20" iMac 2.0 Ghz - Recommended?

serpentfruitserpentfruit
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
I understand there have been problems with the first, and even some second(?) generation iMac G5's - problems associated with midplane and power supply requiring replacement seem to be the most common of serious issues.



Are these problems infrequent, have they been worked out, and would users recommend this machine?



Thanks,

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    auroraaurora Posts: 1,142member
    Lets just say Imac G5 has lots of history.
  • Reply 2 of 3
    cheapfragcheapfrag Posts: 91member
    My mainboard fried. had it replaced and it worked great. But compared to my new dual 2GHz powermac the iMac is sllloooooowwwww. I/O is way slower especially. I could pin the processor quite easily running a few apps. It is difficult to do this on the powermac. Also, the powermac is quieter. my imac had a quiet but annoying whine to it.



    the big pros for the iMac are its all-in-one'ness. I had bluetooth and an airport express so the only wire needed was power. i used it for music in my bedroom and piped music to my stereo in the living room using the express.



    Did it do the job? yes. was it unobtrusive? absolutely, i had to explain to many friends that is indeed a whole computer. was it wireless? yes, except power. Was it easy to move around? yes. was it fast, not really (G5 1.6, 533MHz bus, 1GB RAM).



    thats my opinion. is it right for you? i dont know!
  • Reply 3 of 3
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    The iMac 20 is a nice little package, in my opinion. It probably could us some water cooling, though.



    Anyway, with the ADC discount I could get a totally pimped out iMac 20" for about $2000. That's not a bad price, considering that a Powermac is more costly and not nearly as pretty (cables aren't pretty, no matter how sweet the box looks). If you don't think having the dual processors is going to make much of a difference for you, then get the iMac.



    I'm probably going to get a PowerMac in the next three months, though. It will have a much higher residual value than the iMac a year from now, or even two years from now when all macs are Intel. Since I go through computers kind of quickly, it make more sense for me to do so.



    In case you're wondering why PowerMacs will have high residual for years to come, it's because PPCs will still be used in the forseeable future for a lot of embedded tasks, and it's really nice to not have to deal with various cross-compiling toolchains in the development process. The iMac isn't as expandable, which hurts for embedded dev.
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