Source: Tom's Hardware – Keywords: Apple, iMac, 24-inch
Categories: Hardware
An Apple with a Vista
Boot Camp
With Apple’s migration to Intel hardware, users have been able to install Windows on their computers. The simplest and least expensive option is to use the Boot Camp boot manager integrated in OS X. Using the Boot Camp assistant, you can quickly and easily create a Windows partition on the hard drive and begin the installation. Once Windows is done installing, simply insert your OS X installation CD and let the automatic setup program install the drivers as well as the Boot Camp tool that lets you choose which OS to boot on the next restart. That brings us to Boot Camp’s major limitation. It’s an either-or solution.
Aside from a few key bindings, the keyboard behaves normally under Windows. The system runs like any other Windows computer, and all features including Windows Update are available. Where driver support is concerned, users are completely dependent on Apple in some cases. For example, we were unable to find a suitable driver for the iMac’s ATI Radeon Mobility 2600 Pro chip. Interesting note – Windows (and the driver provided by Apple) identified the graphics unit as a Radeon 2600 XT version.
VMWare and Parallels
If you want to use applications from both platforms simultaneously, there’s no way around a virtualization solution. Both VMWare and Parallels offer appropriate solutions that let you run Windows within OS X. VMWare Fusion provides a “seamless” mode that displays Windows apps directly on the OS X desktop. Although this looks a bit strange at first, this integration is extremely useful and even extends to Exposé integration. Parallels Desktop offers similar functionality through its “Coherence Mode”.
The advantages to this approach are obvious – in the end, they both run in a VM, which is essentially a sandbox and thus a rather secure environment. Also, you can continue to use Windows applications of which there aren’t any OS X versions. Additionally, you can have applications from both platforms running simultaneously, no restart required. The downside is that performance suffers. A host computer should be equipped with sufficient memory, since each of the operating systems wants its share of the available RAM. Equipped with only 1 GB of RAM, our review sample would be painfully slow.
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You're not the target market. iMacs are not for gamers who want a big noisy box that you can put great honkin video cards into - they're for people who want a silent, slim computer that won't look out of place on the coffee table in the lounge "that just works". Like a laptop, you can?t upgrade the video card or swap the internal screen or CPU, but like a laptop, you *can* upgrade the internal HD or RAM, plug in Firewire or USB external drives, connect an external screen as big as you like etc.
We have the 2.8GHz, 4GB RAM 24 incher iMac with 3 EyeTV digital TV tuners in our lounge acting as our home media centre with the optical audio-out plugged into our home theatre sound system and data projector for when we have larger groups watching movies and it works a treat.
For those who are in this demographic, compare the iMac to other PCs in the same form factor - the Del XPS One or the Gateway One or the Sony VAIO LT19U and it comes in cheaper, faster and better looking and with the ability to run Windows and Mac OS X natively and it?s not a bad choice.
Here's a classic quote from Cnet about the Dell XPS One vs the iMac:
"You know your performance is in trouble when your gaming scores are slower than a Mac's. But on every test, from music encoding to photo editing to multitasking, the XPS One falls behind the iMac that costs $750 less."
Horses for courses and each to his or her own.
-Mart
Overprice + underspec = rip off crappy products
+if you want apple media centre then why wouldnt you get a Mac Mini or Apple TV and hook it up to a TV designed to be a TV, on the grpund that the apple screen would poudce a high enough contrast ration. Althoguh i would still get a Vista Box with Media Centre (or Myth TV with Linux
and keep saving money.
Why do you think XP and Vista run so smooth on MAC hardware.... This is something for PC users to think about.
I got a PC at home and a Mac and let me tell you life is soooo much easier with a MAC.
And as for usability – you’re talking about operating system Vs operating system.
I like mine with a little less DRM. So neither win. And if you don't know what DRM is then go learn.
1. I like Macs, but not the price.
2. (XP) I’ve no love for it; but it pays the bills.
3. Ubuntu, I love the free price. Not ready for prime time.
Well that's not been my experience. Try and connect to a network printer on a mac, just try it... then learn how to re-write FreeBSD just to get it working, even HP's awful PC software does a better job. Try using an Outlook archive, ooops you can't. Try playing a game that looks like it was made in the last ten years, nothing. Try using around 90% of the software on the market today...
If you're the sort of person who hasn't got requirements above reading a website, more money than sense and have decisions easily swayed by marketing then buy a mac be become part of the moron club.
Then spend your time trying to convert others, hopefully this will give you more chance of finding someone out there who you can help you use your 'computer', you know, for when you finally get around to writing that novel you've been telling the girls about (they don't believe you by the way).
pc=(can be)nice looking, works out of the box, plays games+hd video.
to me, a mac is more of a status icon (to some anyway) and a pc is something that does the job. you can get pc's that "just work", and likewise i know a family friend who has had a terrible experience with his 24" imac.
personally i dont see the problem with having a simple cable runnning from a quiet box under my table (a pc) to my screen, its just not that big a deal. my pc is also sufficiently good looking and unobtrusive that i would put it in my living room. so for me, the mac has absolutely no plus points. however...since i do lots of audio work, maybe a mac pro and pro-tools hd would be attractive, but again, mac pro is basically just a pc with osx (not all in one, nice and powerful, does what i want) so there is not much there either...
People are happy to pay more for a well design piece of hardware.. Anyway is not all about the hardware is the whole package that make Mac a good system.. Software and hardware go hand in hand.
read this article it may change your mind.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/cu [...] pple.ars/1
Both PC's and Mac's get the same ram the same motherboards and now they even use the same damned processors, EVERYTHING and i mean everything is the god damn same except for the freaking case it goes in and what OS it runs, so people who dont wanna play games can get a mac it'll make no difference and people who get a PC can pretty much do everything, yeah it doesnt have some of the software but boooohooooo cry it off and go find 1 of the hundreds of versions of the same software...this isn't about which side is better anymore, its just who has the bigger ego...
To use a car term, PC's are generally 'depreciation disasters' and the only way to avoid losing money is to upgrade the mobo, CPU, memory and GPU every couple of years. Fine for Tom's Hardware readers, but not for a large chunk of the PC market.
"Why do you think XP and Vista run so smooth on MAC hardware.... This is something for PC users to think about"
er yeah let me think about that.. er mabey it is because a Mac is basicly entirely PC hardware, in a different BOX. Hell I got OS X booting on my PC for a laugh once.