Customer Reviews

Apple iMac Desktop with 17" Display MA199LL/A (1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo, 512 MB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive)

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

First impression: Wow, that is a big white brick/tile like object staring me in the face. Less personallity than the lamp iMac; it appears more business/professional oriented. Then I sit down in front of it, move the mouse to wake it up, and I am impressed. The 17" intel has a lot more screen real estate than the 15" lamp iMac; larger area and higher resolution.

I start clicking on applications, everything is so fast and responsive; especially native applications. I open a finder window and it appears instantly in front of me. I grab the corner and start resizing it; no delay, the window corner goes where I drag it. Open non native FireFox running in Rosetta, opens quickly but has noticeable lag. Click on the corner of FireFox and drag, feels like OS 10.1, the window takes a fraction of a second to follow the cursor; still very usable.

iPhoto. I import my old library (by dragging the folder from my old pictures folder to my new pictures folder). Open iPhoto. It says it needs to update my library, it does that flawlessly and opens. Takes 1 or 2 minutes for several thousand photos. I scroll through my library; everything is so fast. As I scroll through my film rolls a big black semi-transparent box pops up with the roll name. I go to my 6 MB RAW photos from my digital rebel. I double click on one to edit. It only says "loading picture" for about half a second. I start clicking the next picture arrow, instantly loads the next RAW photo (it must be caching them). I hit the next about once a second and it never stops to think, I hit next much faster and it starts saying "loading picture" I stop, and it pops up in about half a second. Not in 5 - 10 seconds like my old iMac.

I open full screen mode. I click on a photo, loads quickly. I hold command key, and click another photo, it pops up beside the first, I think why not select a 3rd? It pops up along the other 2, I went up to 6 on the screen at the same time and the computer was still responding fast. I got bored of comparing pictures, and did some more exploring.

PhotoBooth, I could play with this for hours.

iWeb, great for a home or possibly a small business website. Much more professional and customizable templates than .Mac alone. I will get good use out of this program.

There are some neat new programs on the computer that you don't hear much about (these might also be on the G5 iMac, I haven't used it enough to know what it comes with). There is a comic program where you can drag photos from your iPhoto library (or other locations) into comic book style pages that are fully customizable, then you add little speach/thought bubbles and text. Looks like a comic book. Very slick program for developing collages and such for web pages.

I am impressed. The computer is very responsive, except Rosetta, which is fast, but not as responsive. Think OS 10.1. I honestly think the Intel iMac running native applications is as, if not more, responsive than my Windows XP machine running after a fresh install. And I rarely get the beachball now.

Speakers: More "tinny" sounding than the external ball speakers I had with my iMac lamp, but similar sound output.

Keyboard: Nice non-slip feet that keep it from sliding all around. Positive feeling keys, but need some adjustment from my iMac lamp keyboard. It just feels different.

Mouse: I love the mighty mouse. Switch it to two button mode and it works great. Has a small learning curve. The scroll wheel (ball) gives me the shivers as it has a very fine resolution click and it makes for a "tingly" feeling in my had when I scroll. The side buttons also take some getting used to. As I said, a small learning curve.

Display 17": Nice and clear, I haven't found any dead pixels yet. I see one suspect, will have to check it later, but they are so small anyway you cant tell when they are dead, just looks like a fleck of dust. I like the widescreen and improved resolution over the old 15" I have.

Appearance: As I said, lacks some of the character of the older iMac lamp and original iMac, but nice and professional looking. The computer feels big due to the white area below the screen. I like the added touch of the "heartbeat" LED in sleep mode, it is in about the same spot as it is on the lamp iMac, but it isn't visible unless the computer is asleep.

Noises: What noises? Slight fan noise at times, a soothing white noise whir from the quiet fans. The faintest clicking of the hard drive, which is nothing obnoxious, but it is audible in a totally silent room or with your ear by the monitor. I haven't fully loaded the processor yet so I don't know how loud the fans can get. Then my external firewire drive fires up sounding like an airplane taking flight and totally drowns out the computer.

Conclusion: If you have to run all your old professional applications, you might wait a few months to make the "switch" to Intel. If you just use it for an everyday computer, what are you waiting for? I can't tell it isn't a PowerPC under the hood, it is the same old Mac I have always loved. Just make sure you upgrade to 1 GB of RAM to get the most from your new iMac.

I have only had a few hours to play with the computer, but they say you only get one chance to make a good first impression and this iMac certainly did.

Without question, I love Macintosh computers. The ease of use, performance, and design that is Apple makes me productive, keeps the headaches down, and makes working on a computer fun.

When Steve Jobs announced the new iMac, with Intel Core Duo processors I was almost certain I wanted to buy it. Why? Macs are well known for ease of use and capabilities, but they have managed all that for years, with processors that are not always top-notch.

Processor in the new iMac

The Intel Core Duo processor in the new iMac is an amazing chip. What have I noticed about the speed of the machine featuring this chip? It is incredibly fast. You'd be surprised by how much faster even web browsing is, when you have a processor as powerful as the Core Duo. However, what I've really been impressed by is doing things such as video encoding. I've encoded videos in H264 as much as eight times faster than my Powerbook G4. Furthermore, the iLife applications that are included on the iMac fly, with the speed. iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and Garageband perform like never before. I've really been impressed by the speed.

The Core Duo is a great processor. It offers exceptional desktop PC performance, in a design that can fit in small computers and notebooks. It features two cores on a single die, which effectively gives you the performance of two processors. Don't let the 1.83 GHZ clock speed fool you. This Core Duo Chip will outperform 3+ GHZ Pentium 4 processors. It really is an amazing breakthrough, from Intel.

Video Card

The new iMac features an ATI Radeon X1600 graphics processor using PCI Express
128 MB of GDDR3 video memory. This is the best graphic card Apple has *ever* included with a consumer Macintosh. This graphic processor will work well for most gaming, and it is great for viewing back complex H264 movies, including high definition videos. You can enjoy high definition H264 videos, without drop frames. I couldn't even play these videos, on my Powerbook.

Video out - The new iMac, for the first time ever, features a Mini-DVI output. This allows, with adapters, the ability to connect the iMac to a DVI display, a television via composite or S-video, or an analog display via VGA. I have my new iMac Core Duo connected to my 20-inch Apple Cinema Display, and it works perfect! A nice feature. This allows for screen-spanning, so I can take advantage of both screens.

Memory - This iMac is a powerhouse, but it is held back by the standard 512MB of memory. You can still do a couple tasks at a time, but for intensive tasks and multitasking you need more memory. Add at least another 512 MB stick, for a total of 1 GB memory, but you might consider adding even more. The iMac supports up to 2 GB of memory. It uses PC5300 DDR2 - SODIMM modules.

Applications -

Apple has removed some of the applications previously bundled, with the iMac. This includes Appleworks. Appleworks is no longer included, but if you own a copy, it will run fine on this machine. Apple does include iLife '06, which has iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, iDVD, and Garageband. There is the Safari web browser, some board games, the always useful iCal, AddressBook, iChat, etc. Overall, I was pleased with the included software.

iLife 06 is particularly great. I love the new full-screen photo editing, photo comparing, etc. You can now also order calendars and greeting cards made with your photos, direct from Apple, by using the iPhoto software. iMovie has new themes, which helps make professional-looking home movies, and iDVD now supports widescreen DVDs. iWeb is a brand-new applications, which makes it easy to create professional quality webpages, quickly. I can't wait to rebuild by site using iWeb. Apple continues to make it easy to create music, manage your digital images, make movies, and create web sites.

A trial (30 day) of iWork '06 is also included, which includes the page layout program Pages, and the presentation program Keynote (which makes presentations that blow away presentations made by rival Powerpoint).

Hard Drive -

The 17-inch iMac comes with a 160 GB hard drive. This is going to be sufficient for most people to hold their photographs, music, and movies. However, some people may need more. It is also important that you remember to backup your important files to either another external hard drive, or DVDs. I only point this out because today with great machines like the iMac we're storing more of our great memories on computers than ever before, so make sure you don't lose them, if something happens to your machine. Apple includes a great backup program called Backup 3, if you subscribe to the .mac service. I use it all the time, and it simple interface helps me keep peace of mind.

Superdrive-

The optical drive included with the new iMac allows you to watch DVDs, listen to music, burn DVDs, and burn CDs. You can also burn dual-layer DVDs, which is nice. It is a slot-loading drive, so the disks slide magically in and out of the computer's right side. There are no drawers to break off.

Front Row Experience - Apple has included a new software title that at this time is only available on the iMac and MacBook Pro. Front Row. Front Row comes with your iMac, and a remote control is also included. Front row allows you to watch and listen to media items, on your computer, from across the room. Click one button on the remote, and bring up Front Row, for quick access to your music, movies, podcasts, DVD, and more. I like this feature, but I wonder how useful it is, since I'm usually sitting right in front of the computer and can just use a mouse, to access this content.

PowerPC Applications on Intel Machine

If you own a lot of software for Mac, then most of it is probably compiled for PowerPC. Developers are working hard to make titles run natively on both Intel and PowerPC, but many titles are not yet ready. However, many titles you can use on an Intel Mac because Apple has included Rosetta, which translates the PowerPC code into something the Intel machine can read. However, you never see Rosetta for it works quietly in the background and makes running PowerPC applications seamless. Microsoft Office, for example, works perfect under Rosetta. Intensive applications such as Photoshop will run under Rosetta, but it will be slower until Adobe has an Intel compiled version of Photoshop. Rosetta does work and if you add memory to your iMac, you may find such application somewhat equal to how it would perform on a 1GHZ PowerPC G4, from my experience.

Two titles I use EyeTV and Toast 7 are not yet compiled for Intel, but they run fine on my Intel iMac, under Rosetta. Again, you don't have to open anything special to use Rosetta. Your Mac knows when it needs it and uses it.

Wireless- The iMac can still connect wirelessly to networks using its included Airport Card. Furthermore, it features a Bluetooth module to connect wirelessly to devices.

Design - This iMac is beautiful, and you notice the quality as soon as you begin to open the box. It is packaged with care, in beautiful packaging. The iMac is thin, and the display floats above your desk. Furthermore, Apple includes a nice keyboard and mighty mouse, which allows for multi-button clicking.

Overall, I am very happy with my iMac Core Duo. It should perhaps come with more memory standard, but it is a very impressive machine. It is incredibly fast on Intel-native applications, and it does a very good job running PowerPC applications. If you're upgrading from a G4 Mac like myself, this machine will seem to fly. If you're upgrading from a G5 based Mac, it will be faster on native applications, but the increase in performance will be less significant to you. The Intel machines are the future of Apple, so there is no question this is a good machine, and it is powerful enough to be a good computer, for quite some time. I'm happy with my purchase, and I look forward to continue exploring it in the coming days.

I used a PC for 10 years but got fed up with all of the bugs, reboots, crashes, viruses, and incompatibility. I loved my iPod, so I looked at buying a new Intel iMac. This is quite simply, the best desktop computer on the market and the best desktop computer that I've ever owned. Switching from a PC to a Mac was so much easier than I had thought it would be. And being a Mac user is like being in a family - with top-notch customer support from Apple, helpful and courteous users on the Apple Discussion board, and the Genius Bar at the Apple Stores. Mac OS X Tiger is amazing - and has everything that Microsoft Vista will 'try' to have, but so much more. Sure, you can buy a dirt-cheap PC from Dell, but what good is a slow PC with no applications installed? Included in every new Mac is the iLife suite. All you need to do is plug it in and you're listening to iTunes, editing photos, movies, and burning your home movies to DVD. If you're a PC user, switch now...but I'll warn you...you'll never look back!

Our iMac just replaced a Dell desktop PC, and all I can say is WOW. OS X is so far ahead of Windows in just about every area, and everything just works. First try.

I am addicted to this computer and eager to one day switch the rest of our Windows PCs to Mac.

My only complaint would be the color. I wish they would make these in colors other than white.

If you are switching from Windows, expect a day or two of learning curve, but everything is so much easier and more fun!

Highly recommend adding the .Mac subscription for nice integration with the Internet.

The e-mail client is also excellent (much better than Thunderbird or Outlook Express), and Safari web browser actually seems much more IE compatible than Firefox on Windows.

Highly recommend. Buy as many as you can afford, as everyone in your family will be fighting over it.

Also recommend the AirTunes to wirelessly send your iTunes songs to your stereo.

This is my first Mac and I very pleased thus far.

Pros: It's true... it just works. Ten minutes after first powering on the iMac, I was already surfing the web and had access to my home network! The iMac immediately recognized my WEP secured wireless network. All I had to do was enter my security code! This is the same thing that took at least one hour (at first) on my Windows systems. The iMac also recognized my home network with no problem at all! I was able to transfer files from my Dell notebook by just dragging them over to the Mac. It took me almost an hour to get my two Windows computers to "see" each other on the home network. I haven't figured out how to make the Mac visible to the Dell just yet.

The iLife software bundle, although not Pro level, is great for basic home use. I just made a DVD using iDVD and iMovie HD. I had a VHS tape that I transferred to a mini DV using a camcorder and my VCR. I then imported the film into iMovie via firewire. After inserting chapters markers, I imported the film into iDVD. It was easy to figure out how to add titles and music to the menus. One cool thing I've already noticed about the Mac OS is that I can drag files into the applications from any window. I don't need to search for the file from within the program I'm using. For example, I wanted to import a photo and a song as the background for the DVD's main menu. I already had a window open that had the files I wanted. I just dragged the files over to the iDVD program and dropped them in. The program did the rest.

If you are worried about MS Office compatibility (my biggest concern), I haven't found any compatibility issues yet. The iMac came with a free 30-day trial of MS Office for Mac. I was able to open and save all my old Office files with no problems. I am going to wait for the new universal version of Office before I spring for it. No news on when it is going to come out. But it will happen.

Cons: The only negative things I've seen thus far are pretty minor. First, the machine is just screaming for more RAM. 512 MB is fine for basic applications. However, in my opinion, you really need to upgrade to at least 1 GB if you plan on working with any digital media at all. The upgrade "door" is located on the bottom of the case. It looks like a easy upgrade. A 1 GB chip will run about $120 from third party vendors.

The only other problems I can see are with the keyboard and mouse. First, the cords are very short. If you plan on placing the keyboard more than 2 feet away from the monitor (on a pull-out keyboard tray under your desk) you'll need a hub and an additional USB cable. I already had these items, so I had no problem. The mouse cable is so short that you have to plug it into one of the USB slots on the keyboard, which only leaves you with one remaining slot. Which leads me to my only other complaint, the USB slots on the keyboard are only 1.1 and not the speedier 2.0. The cord problem can be solved with the wireless option (more $). However, there is no wireless Mighty Mouse (two button mouse) yet, so I'll wait on that one. The Mighty Mouse is nice, but the "buttons" are a bit finicky. You have to really concentrate on pushing the right side of the mouse down since there is really no "button." The mouse has a pressure sensor that can tell that you are pushing on the right side. It doesn't always work on the first try. However, after getting a feel for how far to the right side of the mouse you need to push, it seems to be fine.

Overall, I am extremely pleased with this machine and would recommend it to anyone considering a new computer. There are minor issues (minor for me, maybe not for you) of compatibility with my Tivo Series 2, X-Box 360, and old printer. So, until those are completely solved, I will still keep a Windows machine in the house. A desktop Mac and a cheap Windows notebook seem to be a good mix for me.

Why didn't they switch to Intel sooner!? I compared my previous 1.9 G5 iMac to this model within days of one another in similar tasks using processor-specific software (or universal binaries when I could) to get a performance difference on CPU intensive tasks. The Intel iMac was the hands-down winner in everything by a significnt margin. One thing was huge: transcoding movies to fit onto my 5g iPod. On high quality, the G5 would take upwards of 5-8 hours (HOURS!!!) for a 2 hour movie. The Intel took 2 hours, or less, for a 2 hour movie.

The only place this thing is lacking is in an area that is not its fault. Microsoft and Adobe need to get their stuff together and release universal binaries for their applications... Oh, and so does Intuit (Quicken). All 3 of those groups of applications have to run emulated - at which point there is no performance gain by switching to the Intel mac. The software does run, it's just at an obviously restricted pace compared to what a native version would likely 'feel' like. If you don't mind Office feeling sluggish for a bit and waiting another 9 months or so for Adobe to release the next version of Photoshop that is UniBin, then this is right up your alley.

I assure you though: only the most hardcore will really be frustrated by the speed loss in those applications when running emulated. Otherwise, everyone and their dog should be really impressed by the blinding speed of this thing.

A recent review of the MacBook Pro (which has the same system specifications as the Intel iMac I'm writing about) was clocked at performing tasks as quickly as a dual 2.0 G5 Powermac. Quick price check... the 2.0's are still selling for $1799 in some places and they don't even come with a monitor or good graphics card. The Intel Mac is an absolute bargain at this price.

If you're a gamer and concerned at all about performance; Doom 3 UniBin that was just released can play at 1440x900 with medium-high detail level at well over 40 frames per second consistently.. which is great since usually one can't tell much of a difference above 30 these days. I've seen reviews of World of Warcraft UniBin that run at 1680x1050 on the 20" iMac Intel at a sustained frame rate above 35 fps with nearly maxxed out detail settings.

This Intel Mac is a definite taste of things to come. It's an elagant, silent (you seriously will have a hard time hearing the fan noise in the most quiet of rooms), and has an 8" deep footprint on the desk.

-Buy it-

We are very pleased with the machine.

Pros:
1) small! It takes up very little room and is a snap to set up (included software to do so is cool too).
2) fast! The Intel core duo processor really provides great performance for apps that are Intel native
3) screen! the screen is absolutely amazing and quite spatious
4) front row and remote! surprisingly useful for listening to music from across the room with the remote
5) iLife is just great...if you've never used it you're in for a treat
6) OS X has zero security problems that are of concern to any normal user at this time
7) can run winodoze just fine. not sure why you would want to unless you have some weird app that is windoze only, but you can boot up your Mac just like a Dell (gasp!!!!).

Cons:
1) there are a lot of great ports, but they are on the back and are hard to get to. having them there makes things look nice though.
2) wired keyboard. it's probably worth getting a bluetooth keyboard and mouse from apple and i wish that this was included with the base configuration.

Seriously, if you are considering a mac this is a really great machine and amazon has it at a really great price right now.

As a former windows user, I really love the elegent, secure and easy to use OSX platform. We bought the 17" iMac Duo and configured it with 2gb of ram and it is just incredible. It runs non native intel apps without a hiccup and flys through the Universal Binary apps. For some reason the 17" looked to be easier on the eyes as the pixles were smaller. The text seemed to be clearer. My wife and I both noticed it so it was not my imagination. It arrived in perfect shape without any dead pixles and everything worked flawlessly out of the box.

Really love playing the crystal clear HD movie trailers. Though the movie trailer server in Front Row is not always up 100% of the time. No problem though, as you can just go to [...] and play them all from there.

In case you are wondering this iMac is virtually silent. The only noise you will hear is the CD/DVD rom drive when it's spinning or the mouse clicking. The built in speakers sound great. I would have to give it a perfect 10 out of 10! Good job Apple, you hit it out of the park with the new Intel Duo iMac!!!!

By the way, thanks Amazon, for the $125 rebate on a brand new machine!

This computer was straight forward to set up, boots up incredibly quickly and was easy to learn even though I've never worked on a Mac before. I would strongly recommend it, especially for the price. Nice sized screen, lightweight, cool remote control!

I just love this machine. After 10.4.5 it's perfect - the way up to the apple standards.
The screen is extremely bright, and looks huge after my 12" ibook :) The system is very responsive (I added another 512meg to a 1gig total). I do run a lot of application simultaneously, and it's very fast.
Office run just fine under rosetta very fast and responsive.
I use bluetooth keyboard (apple pro) and mice (logitech v270) and it works fine.
Also works great with my HP printer.
In short, this system delivers as expected and definitely worth the money