.

The only area that you may see a nice difference is the amount of RAM that you can add. I believe the new ones is 4GB, and the 'older' ones is 3GB. This might speed up the OS a bit, but again, its not a deal breaker.

To top it off, I really like the white display. To me, that is Apple's trademark.

 

[Sannekita]

I'd totally get the white one! seems perfect for you and a great opportunity

 

[garfield2002]

Thank you all for the great and quick replies.

cmvsm, I have a question for you in particular, since you own one of these machines. What is the noise level like? Say at rest and then under load. My wife's main concern in this purchase stems from her horribly loud G5 white iMac at work. This machine's fan goes crazy when doing the smallest tasks. Not so bad at work, but it would be really annoying at home. The G5's were notoriously hot. Has noise been an issue for you at all with the newer CD or C2D processor?

 

[Silverbird0000]

Thank you all for the great and quick replies.

cmvsm, I have a question for you in particular, since you own one of these machines. What is the noise level like? Say at rest and then under load. My wife's main concern in this purchase stems from her horribly loud G5 white iMac at work. This machine's fan goes crazy when doing the smallest tasks. Not so bad at work, but it would be really annoying at home. The G5's were notoriously hot. Has noise been an issue for you at all with the newer CD or C2D processor?

I have a 20" white iMac, the last ones released. It's a 2.16 GHz C2D and it is super quiet. I upgraded the video card to 256mb when I bought it from Apple, so the video card is awesome. Never had a game I couldn't run in Bootcamp!

 

[bagelche]

I bought a 20" white iMac at work at the beginning of the summer for non-super-duper FCP work. We upgraded the graphics from Apple and ram after-market. It's a great machine. Not a Mac Pro, but for your purposes....

I'd jump on the $1200 white 24".