From: Jay Boshara <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Most of your questions can't be answered definitively because they are either highly subjective (fan noise) or speculative. But we'll give it a shot.
I am one phone call away from buying the 20=B2 1.25 GHz iMac with a 160 GB
hard drive for the educational discount price of $2318 (including tax and
AppleCare), and I would like to get some feedback from any of you who
already have that specific model. I am curious about the following issues,
but any other details about this model will be appreciated.
1) Does it make much noise?
Define "much." It's noisier than a fanless CRT iMac, but MUCH less noisy than *any* PC I've ever worked with.
There is a fan. It's very quiet as fans go, but "quiet" means something different to a guy living on his own in rural Montana as it does to someone living in NYC near an airport, if you see what I mean. :)Also, is there a fan on the 1.25, and if so, is it loud?
2) Did the boost to a 167 MHz system bus in the models released afterI've worked with both models and didn't notice a huge performance boost. A much more significant boost came when we went from non-Quartz Extreme iMacs to QE-compliant iMacs.
September 2003 (from the 133 MHz bus on prior models) significantly improve
performance?
3) Is the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra graphics card on the 1.25 GHz 17"Depends ENTIRELY on how much 3D gaming you do.
and 20" iMacs a significant improvement over the previous card on the 1.0
GHz 17" (the NVIDIA GeForce4 MX)? I read a review awhile back that kind of
suggested that the graphics card on the 20" is a little under-powered.
4) What chance is there that the 1.25 GHz processor will be upgradeable aSlim to none.
couple of years hence?
5) I have heard that Apple is currently redesigning the iMac. Any rumors
out there about when the new model will be available and what the changes
will be?
If I had to guess, I'd say you could look for a significant update to the iMac very late this year or early next year. They will have to redesign the iMac if they want to put a G5 chip in it, but I'm *NOT* persuaded that there's a rush on them to do so until OS X has been upgraded to handle more 64-bit tasks. IOW, I'd be surprised to see a RE-DESIGNED (as opposed to "speed-bumped") iMac this year, but maybe by summer or fall the sales will have fallen off enough to justify coming out with a new machine.
The upgrade will happen as soon as you buy one. :)I know it is foolish to wait aroun= d for such an upgrade, but I cannot help being curious.
6) Is the 20" 1.25 GHz iMac much faster than the 17" (viewable) 1.0 GHz
eMac?
BareFeats.com or xlr8yourmac.com would be good places to look for this sort of info.
I am really enamored of the 20" iMac, but the eMac is less than half its price, so I am a little curious about how they compare in speed.
I feel safe in saying the difference could not be more than 20%. :)
The
most processor-intensive work I plan to do is digital video editing with
FinalCut Pro 4 and a fair amount of Photoshopping, so I need to know if
either machine can handle that.
Either machine can handle it, but of course when working with video, the larger screen is the better option.
To me you sound like a good candidate for a refurb'd dual G4 plus a larger LCD. With prudent shopping (for example, buying the new $799 DoubleSight (two 15" 1024x768 LCDs strapped together on one stand for a combined 2048x768 resolution and 30" viewable) instead of an Apple LCD you might end up with a killer system for only a little more than you'd pay for a 20" iMac.
7) What's the cheapest place to buy an extra 512 MB of SO-DIMM PC-2700 RAMCheap is not always a good thing. I've had no trouble from 18004MEMORY, but 10.3 has gotten pickier about RAM and the newer machines probably are too. Cheap should not be your sole consideration.
for the iMac? Apple RAM is too damned expensive, so I checked out the
prices at Ramjet ($129), Crucial ($126), MemoryX ($110), 18004Memory (the
cheapest so far, at $84), Computers4Sure ($97), and 4AllMemory ($95), but I
wonder if there are any other cheap RAM sellers out there that I should
check.
_Chas_
Mnemonic of the Year: ABBA -- Anybody But Bush Again. http://www.abbaparty.com
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