So after what I considered to be a long wait (although not longer than was projected when I ordered the thing) I finally received my new intel iMac. Talk about a thing of beauty! Check out all my phots here.
I must admit, the photo pictured here is sort of staged…that’s not my wireless keyboard and mouse in the picture – they’re Dave’s. I opted to continue using my wired keyboard and mouse (from my eMac) for a couple of reasons – speed of setup and fear of interference with Dave’s mac mini. I’ve since realized that interference shouldn’t be a problem considering how bluetooth works. The fact that I didn’t set up the new keyboard and mouse has ended up causing me a bit of grief, but more on that later.
Anyways, on to my inital thoughts on the new toy. Beautiful! Even the back of the machine looks good. Holy desktop space batman! Are you sure this thing wasn’t made by McDonalds because I’m Lovin’ It! :) And once I get the appropriate adapters / cables I’m looking forward to extending the huge desktop to my TV too! Fast – much faster than my old G4 eMac of course. Things like expose seem lightning fast. Also – I’ve switched back to using Safari (as opposed to Firefox) for the simple reason that Safari opens in under a second whereas I need to wait 5 plus seconds for Firefox to open. I haven’t noticed anything running slower at all – it seems they did a good job with their emulation software.
I have had some trouble with the new machine though – but nothing too upsetting so far. The first thing I noticed was that I couldn’t start my SlimServer (which is what my SqueezeBox talks to). However, after a quick post to the user forum at slimdevices.com I was pointed towards a nightly build of the server which runs on the new intel macs. Sweet! Problem one solved.
The second problem I’ve noticed so far is with sound effects. It seems that after a time (not sure if it is set or variable), I stop getting sound effects for various activities. Things like moving files to the trash, emptying the trash, or just moving files from one location to another. I have found that a reboot of the system seems to fix the problem, but it does come back. I still continue to get sound when playing movies, songs, etc so I’m not in full blown panic mode but I will be keeping an eye out for a fix for this. If anyone else has seen this or knows of a fix, please let me know.
My biggest problem to date with my new mac has been with the wireless keyboard and mouse, but as I alluded to earlier, this was self induced. As I mentioned, I opted to use the keyboard and mouse from the eMac while at Dave’s place, rather than unpacking the new keyboard and mouse from the box. I also made the mistake of turning off bluetooth on the iMac before packing it up to take it with me to our next stop on the homeless tour. As you can imagine, when I unpacked it again at Bonnie’s mom’s place, the wireless keyboard and mouse didn’t work and I had left the old keyboard and mouse at Dave’s place with the eMac. D’Oh!
All in all I’m very happy with the machine so far. I’d highly recommend picking one up for yourself if you’re in the market for a new PC.
Are you still happy with this machine? I’ve heard good and bad things about them moving to the intel chip, mostly good though. Troy and I are shopping for a new Mac and I was thinking of getting this one. How much RAM did you get with it? Standard is 512M but I’m thinking you’d need at least 1Gig to really appreciate it. How much did it cost in Ottawa? If there is any cost savings maybe when the snow melts we’ll take a drive up there. There are no places really to buy macs here (just CompuSmart) and Apple.com of course. Where did you get yours?
Tan – sorry I didn’t reply earlier, your comment got lost in a sea of SPAM. Oops.
To answer your questions – yes, I’m still very happy with my new mac – although it’s not as quiet as I once thought it was. Still very quiet, don’t get me wrong, but now I notice the sound it makes whereas before I didn’t. Could be because of where we have it located in the new place, I’m not sure.
I put the full specs of the machine on my other post about the new iMac (the one where I tracked it on it’s way to me) but to answer the rest of your questions: I went with 1 GB of RAM (make sure you get one stick of 1GB as opposed to 2 sticks of 500 MB each). I also upgraded the video card to 256 MB from 128. I bought it off the online apple store since I didn’t have to pay for shipping and that way I could customize what I was getting (the extra memory and the wireless keyboard/mouse, etc). It took a while to get to me, but it arrived in one piece so no complaints.
I went with the bigger model (for a few reasons, but mostly because bigger is better right? :) ) and it is actually just *slightly* too large for where we’ve got it right now. If only I could lower the foot just a tad I’d be all set.
Anyways – all that to say that yes, I’m still very happy with the machine.