Editorial Product Review:Item Description:Includes: Apple Remote, Apple Keyboard, Mighty Mouse, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Front Row, Photo Booth, iLife '05, iChat, AppleWorks, Quicken 2006 for Mac, 2006 World Book,&more.Apple 17' iMac - This iMac computer features a brand new bundle of software and built-in hardware to further enhance your computing experience. The iSight camera is now built into the iMac for quick and easy video chatting. No additional hardware to buy, nothing to attach to the computer, no cables,&no software to install or configure. Just turn on iChat AV, click a buddy's video icon and you're ready to chat - visually! You can also take command of your iMac from the sofa or across the room with the included Apple Remote and Front Row software. Front Row gives you an intuitive graphic interface and large text and graphics that are easy to see. Slot-loading 8x SuperDrive - (write speeds) up to 2.4x Double Layer DVD+R, 8x DVD-R, 8x DVD+R, 4x DVD-RW, 4x DVD+RW, 24x CD-R,&8x CD-RW Slot-loading 8x SuperDrive - (read speeds) up to 8x DVD-ROM&24x CD-ROM 17 widescreen TFT active-matrix LCD Native Resolution - 1440 x 900 Built-in iSight ATI Radeon X600 Pro with 128MB DDR SDRAM - PCI-Express Ports - 10/100/1000 Ethernet, 2 FireWire 400, 3 USB 2.0, 2 USB 1.1 (on keyboard), 1 VGA, 1 S-Video, 1 Composite Video, 1 Headphone/Optical Digital Audio Out,&1 Audio Line In Built-in Stereo Speakers Built-in Microphone Built-in 802.11g AirPort Extreme Built-in Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) Module Unit Weight - 15.5 lbs.
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Buyer Reviews
Average Buyer Rating:
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Made the switch to Apple Macintosh.
After years of using PC's with a "virus" called Windows, I made the switch to Macintosh with an iBook G4 and the iMac G5 and haven't regretted it since. The operating system is rock solid. In fact, after nearly two years of using both Mac's, I haven't had the OS crash even ONCE. Sure, I've had some applications hang up or quit unexpectedly, but they NEVER took the operating system with it (I just used "Force Quit" and tried again). As a comparison, my old Windows 98 system couldn't make it 2 hours without needing a re-boot.
Yes, there isn't as much software available for the Mac's, but if you look around a while, you can find a program that'll do whatever a PC can do, many times even better.
No viruses, no spyware, no non-sense. The Macintosh just works.
Customer Rating: -
Quality computer
I purchased this model recently as my first Apple computer. Coming from a Unix background, the initial experience is a bit of a mixed bag. Some things are highly annoying, for example, not only is gcc, an absolutely essential piece of unix software, not available at install time, but it is a massive chore to even get on the system, and in the end you have little choice but to install Apple's Xcode tools.
The root account is disabled by default, as are a number of services such as ssh. Several traditional Unix pathnames have been changed inexplicably, for example, the home directory is called Users in the mac os. Options for other operating systems are largely limited to Linux.
This computer comes pre-installed with a number of slick looking and useful programs, mirroring the operating system itself. These are rather heavily biased towards multimedia. It is nice to have a working microphone and camera out of the box, however.
Overall, the operating system is good, but it could be better. Apple fans will throw it in with other unix systems like FreeBSD. In a lot of ways, the Mac OS is not in the same league as FreeBSD, and the inverse is also true. The typical user will get more out of the Mac OS because of its multimedia features while the programmer or network administrator will probably get more out of a more traditional unix system because of the readily available programming and networking tools.
As far as the hardware goes, there's a lot of FUD going around about the switch to Intel. It is true that the Intel processors have higher clock rates, but just as horsepower is only the definitive measure of a car to the uninformed, so too is the clock rate of a processor. The Intel architecture has some key disadvantages when compared to powerpc. One of the obvious ones is the register set. Registers are small, extremely fast memory for a processor. The 32 bit x86 architecture has 8 32 bit registers that are used as general purpose along with a few special purpose registers. The 32 bit powerpc implementation architechture features 32 general purpose registers, also 32 bit, as well as 32 64 bit floating point registers, in addition to a set of special purpose registers. Why is this important? Because in the register starved x86 architecture, there is more dependence on operations on the slower RAM. With the powerpc architecture, the programmer can load values into registers, manipulate the contents of those registers as necessary, and store the results back in memory. This is one reason why a "slower" powerpc will have better performance than a "faster" intel. Of course, since the intel processors have higher clock rates, you can concoct tests that will favor them, but these have little bearing on reality. The Intel strategy for at least the past ten years has been to increase the clock rate steadily and not really improve the architecture.
Customer Rating: -
iMac G5 - 17 in. BEST VALUE
I bought my iMac G5 3 weeks ago, not from Amazon; but from the Apple Store (Refurbished for $999). This was absolutely the best value I couldve gotten: especially since because of recent iPod purchases, I got a $100 eCoupon. (You should definately try requesting one).
Anyway, I got a great, fast computer: and only for $899! I dont know why people would need to fork up another 100 bucks to get a 20" model with only 1.83 GHz processing speed.
With the superdrive, iSight built in, 160 GB HD, and more... I think this is the best value for an Apple Computer available: but if you think you may need windows, go and buy an Intel machine to download Windows into it. Be aware that its almost impossible to find some software on a mac, but takes less than 5 minutes for Windows...
Customer Rating: -
my first apple
im very happy to have bought this computer after many years of PC.