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Finally, the long awaited iMac review.
First impressions At Christmas last year, I bought myself a new iMac Rev B computer. Since my previous home computer was an LC III, and my current work computer is a Power Macintosh 7220 (the Asian name for the 4400), my immediate impression on taking it out of the box was its speed. The second impression was how impressive the display was. While I found the old 640x480x256 top resolution of the LC III's monitor a little limiting, and was quite used to the 17 inch screen of my work's 1710 monitor, I found the "measly" 15 inch screen of the iMac quite usable. The added real estate of the iMac's middle resolution of 800x600 was more then enough for my home usage. The 1024x768 resolution displays things too small for detailed work, but is still quite usable, it is in fact my favored resolution for any game that supports it. The 640x480 resolution seems very large on an iMac, and is especially noticeably so when games switch to it. The primary reason for the purchase of a new computer for me was that lots of programs were simply no longer available for my old 68K Mac, the prime culprits of this being games. The iMac has been able to handle all games I have thrown at it so far, including Quake, Unreal and Future Cop, where the inclusion of the Rage Pro 3D accelerator in the Rev B and above iMac leads to some really nice graphics improvements. All in all the iMac made a very impressive impression on me. Detailed examination Ease of Use Apple are advertising the iMac as the easiest to use computer ever, and with its all in one enclosure, USB interface and Mac OS 8.5 operating system the computer definitely looks like it deserves this title. Setting up the hardware of the computer is as easy to do as the advertisements suggest, you literally plug in as little as four cables (mouse into keyboard, keyboard into computer, modem or Ethernet into computer and finally power) and turn it on (though there is almost no way the boy, even with the help of a dog, could have lifted the computer onto the table. It weighs as much as a similarly sized TV.) The Mac OS setup assistant then runs and walks you through the basics of setting up you computer, including setting your location, time and other preferences. You are then asked if you would like to connect to the Internet and, as long as you use the included Internet provider, are onto the Internet in about 10 minutes. |
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