So today I finally gave in to the devil and purchased a 20" iMac. And let me tell you, this thing is cool as hell. Built in camera and microphone. The iLife suite for picture editing, video editing/creation, etc. I also purchased a wireless keyboard and mouse, and let me tell you the little keyboard is the coolest thing I've ever seen All of which comes with a remote.
The more impressive thing to me? The thinness of the machine. For having a built in wireless N network card, bluetooth, dvd burner, 3 USB plugs, 2 firewire, etc. this thing is no thicker than a standard monitor. But the resolution and display on it is probably the best I've seen. Did I mention it comes with a miniature remote? And it's so quiet.
And the Leopard OS is on it. I've been playing around with some of this. I do have a hard time with only one aspect, and that is the yearly cost for a .Mac account (email, 10GB of storage, web pages, hosting) so we'll see. I have signed up for the 60 day free trial of it to see if it is worth it. I imagine that down the line I will probably go ahead and add that, but for now it's just learning the subtle differences.
I will tell you this, the drag and drop functionality built inside of this is incredible. And the OS just screams...and that's with only 1GB of RAM. I haven't played with it too terribly much yet tonight, shockingly, so a further post with a review of it will be forthcoming.
Now comes the part where I push for my trillian astra account to get me access to the mac portion and then try to screw with people on iChat. The possibilities are endless!
5 comments:
I just have a few questions.
I didn't know that you had to pay for a .Mac account. How much is that? Is it necessary? What are the benefits of having it? What made you go with the desktop and not the MacBook? Are you having any issues with Time machine? How fast is the Wireless N?
Oh..... and are you planing to dual boot it with Vista or XP?
You don't need to get a .mac account, but it does allow for very easy web publishing of the pics in your iPhoto library, gives you iChat access, and makes for easy web-based backup of your data. At $99/year, it's not a great value.
Welcome to the Good Side, Matt.
I'm doing a 60 day trial. If I don't like it, I won't do it. Although they do have a $30 off coupon....I may just end up biting the bullet. We'll see.
I have not purchased the airport extreme yet, but that has been ok'd by the wife. The throughput already is pretty impressive. I am downstairs in our dining room temporarily. This will eventually be placed in the family room as the office will become the kids room.
We went with the iMac because, at the moment, we have our travel laptop. More importantly when we get rid of the office room ,the iMac is all in one. There are only 2 cords going into it right now: 1 power and one usb for the printer/scanner. And we just get a lot more storage out of it.
And no, no issues with time machine.
When you get your airport extreme, you can plug the printer into it and share it with all your computers. Then the only cord going into your iMac will be power.
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