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Archive 2008 · Should I get a new iMac? Im a n00b to Apple

Edgar M
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p.1 #1 · Should I get a new iMac? Im a n00b to Apple

I think its about that time to get a new computer. Ive been a PC user forever, never owned an Apple computer, or even an iPod. Ive used a few Apples from friends and school, pretty nice and I can deal with jumpling ship.

Reason I am thinking of going to Apple are all the reports of speed and stability when using Lightroom, Photoshop, etc.,etc. as well as other progs.

Currently, I have a 3-4 year old Dell Dimension 9100 w/ Home XP, Pentuim4 3ghz, 3G RAM, and the usual big hard drives.

I find my setup usable, but often slow at times feeling like it works too hard when multitasking, especially when using Lightroom. I bought an extra 2G ram last week, although it helped, it is still not impressive.

So...looking at the Apples, the new iMac 24" looks very interesting. Maybe too pretty to be a functional workhorse for digital photo editing? I have no idea.

Me being a PC head, the iMac sometimes reminds me of a "toy computer" that is unupgradable and made for 6th grade homework assignments. But, I am attracted to the Apple rep, the clean lines and decent price of the iMac. Of course the Mac Pro would be nice, but I dont think I can afford an extra grand or 2 at the moment.

Heres a few Qs you Apple afficianados:

1.) It looks like upgrading it would be difficult and need to be sent in, correct?

2.) I also hear that when upgrading, you MUST use real, expensive, Apple hardware components (RAM, etc). Is this true?

3.) What do you peoples think about the new iMac?

4.) Will this be an upgrade from my current setup?

5.) Can you still Torrent, and use Torrent Programs with Apples?

6.) I admit that I "burn" DVDs

can you still use the same DVD burn programs (anydvd, dvdclone, decrypter, dvdfab, dvd shrink, etc.) on Apples? I think I remember hearing you cannot.

insight appreciated

Edited by Edgar Maguyon on Mar 03, 2008 at 12:01 PM GMT

Edited on Mar 03, 2008 at 03:01 PM

Mar 03, 2008 at 01:14 AM

CTYankee
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p.1 #2 · Should I get a new iMac? Im a n00b to Apple

1.) It looks like upgrading it would be difficult and need to be sent in, correct?
-RAM is simple. Hard drives more challenging. Anything else is not possible at all (Apple or otherwise).

2.) I also hear that when upgrading, you MUST use real, expensive, Apple hardware components (RAM, etc). Is this true?
-No. 10 years ago, sort of. Now they use the same stuff as PC. Off the shelf RAM or hard drives will work just fine provided they are decent quality.

3.) What do you peoples think about the new iMac?
-Very impressive actually. My complaints about the iMac is that you pay a lot and much of that cost is the LCD. Also, just one internal hard drive. I would much rather buy a Macbook Pro and an external LCD. For $2000 you can get an older MBP and a good 24" LCD. You then have a machine you can use anywhere.

4.) Will this be an upgrade from my current setup?
-Absolutely...though any Core 2 Duo system will be...Apple or PC. They are much much beter than the P4.

5.) Can you still Torrent, and use Torrent Programs with Apples?
-Azureus, Transimision, and others will do that...

6.) I admit that I "burn" DVDs

can you still use the same DVD burn programs on Apples? I think I remember hearing you cannot.
-Nope, you can't. There is a build in DVD burn feature in the OS, but its clunky imo. I like Toast, but that is because it does disk spanning. If you don't need that then there are many free or cheap ones out there.

PS, a refurb Mac Pro 2.66 quad core is $2000 right now. Great price for the capability you get. It will work with any LCD you may already have.

Mar 03, 2008 at 10:21 AM

cgardner
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p.1 #3 · Should I get a new iMac? Im a n00b to Apple

I've used both Macs and PCs since the mid-1980s in graphic arts / printing/ database development. I use Mac at home and recently upgraded from a circa 2000 G4 tower to a 24" 2.8Mhz iMac w. 2 GB of RAM and an 750GB HD. We also have a PC laptop running XP my wife uses. One you get inside of your applications there really isn't much difference functionally except differences in keyboard shortcuts.

1) You can run XP on the iMac and port everything you have over, then migrate to Mac versions as you upgrade. You can set up your existing PC and the new Mac to share flies over the network, wired or wireless. When switching to the iMac it came with OSX 10.4 "Tiger" and PS7 ran OK on it. When I upgraded to OSX "Leopard" I discovered PS7 was no longer supported and I had to finally upgrade to CS3. That was long overdue anyway so it was not a big deal. I also discovered that Leopard changes in printer drivers eliminated the ability to turn off the drivers in my HP7960 printer so I could manage color from Photoshop. It still prints OK with the printer control on HP papers, but it nixes the use of custom profiles for other papers. There is no solution in sight, so I'm looking for a new printer; also not a big deal since the HP7960 only cost me $120

2) Unmatched, off-brand eBay RAM can cause problems. Matched RAM from reliable sources doesn't. The iMac is not designed as a expandable tower machine, so you need to reorient your thinking if you buy one. I weighed buying the G5 tower vs the iMac and opted for the iMac. It has most of the things needed built-in. The need for using the CPU tower as a docking bay for hard drives has been replaced by better external disk interfaces. I transferred the FW400 280GB Maxtor external I had been using on my G4 and recently added a $280 FW 800 1TB Western Digital for to handle back-ups via Time Machine.

3) Impressions? Compared to my old machine it operates at warp speed. It makes a huge difference when working on RAW files. I ran a processing intensive camera profiling application which took 20 min. to run. I thought that was pretty slow until someone with a tricked-out quad core PC asked if I'd run it on a CRAY supercomputer: the same application took 30 min. on his computer

4) See #3

5) Not familiar with Torrent programs, but they should work in PC mode. For FTP I use an application called "Transmit".

6) Disk burning is built into the OS. You can create a "Burn" folder and drag stuff into it. As mentioned an application like Toast is more versatile.

I used the original Mac OS for many years before switching to OSX and have used MicroSloth products since before MS-DOS. (Trivia: The interface for the BASIC language Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 I bought in the early 1980s was created for Tandy by the fledgling Microsoft before MS-DOS. Bill Gates reportedly actually wrote much of the code himself in assembler.) For me the transition from OS9 to OSX was more difficult conceptually/functionally from an operating system / management standpoint than switching back and forth from XP to OSX on a daily basis so you likely will not have much difficulty adapting to OSX if you read one of the available "OSX bible" guide books to understand how the UNIX underpinnings work.

Edited on Mar 03, 2008 at 11:51 AM

Mar 03, 2008 at 11:48 AM

Mr Mouse
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p.1 #4 · Should I get a new iMac? Im a n00b to Apple

If you switch to a mac get a bigMac not an iMac. You will have a learning curve but should be able to use the machine is a short period of time. Apple will cost you more then a PC. One of the reasons Mac's are more stable the PC is because there is less software available for Mac's and Hardware. Nothing will bring an OS to its knees faster then a bad hardware driver. Now that Apple has turned to the Intel processor we might see more third party software and hardware available for the Mac. If that come to be it may have an adverse effect on stability. Unix has been around longer then Microsoft NT so Apple may still have a better base operating system Apple OSX is a Unix system with an Apple skin peel, shell in Unix lingo..Apple Core Unix.

Edited on Mar 03, 2008 at 12:55 PM

Mar 03, 2008 at 12:50 PM

Edgar M
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p.1 #5 · Should I get a new iMac? Im a n00b to Apple

thx for interesting replies

Edit:

6.) Will these, or similar 'bootleg' DVD burn programs work on Apple systems: anydvd, dvdclone, decrypter, dvdfab, dvd shrink, etc.

Mar 03, 2008 at 03:21 PM

BobCollette
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p.1 #6 · Should I get a new iMac? Im a n00b to Apple

I believe most, if not all of the DVD programs you mentioned are Windows only. You could run them on a Mac, but only if you were running Windows (not OS-X). I don't know if there are equivalent programs that run natively on a Mac.

Mar 03, 2008 at 04:12 PM

Kevin Bickmore
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p.1 #7 · Should I get a new iMac? Im a n00b to Apple

I'm not sure what your total budget is, but I think you would be happier over the long term with a Mac Pro. If you have a monitor you are happy with it will work with the Mac Pro and if you plan on getting a new screen it will almost certainly be better than the iMac one(glossy is bad among other things).

I have a new Quad core 2.8ghz Mac Pro at work for RAW processing and with just 2gb of RAM and a 1tb hard drive in addition to the 320gb it came with. I was able to pound it with about 2k images from a 1DsMkII the other night and it exported all of them(full res, full quality) in about 4 hours from Lightroom. It could have been a bit faster but I think I need more RAM.

Oh and if you want to "backup" dvds use handbrake. To burn dvds I use Toast.

Edited on Mar 03, 2008 at 04:24 PM

Mar 03, 2008 at 04:20 PM

HinduG
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p.1 #8 · Should I get a new iMac? Im a n00b to Apple

Fwiw, the new Intel core 2 chipsets are lightyears ahead of the pentium 4 chips, so yes, the iMac will out preform your current setup.

In terms of 3rd party software, free or otherwise, you can't beat the shear number of apps available for a Windows PC.

As a recent apple.com/switch-er, I've found that many free utilities Windows, are not free for the Mac (ironic since mac osx is built on open source, and Windows aint). It's probably not as bad as I imagine, but it was the first thing that stood out.

I ditto what others said about the MacPro.

Mar 03, 2008 at 04:42 PM

JonS
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p.1 #9 · Should I get a new iMac? Im a n00b to Apple

The open source movement is very alive and well on the OSX platform. For DVD decrypting, handbrake is great. There is more if you do research, but handbrake is definitely a standout. It was actually mac only for a while.

The new iMacs are VERY impressive for how capable they are. I bought one when they first came out, and was impressed. I also have a Mac Pro, and pound for pound, the iMac keeps up pretty well.

Apple computers are not necessarily more expensive then their PC counterpart. The sheer amount of great software you get with them offsets most of the "premium" you pay. Most of the time, they are just about equal in cost with, say, a dell of equal specs.

Once you get used to working in OSX, it's hard to go back to the windows UI.

Hope this helps!

- js

EDIT: For what it's worth, I configured a dell 8-core 2.66ghz, and a Mac Pro 8-core 2.8ghz. The mac has a better video card and is faster. The dell includes a 19" monitor by default. You can add the 20" apple cinema display, and the computers cost about the same. The apple display is light years beyond the dell though.

Dell 8 Core Xeon 2.66: $3607
Apple 8 Core Xeon 2.8: $3049

Edited on Mar 03, 2008 at 05:20 PM

Mar 03, 2008 at 05:12 PM

CTYankee
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p.1 #10 · Should I get a new iMac? Im a n00b to Apple

To echol earlier comments about the free software for the Mac. There are many great apps out there. The trick is getting into the mac community to find out where to look. The volume is not as great as on Windows, but the quality on average is better.

What Utility programs do you need?

Mar 03, 2008 at 05:24 PM

lou f
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p.1 #11 · Should I get a new iMac? Im a n00b to Apple

i have the original 20'' intel imac and my brother has the latest 24''. bigger is better. we both we pc before. just get 4 gigs of ram else where and forget about the machine.

Mar 04, 2008 at 08:26 AM

gillyohan
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p.1 #12 · Should I get a new iMac? Im a n00b to Apple

If you don't a good display, the imac is a good option. I prefer power, but the mac pros are pretty expensive.

A great app for torrents is xtorrent. You have to buy it (not much) to get good download speeds, but changes how you search for torrents. I use Transmission because it's free and I don't do torrents enough to warrant buying something.

I agree with CTYankee about getting into the mac community. You will find out a lot about what is good and what is not. The first app you find is not always the best. You can also got to macupdate.com or versiontracker.com to find some apps.

Of course, you can always install XP or Vista and use Windows apps that way.

Mar 04, 2008 at 02:23 PM

MRoach
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p.1 #13 · Should I get a new iMac? Im a n00b to Apple

Go to the MacForums>switcher at
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=8
and hang around a little bit and check the stickies at the beginning; you will find almost every question you can think of has been discussed. If it hasn't, it probably will be in a short time. It is a very good into to the Mac community that was mentioned earlier.

Michael R

Mar 04, 2008 at 04:20 PM

halse
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p.1 #14 · Should I get a new iMac? Im a n00b to Apple

the iMac may get an updated video card and the Penryn chips in the next week or two, but these will be pretty modest updates:
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#iMac

remember that you will be able to use your current PC programs/files on the iMac via VMWare or Parallels

(the iMac with Handbrake will be about 10x faster ripping DVDs than your PC)

Mar 05, 2008 at 10:30 AM


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