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Yay! Just got my first Mac!

mavis

mavis

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jul 30, 2007
4,795
1,594
Tokyo, Japan
Well, I finally got the cash together and ordered my first Mac about ten minutes ago. Here's what I'm getting:

24" iMac 2.8GHz, 4GB RAM (already have, from OWC), 750GB HDD
Logitech MX Revolution mouse
Logitech Z-4 speakers (2.1, perfect match for the new iMacs!)
New office set (black desk, matching file cabinet, printer stand, etc)
Quad-interface Ext. HDD enclosure (USB2.0, Firewire 400/800, eSATA)
500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (SATA-II, 16MB cache)

The Apple rep said there wasn't a delay on shipping the 2.8GHz machines (??) so he said I should get my new iMac in about ten days. I can't wait!!!!!!!!

Sorry for posting this, I'm just really excited. :)

edit: it finally arrived today!
 
Cool! When it arrives, turn off your cell phone and spend all day hanging out with your new toy, just make sure to turn off your phone, no need to be disturbed and you won't want to be once you turn it on. Enjoy.:)
Also one more thing, after it arrives don't hang out on the Mac forums too much as people will try to convince you that something is wrong with your computer.
 
Awesome Mavis, Congrats!

If you can, reverse the order for the speakers, spend a little more and get the Logitech Z-2300 thx 2.1 speakers. They quite simply are amazing and will complement the iMac even more (with all the silver trim they have). For games/music/movies etc I have never owned such a pair of crisp, powerful 2.1 speakers.
 
1) Congratulations on the purchase! That machine is a beast!!

2) Right on about the speakers. The Z-2300's will sound way better - they look nice too (but not as nice as the HK Soundsticks II! :p).

Check out the soundsticks...they are very "mac-ish". Because I own both pairs of speakers (different rooms) - i.e. the Z2300's and the HK Soundsticks II, the audio quality is super fantastic off of both of them. For music, the soundsticks sound a bit better, but that's kind of subjective. They're both awesome. So I would definitely cancel the ones you ordered if you have a bit left over in your budget.
 
Nice one Mavis! I'm a long-time Apple user but am awaiting my first new Mac in about 5 years. The wait is the hardest part!

Be sure to post your tracking info in this thread - we want to know where that baby is!!!
 
TheJGene said:
Awesome Mavis, Congrats!

If you can, reverse the order for the speakers, spend a little more and get the Logitech Z-2300 thx 2.1 speakers. They quite simply are amazing and will complement the iMac even more (with all the silver trim they have). For games/music/movies etc I have never owned such a pair of crisp, powerful 2.1 speakers.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the comments (everyone!) and also for the advice on the speakers. I actually saw those Z-2300s in a local shop but I figured it would be a waste for me to get them: I live on the second floor of a condo in Japan, so I can't crank the volume, EVER - I have a headphone amp and three pairs of $1000+ headphones for critical listening, and my wife would absolutely freak out if she heard music pounding from my PC room. So I kind of figured even an 80 watt system (ie, the Z-4) would be overkill, let alone a 200 watt THX certified system. I doubt I will ever turn the Z-4s up past about 1/4 on the volume knob, as much as I would like to!!

Anyway I will stop by that shop again and check the two systems out one more time before I buy, so thanks for the advice!

Actually, all of the peripheral stuff was going to be purchased 'under the radar,' so to speak - my wife would kill me if she knew I was going to drop $500+ on that stuff in addition to the money that we're spending on the iMac! But as it turns out, I stumbled upon a buyer for my Windows rig this afternoon and so now I don't have to throw it all on my Visa - this switch to the dark side (or the light side, is it? heh) is turning out to be easier than I thought! I'm looking forward to getting my new toys all set up, but I have a feeling this 10 day wait is going to be the longest ten days of my life!
 
mavis said:
Thanks for the comments (everyone!) and also for the advice on the speakers. I actually saw those Z-2300s in a local shop but I figured it would be a waste for me to get them: I live on the second floor of a condo in Japan, so I can't crank the volume, EVER - I have a headphone amp and three pairs of $1000+ headphones for critical listening, and my wife would absolutely freak out if she heard music pounding from my PC room. So I kind of figured even an 80 watt system (ie, the Z-4) would be overkill, let alone a 200 watt THX certified system. I doubt I will ever turn the Z-4s up past about 1/4 on the volume knob, as much as I would like to!!

Anyway I will stop by that shop again and check the two systems out one more time before I buy, so thanks for the advice!

Actually, all of the peripheral stuff was going to be purchased 'under the radar,' so to speak - my wife would kill me if she knew I was going to drop $500+ on that stuff in addition to the money that we're spending on the iMac! But as it turns out, I stumbled upon a buyer for my Windows rig this afternoon and so now I don't have to throw it all on my Visa - this switch to the dark side (or the light side, is it? heh) is turning out to be easier than I thought! I'm looking forward to getting my new toys all set up, but I have a feeling this 10 day wait is going to be the longest ten days of my life!
Click to expand...

this board sure does have an international flavor....
 
Congratulations with your purchase.. I hope you won't have the same problems I'm having for your machine to arrive -_-
 
Congrats! I've used a MacBook Pro at work for 5 years, but now I changed jobs and got a boring Lenovo Thinkpad...so after 4 weeks I broke down and ordered a 24" iMac. It's set to arrive here in Norway on October 8... :D
 
Bolteh said:
Congratulations with your purchase.. I hope you won't have the same problems I'm having for your machine to arrive -_-
Click to expand...

I truly don't mean to knock your post but please be kind. The OP is very excited about her new computer. It hasn't even shipped yet and it's really unnecessary to post about your negative experience. I'm sorry you are having issues but it scares a new buyer when people post stuff like you did.

Let someone see how their computer works for them first.
 
HLdan said:
I truly don't mean to knock your post but please be kind. The OP is very excited about her new computer. It hasn't even shipped yet and it's really unnecessary to post about your negative experience. I'm sorry you are having issues but it scares a new buyer when people post stuff like you did.

Let someone see how their computer works for them first.
Click to expand...

Actually, it's ok - I know that some people have had problems with their iMacs (they're sophisticated machines, after all) and I know that I will be disappointed if mine isn't perfect. That said, I also realize that the odds of getting a defective machine are fairly slim, and if there IS a problem, I know Apple will take care of it. So, no worries. (of course I'm crossing my finger that mine will be OK!!) :)
 
Actually I think it's worth pointing out for all people new to Macs that forums like this - as insanely essential as they are (and they are), they do tend to skew statistics when it comes to faults, problems, defective machines etc. It's simple because if you post here, you're likely to post a problem because you want advice. It's just the nature of a forum like this.

So when is the baby due anyway?
 
zen said:
It's simple because if you post here, you're likely to post a problem because you want advice. It's just the nature of a forum like this.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think people tend to overlook this fact a lot of the time ... ;)

As for the due date, this is what my confirmation email said:

Estd Ship on/Before : 2007/10/03 - 2007/10/05
Estd Dlvy on/Before : 2007/10/10 - 2007/10/12

When I sign in and check online it still says "Not yet Shipped" ... Should've ordered on a Monday instead of a Friday! :D
 
mavis said:
Estd Ship on/Before : 2007/10/03 - 2007/10/05
Estd Dlvy on/Before : 2007/10/10 - 2007/10/12

When I sign in and check online it still says "Not yet Shipped" ... Should've ordered on a Monday instead of a Friday!
Click to expand...

Well, it now says "Prepared for Shipment" ... :D

My buddy who also lives in Tokyo said that once his Mac shipped, it was delivered within a day or two (we're a lot closer to China than you guys back home in the States!) ... So hopefully it will arrive ahead of schedule. Hopefully. ;)
 
Well, I just checked my order status and it says it has shipped!!! :D

The delivery sate still says Oct 10th-12th, but since Japan is relatively close to Singapore, I'm hoping to get it this weekend (local couriers deliver all weekend, until 9pm) ...

Funny enough, in what would almost seem to be an effort to reassure me that my switch to Apple was indeed the right choice, the Plextor DVD drive on my Windows rig died tonight (it's only 10 months old!) and I had to make a dash to the local computer shop to buy a new one. I'm prepping my rig for sale this weekend (nuking the drive, re-installing Windows, etc) and having the drive fail at the zero hour was just perfect timing. However, I think the nail in the coffin (it gets better!) was that once I booted up with the new drive installed, Windows popped up a warning that my hardware had been changed too much since I activated (this new DVD drive is the first new hardware I've installed since I last activated, BTW) and so I needed to re-activate Windows within three days. When I tried doing that, I was then informed that I would need a new license key altogether because I had exceeded the allowed number of activations!! So, it looks like I'll be on the phone to Microsoft yet again when I re-install XP tomorrow, I absolutely can't wait. :rolleyes:

This latest round of good times with Microsoft is making me yearn for my iMac even more. The thought of being able to call AppleCare anytime in the next three years if my hardware fails almost makes me salivate. Being able to re-install Tiger/Leopard on a whim, without activating? Too good to be true. I can't wait!!!!! :D
 
Well, my iMac finally arrived today, I was excited as can be, rushed home to fire it up for the first time and ...










































It's perfect!!!!!


:D



The first thing I did was to turn it on and check for dead pixels - to my relief there were none - the screen is perfect!! Next, I unplugged it and installed my 4GB OWC RAM ... again, perfect. I then proceed to wipe the drive, re-partition 200/500GB (I like to keep my data seperate from the OS, not only because I'm a long time Windows user ;) but because I like to know that if I ever have to do a clean install in the future, all of my data will be intact) ... Since then I've just been installing all of my apps (FCS2, Adobe Design Premier, etc) and so far, so good.

I have to say that I am impressed thusfar with the ease of installation (compared to Windows) and the speed of the machine (compared to my old P4 3.2GHz 1GB RAM rig) ... For example, I'm importing about 20,000 RAW files in Lightroom at the moment, but despite the fact that it's not even close to being done yet, the gallery display and loupe views are faster and more responsive than they were on my old rig, when it was idle! WTH!!! I am glad that I have I upgraded the RAM though, with only Lightroom running I've got just 2.6GB free - that memory will be taken up by Photoshop in the future (I always run them together) so having 4GBs will really help me with my workflow.

Anyway, OSX/Apple is really impressing me - I installed a hacked OSX86 build on my Thinkpad a few weeks ago just to get a feel for the OS, and with just a few days (total) of experience in OSX, I feel pretty comfortable with it, am able to customize stuff and tweak things to my liking - it's not as big a learning curve as I thought it would be. I realize I've probably just scratched the surface, but so far so good. The best decision I've ever made, as far as computers go.

So if there's anyone out there sitting on the fence, trying to decide if an iMac is a good purchase or not - I wholeheartedly recommend pulling the trigger and just doing it! You won't regret it!!!! :D
 
Lol, that post format was a success here ;) I paused, read the text and thought "wtf.. :/" and then continued to scroll.. perfect :D

I'll buy a 20" 2.4Ghz in the beginning of next week :) Bluetooth keyboard ftw!
 
Sounds great! Had my 20" for a week now and it's perfect too - just love the screen. Absolutely faultless with no dead pixels or colour variation.

Out of interest, is partitioning like that really necessary? You can do a clean install using the "archive and install" option which does it cleanly while moving everything else into a neatly labelled old data folder. You certainly never need to erase your disk if you don't want to.
 
zen said:
Out of interest, is partitioning like that really necessary? You can do a clean install using the "archive and install" option which does it cleanly while moving everything else into a neatly labelled old data folder. You certainly never need to erase your disk if you don't want to.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's absolutely necessary but it has it's advantages. First of all, by keeping my data in a seperate partition, it is easy for other users to access (basically my wife, I have her set up with a non-admin account) whereas if the data is stored in my user account, it would be more of a PITA to let her access it. Second, keeping large data (movies, music, pictures) on a second partition makes it easier to maintain system backups, since the system partition itself is relatively small. Third, while I'm sure 'archive and Install' works in most cases, I've read about people who have had problems with it. When I install Leopard (for example) I want to do a 100% clean install - the less complicated the installation, the less room for errors. Finally, I like knowing that if I ever have to do a complete erase, I can - without having to worry about backing stuff up first. Of course there's other stuff to backup, but all of my docs, pictures, movies, custom icons, music, and apps (DMGs and zip files, etc) are on the second partition, nice and safe. :D

oh and BTW - 'grats on your new iMac! Enjoy it!!
 
How do you solve the Music folder i.e?
Cause you can't choose mount points as in a Linux installation. Do you simply change the items in the lefthand column of the Finder window to the items in your "own" partition?

This is hot ontopic for me, who will change my iBook to an iMac in about one week.
 
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