My Valentine: New Dual 1.25 PowerMac

[uhzoomzip]

Actually, I didn't get it until the morning of the 15th but who's counting anyway...

I ordered the PM the day they were released. There was a slight delay in shipping it which I assume was because of some logic board problems I had read about.

Impressions:

First of all, I've read a lot of people are concerned about noise issues. I have it setup next to my old Gigabit PM 400Mhz and it is louder than that machine (I can't really hear anything coming from the Gigabit PM) but it's really not an issue. I haven't really listened to the old "leafblower" MDD model anywhere except Apple Stores and CompUSA - so I wasn't really aware of noise issues with those. Yes you can hear the fan(s) running on the new PM. No, it is not loud. In fact, I've got an old PC in my room which is definitely louder than this new PM.

I am surprised at how warm these things get. I have it sitting on my desk with the back of the tower facing the wall...and the wall gets pretty warm at times. So unless I've got something going on, I just put the machine to sleep when I'm not using it.

Coming from an old Gigabit 400 PM, this new PM feels like it's cutting through butter. I ordered it just with 256MB of RAM but I had a stick of 512 from OWC waiting to put it in. I don't really see a performance decrease even when I have 10+ apps running at the same time including Photoshop. It's fast, responsive and feels as solid as any new PC I've used recently.

The first thing I did when it got booted into X was to run the software update. It did not have 10.2.4 yet...but didn't take too long to get that installed. Software update also downloaded and installed the PM firmware update.

I know others have written about this, but the new towers do come with a WHITE pro keyboard and mouse.

I tested some mp3 rips...the superdrive seems to peak at 12-15x - with my LaCie 48x firewire burner, it peaks at 25-26x! iPhoto works like a dream - imports and exports quickly and flawlessly.

I haven't started any projects in iMovie/Final Cut but based on the performance so far, I think it will be very productive.

I finally get to run my Mitsubishi NX85 18" Flat Panel on a DVI connection...this along with the Radeon 9000 is WORLDS of improvement over the VGA connection I was using with the Rage 128 card in my old PowerMac. The screen is brighter, crisper and text is not blurry at all.

All in all, this is a quality machine and I'm certain this will last me at least a couple of years just as the Gigabit 400 tower did.

I'm curious if these machines will ever be able to accept a potential 970 processor upgrade like the 7475 upgrades that are about to be released...

Anyway...I love my new PowerMac. Cheers to anyone else getting a new tower.

 

[giovanni]

so it is great to hear the new PM with superdrive are eventually shipping ! Congrats on your purchase and I love to hear you are pretty happy so far. Did you get the bluetooth piece also ?

Note on noise: I did have a dual 867 and never ever thought they were too noisy.

 

[synthetickittie]

I CANT TAKE THIS!! I WANT MY MAC NOW!.. ya Ive got no self controlle and no pacients what so ever. I just bought a new desk today because Im keeping the one I have now to keep using my pc on. I set up the desk and the new printer, speakers, sub, scanner, 23inch cinema desplay, and blah blah... AH Im looking over at the desk rink now I cant take this any longer! My shipping date says 3/19...

 

[giovanni]

synth, is that for a 1.42 ?

 

[uhzoomzip]

Giovanni - didn't get the Bluetooth mod...

 

[synthetickittie]

yup.. I keep having thought of dropping my order and just getting a 1.25 so I can have it with in the week because I dont have a real use for bluetooth(if you add it the 1.25 PM's are getting delayed a few weeks). But Im trying to tell myself I'll be better of just waiting 4-5 weeks for the 1.42.

 

[Bear]

Originally posted by synthetickittie
yup.. I keep having thought of dropping my order and just getting a 1.25 so I can have it with in the week because I dont have a real use for bluetooth(if you add it the 1.25 PM's are getting delayed a few weeks). But Im trying to tell myself I'll be better of just waiting 4-5 weeks for the 1.42.

Remember, it's not just Bluetooth which is a difference, it's processor speed and the size of L3 cache. From your ship by date, it sounds like you've already done almost 2 weeks of your wait.

Look at it this way, getting the fastest model now hopefully means one will not feel the need to upgrade as soon as if they purchased a slower model now.

I've done almost three weeks of the wait for mine, and at this point wouldn't consider changing what model I had on order.

 

[mdeschenes]

I, too, spent my weekend with my newly delivered DP 1.25. Came in on Friday afternoon along with the programs I ordered - VPC 6.0 DOS, Norton's, Office X . I also ordered a Keystone USB/Firewire card for the extra ports.

Started right up without any hassle. Was able to load all of the programs. It recognized my MS keyboard and logitech cordless mouse right away. I had to network my 16/600 apple laser printer via ethernet but it picked that up, too.

I inserted a 20 Gig, 7200 rpm Seagate HD in the second ATA 100 slot - not too difficult. Thankfully, the manual that came with it showed me how. I also inserted 2X512 DDR 2700 ram memory sticks from my PC (supposed reputable brands). I hope this is not what is causing the dozen crashes and rebuild this weekend. They never caused problems in the PC. I did a hardware test using the test CD that came with the computer and no problems were found in those respects.

BTW: AOL does not support OSX in Canada. I had to switch ISP's because we cannot get the software here.....yet. Once a provider was found, it was extremely easy to set up.

The Norton's software is a nightmare - so is VPC. Norton's will not recognize any of my Hard Drives (2 internal and 1 external FW). When I open the program and go to Check disks, they are not there to choose from. I read the manual and it does not really offer an explanation or solution. I guess it will the the old 1-800 route for me.

VPC 6.0 DOS did the same thing - it choked totally. Despite following instructions - it caused my computer to crash repeatedly. Another 1-800 call will be needed.

All in all, a fairly sleepless weekend. Hardware seems ok. Software is a nightmare. I hope to solve these soon because I have a lot of files from my old PC that I need to work with.

PS> Office X looks and works quite nicely, thank you very much.

Mike

 

[altivec 2003]

ram

Originally posted by mdeschenes
I also inserted 2X512 DDR 2700 ram memory sticks from my PC (supposed reputable brands). I hope this is not what is causing the dozen crashes and rebuild this weekend. They never caused problems in the PC.

Not all ram will work in all machines. The ram might be to fast or to slow, and that could cause problems. I'm surprised that it worked at all. With the prices of ram these days I would suggest that you just buy some brand new (and make sure it will work in a powermac!)