The New Intel iMac – 2007
Well it’s been about a week since I first got my iMac and I am absolutely loving it. I purchased the 20” 2.4GHz, 320GB HDD, ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO – $1499 version. I also installed an extra gigabyte of RAM for a total of 2GBs. It’s VERY snappy. Now mind you my tasks mostly lay in Coda, iPhoto, Photoshop, Terminal, Safari, Handbrake, and iCal. Most of them are not really CPU or system intensive, that is until you start doing all that at once.
The iMac barely slows down when I had all that going at once. I could be making a copy of a DVD in Handbrake while editing some code for my website and while touching up some photos in iPhoto and Photoshop for my website. It was very smooth work and I noticed no slowdown of the system at all.
While some people dislike the glossy displays I think I actually enjoy them. There were also some complaints about how reflective and how much glare would come from these displays but it’s actually not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I actually only use the iMac display for Terminal and Twitterrific so I am not looking at it that often. I have a Apple Cinema Display 23” connected which I use as my main display. Photos and images do look a lot more colorful and vibrant, but this can be troublesome for professional graphics designers and photographers. It hasn’t bothered me though.
As mentioned previously my iMac has a ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO and although I don’t do to many graphics processor intensive tasks, it sure works wonderfully for World of Warcraft. I cranked up all the graphics settings in the game and it still ran quite fluid. I was also doing my usual multitasking but the iMac handled it fine.
The new keyboard from Apple is probably my favorite. It’s slim, quiet, and works great. I’ve been using a MacBook ever since they came out and I have gotten quite used to the keys. Well this new keyboard is quite similar to that, just in a bigger format. One thing I do not like is how they moved the Expose keys around. I ended up mapping F16-F18 to the Expose commands. Other then that one issue, I do really enjoy using this keyboard. If you’re someone who enjoys tactile feedback I would simply recommend keeping your current tactile keyboard or using one of the Matias keyboards.
While this article isn’t on the new iLife ‘08 (another place, another time) I do want to comment on how pleased I am with the new iPhoto. I haven’t used it much but what I have used, I am happy with. Keywords have been revamped and I feel they’re a lot easier to use. It sure makes categorizing my photos a lot faster.
Overall I am impressed and quite satisfied with the new iMac and am already thinking about purchasing a second one for my girlfriend. The iMac is a great computer for most anyone, so check out our iMac page for more information or to purchase one!