Geez, I was going to atleast get the damn thing before I posted about it!
Thanks Leonis! Betrayed by a fellow Canuck, I don't believe it...
Here's the deal. iMacs in Canada? From the sounds of things, they're a couple of weeks away. I really need a Mac NOW for 2 projects I have waiting. Just can't sit around and wait any longer.
I spent the day evaluating what I want from my new Mac, what I plan on doing with it, and the performance I will be getting for my money.
I will be spending most of my day in GoLive and Photoshop building a website, and will be spending a lot of time learning Illustrator. I also use my Mac pretty heavily for music, ripping MP3s, burning tons of CDs, etc. I also plan to run a server on it.
The iMac is a great computer, no knock there. I just started to think, if I want to hang onto this new machine long term, maybe the iMac is going to feel a little restricting.
I mean it's got great specs for the price, but I'm stuck with 1 hard drive, only 1 user accessible RAM slot, and I'm limited to 1024x768 screen resolution on a 15" LCD. Not that these are BIG things, but I'm thinking longer term here. I also really don't have any need for a SuperDrive. I will almost never watch a DVD on my Mac, and with no digital video camera, I won't be burning any DVDs. Well, I could see myself burning photo slide shows maybe, but that would be a novelty at best. I do however, burn quite a few CDs. We have discussed buying a digital video camera, but that wouldn't be until Christmas at the very earliest. I'm not going to buy a computer to do something that I might need in 10 months.
I also read a comparison at Bare Feats pitting an 800 MHz G4 iMac against a 733 MHz G4 PowerMac (and a dual 800). In the 6 tests, the 733 matched or beat the iMac in performance. The new single 800 isn't there, of course it's going to beat the performance of a 733...
So, today I bought a PowerMac G4 800 with a 17" Apple LCD. Just kept it stock for now - 40 GB HD, Radeon, 24x CD-RW. I'll probably be dropping another hard drive into it fairly soon, wanted to keep it stock so I would get it a little quicker. The 24x CD-RW is going to be sweet. I burn a lot of CDs, and this speed boost from what I'm used to (8x) is going to be very welcome. I can also max out the RAM in time a little cheaper than I could in the iMac, and of course I can go to 1.5 GB, as opposed to only 1 GB in the iMac.
The thing I'm most excited about though is the 17" LCD. I did have one once upon a time, and I just loved it. I'm excited about running OSX at 1280x1024, and having some extra real estate for GoLive and Photoshop.
I also got a pretty good deal on it (well, for a guy in Canada, anyway). After everything - taxes, and the mail in rebate - the PowerMac and LCD will cost me $700 CDN ($435 US) more than the iMac.
For that, I get a larger LCD which will be great in OSX, a faster machine, room for more RAM than the iMac, the ability to add multiple hard drives, and a video card I can upgrade. (I also get a keyboard that comes black from the factory - not one that will end up looking that way in a few months )
So, I'll have my new machine on Wednesday!
And I'll admit, I had my eye on a 933 (and for a few weak moments of techno lust and processor envy, a dual GHz...), but I'm happy with my choice. It's the low end, but it's still a very capable machine. It's a step up from what I did have on order, so I'm happy about that.
Oh, and the real kicker here was my wife! She shocked me yesterday. I was telling her that I was thinking of going with a tower and LCD and her eyes lit up. She said "Well, I wasn't going to say anything because you sounded so excited, but I never did like that iMac." <img src="graemlins/surprised.gif" border="0" alt="[Surprised]" /> Turns out she likes the look of a Quicksilver and LCD much more than the iMac. Man, I never would have thought - figured it was a chick computer for sure!
So, I'm going to be humming along nicely on a new PowerMac in 2 days. I'm sure none of you are going to be too excited to see a PowerMac and 17" Studio Display setup, but I still plan on photographing the "birth", and putting an album of it online. It'll be exciting for me, anyway!
Oh, and I still have 1 iMac on order. I get good pricing at a local dealer here, so I've got one on order for a friend. I'm hoping it doesn't get here until after Feb 24, because he's on holidays from then to March 10! I'll still get a good week then to play with it.
Thinking about the future?? Planful execution of ideas?? Resisting 'techno-lust'?? Who are you and what have you done with murbot??? I hope you like the set up! It sounds great.
In Murbot's own dictionary there are NO such words or phrases as "future" "think about long term" "good enough for my need" "will last for years" and so on
I was busy convincing my wife that we needed an iMac 800 when I discovered she too was not too keen on the whole luxo lamp thing and wanted me to have QS733...bought is Saturday and moved my 7200 Deathstar 15GB IBM drive from my Umax C500 and bumped up the ram to 256 with a 49CAD stick from Costco (hid it under the Dole Jello fruit cups and toilet paper in the cart).
I love this computer wven though there was no LCD for me this time. Partitioned 15 GB into two and put X on one 9.2 on other and on 40 Maxtor 5400 put a combined osx/9.2 with most of my apps and all archives. This keeps the X partition to about 1GB of 7 used...is this enough for the VM to run well?
Going from 128 to 256 brought most program launches down to 1 or 2 bounces.
Big step up from G3 400 on 40mhz bus. Just love X. QS733 hit the right price point for us and probably 3 - 5 years of flexibility (I do not switch out macs as often as Murbot obviously) as I like to add stuff over time
<strong>I was busy convincing my wife that we needed an iMac 800 when I discovered she too was not too keen on the whole luxo lamp thing and wanted me to have QS733...bought is Saturday and moved my 7200 Deathstar 15GB IBM drive from my Umax C500 and bumped up the ram to 256 with a 49CAD stick from Costco (hid it under the Dole Jello fruit cups and toilet paper in the cart).
</strong><hr></blockquote>
<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> i'll have to try that
you'll be fine with vm, swap files come in 80mb icremens- on my g3 450 256 after a few days of use it creates a new swap file... my swap file are on a seperate partition, 160mb one, now i wish it was more because every few days i have to restart not cuz of a crash but because i'm running out of room on the partition! next time ill bump it up... 3GB wile be FINE, however you'll find that 512 will run osx faster on that hardware- at least when the load gets hard.
edit- my girlfriend hates the imac, and only kinda likes the ibook- she really likes the TiBook and cin display, she's got quite an eye
In six months, when you inevitably decide to sell this machine, I want to know about it. Of course you're probably used to over-valued ebay bids from clueless Texans by now, so I probably don't have a shot at your used machine, but if you do decide to sell, I wanna know.
Comments
Wait! I will let him tell you guys.
Personally I think he is doing the right thing.
Mat
<img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />
but if, "dude, you're gettin' a Dell", i will be sad
Geez, I was going to atleast get the damn thing before I posted about it!
Thanks Leonis! Betrayed by a fellow Canuck, I don't believe it...
Here's the deal. iMacs in Canada? From the sounds of things, they're a couple of weeks away. I really need a Mac NOW for 2 projects I have waiting. Just can't sit around and wait any longer.
I spent the day evaluating what I want from my new Mac, what I plan on doing with it, and the performance I will be getting for my money.
I will be spending most of my day in GoLive and Photoshop building a website, and will be spending a lot of time learning Illustrator. I also use my Mac pretty heavily for music, ripping MP3s, burning tons of CDs, etc. I also plan to run a server on it.
The iMac is a great computer, no knock there. I just started to think, if I want to hang onto this new machine long term, maybe the iMac is going to feel a little restricting.
I mean it's got great specs for the price, but I'm stuck with 1 hard drive, only 1 user accessible RAM slot, and I'm limited to 1024x768 screen resolution on a 15" LCD. Not that these are BIG things, but I'm thinking longer term here. I also really don't have any need for a SuperDrive. I will almost never watch a DVD on my Mac, and with no digital video camera, I won't be burning any DVDs. Well, I could see myself burning photo slide shows maybe, but that would be a novelty at best. I do however, burn quite a few CDs. We have discussed buying a digital video camera, but that wouldn't be until Christmas at the very earliest. I'm not going to buy a computer to do something that I might need in 10 months.
I also read a comparison at Bare Feats pitting an 800 MHz G4 iMac against a 733 MHz G4 PowerMac (and a dual 800). In the 6 tests, the 733 matched or beat the iMac in performance. The new single 800 isn't there, of course it's going to beat the performance of a 733...
So, today I bought a PowerMac G4 800 with a 17" Apple LCD. Just kept it stock for now - 40 GB HD, Radeon, 24x CD-RW. I'll probably be dropping another hard drive into it fairly soon, wanted to keep it stock so I would get it a little quicker. The 24x CD-RW is going to be sweet. I burn a lot of CDs, and this speed boost from what I'm used to (8x) is going to be very welcome. I can also max out the RAM in time a little cheaper than I could in the iMac, and of course I can go to 1.5 GB, as opposed to only 1 GB in the iMac.
The thing I'm most excited about though is the 17" LCD. I did have one once upon a time, and I just loved it. I'm excited about running OSX at 1280x1024, and having some extra real estate for GoLive and Photoshop.
I also got a pretty good deal on it (well, for a guy in Canada, anyway). After everything - taxes, and the mail in rebate - the PowerMac and LCD will cost me $700 CDN ($435 US) more than the iMac.
For that, I get a larger LCD which will be great in OSX, a faster machine, room for more RAM than the iMac, the ability to add multiple hard drives, and a video card I can upgrade. (I also get a keyboard that comes black from the factory - not one that will end up looking that way in a few months
So, I'll have my new machine on Wednesday!
And I'll admit, I had my eye on a 933 (and for a few weak moments of techno lust and processor envy, a dual GHz...), but I'm happy with my choice. It's the low end, but it's still a very capable machine. It's a step up from what I did have on order, so I'm happy about that.
Oh, and the real kicker here was my wife! She shocked me yesterday. I was telling her that I was thinking of going with a tower and LCD and her eyes lit up. She said "Well, I wasn't going to say anything because you sounded so excited, but I never did like that iMac." <img src="graemlins/surprised.gif" border="0" alt="[Surprised]" /> Turns out she likes the look of a Quicksilver and LCD much more than the iMac. Man, I never would have thought - figured it was a chick computer for sure!
So, I'm going to be humming along nicely on a new PowerMac in 2 days. I'm sure none of you are going to be too excited to see a PowerMac and 17" Studio Display setup, but I still plan on photographing the "birth", and putting an album of it online. It'll be exciting for me, anyway!
Oh, and I still have 1 iMac on order. I get good pricing at a local dealer here, so I've got one on order for a friend. I'm hoping it doesn't get here until after Feb 24, because he's on holidays from then to March 10! I'll still get a good week then to play with it.
So, there's my story.
<dons flame retardant suit>
Bring it on.
[ 02-11-2002: Message edited by: murbot ]</p>
You GOTTA love a PowerMac! Congrats!
<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
I love this computer wven though there was no LCD for me this time. Partitioned 15 GB into two and put X on one 9.2 on other and on 40 Maxtor 5400 put a combined osx/9.2 with most of my apps and all archives. This keeps the X partition to about 1GB of 7 used...is this enough for the VM to run well?
Going from 128 to 256 brought most program launches down to 1 or 2 bounces.
Big step up from G3 400 on 40mhz bus. Just love X. QS733 hit the right price point for us and probably 3 - 5 years of flexibility (I do not switch out macs as often as Murbot obviously) as I like to add stuff over time
<strong>I was busy convincing my wife that we needed an iMac 800 when I discovered she too was not too keen on the whole luxo lamp thing and wanted me to have QS733...bought is Saturday and moved my 7200 Deathstar 15GB IBM drive from my Umax C500 and bumped up the ram to 256 with a 49CAD stick from Costco (hid it under the Dole Jello fruit cups and toilet paper in the cart).
</strong><hr></blockquote>
<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> i'll have to try that
you'll be fine with vm, swap files come in 80mb icremens- on my g3 450 256 after a few days of use it creates a new swap file... my swap file are on a seperate partition, 160mb one, now i wish it was more because every few days i have to restart not cuz of a crash but because i'm running out of room on the partition! next time ill bump it up... 3GB wile be FINE, however you'll find that 512 will run osx faster on that hardware- at least when the load gets hard.
edit- my girlfriend hates the imac, and only kinda likes the ibook- she really likes the TiBook and cin display, she's got quite an eye
[ 02-12-2002: Message edited by: janitor ]</p>
In six months, when you inevitably decide to sell this machine, I want to know about it. Of course you're probably used to over-valued ebay bids from clueless Texans by now, so I probably don't have a shot at your used machine, but if you do decide to sell, I wanna know.
Don't see it happening in 6 months though...