Going to the Dark Side: iMac diff between 2.4 and 2.0 versions

[Earl Bonovich]

Well... I've decided that after 11 years since the last time I touched a MAC... to give it another shot.

I am going to get an iMac for my Son.

So here is the question.

For $300 difference.

Only differences I can see between the iMac 2.4 (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8480253&type=product&id=1185267960006) and 2.0 (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8480235&type=product&id=1185267959940) versions are:

Processor speed 2.0 to 2.4
DVD-R DL writting
250gb vs 320gb hard drive
128mb vs 256mb on the Video


Am I missing something else?
On the iMac, is the Video memory upgradable... aka at a later time can I up the memory to 256?
I know I could upgrade the hard drive... and I am not worried about the DL writting... I have 3 other drives in the house that can do that.

2.0 to 2.4 on a Dual Core for the kid.... not really necessary.

----------

Other question... I plan to utilize Boot Camp, as we have a decent investiment in Windows PC games for him.... plus other things.

#1) How truely easy is Boot Camp?
#2) Does the current Boot Camp versions support Vista?

Really can't believe I am doing this.... but he is going back to the school that uses Macs (vs Windows at his current school... they just rezoned)... So it makes sense.

Plus To be fair... I haven't touched a Mac for anything more then a minute or two in the last 10 years.. so all my previous "feelings" for a Mac need to be refreshed.

And you can't beat the iMac looks (Especially in the living room).

[lostman72]

Hey Earl I am happy that you are looking at the Mac. I am good on a Mac but I know a lot more about windows. You can't upgrade video (I am pretty sure that is on board) so I would go with the 256 for the video. The only thing that is easy to upgrade on the IMac is Memory and Hardrive. If you are going to use Boot camp 1G should be good. I am running 2G in my mac and very happy with it. I started using parallels, it runs windows XP in a window on Mac so you don't have to boot to windows and Mac all the time. Parallels works very well. Also with a kids using the mac you don't have to worry so much about spyware and viruses. I have a link to Parallels below if you want to read about it. One more thing the Mac geeks say to run 2G's of Ram if you want to use Parallels.

http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/

[babrewer]

Earl,

I recently moved from Windows to Mac as well. I still runs LOTS of windows stuff, and here is what I've seen thus far:

XP runs much, much better in both bootcamp and Parallels than Vista. I tried both Parallels and vmWare, and chose Parallels at the time. Both seem excellent by the way. Unless you need something that Vista offers, my advise would be to stick with XP.

If I'm just running excel or word and even Adobe stuff like Photoshop, I just launch those applications in Parallels. You can copy text between windows and mac applications - very seamless. Now, when I need to run intensive stuff like video editing in Adobe Premiere, I re-boot XP in bootcamp. If you set it up right, you can launch XP either way, in bootcamp or as a virtual machine. Both look at the same files, operating system, etc so you don't have to have multiple installs unless you just want to. I decide which way to go based upon how much horsepower I need to throw at the Windows application. Thus far, the only thing I've found that needs bootcamp is video editing, especially in HD.

I was very skeptical about making the Mac move, as I have a big investment in windows software not to mention the learning curve. The more comfortable I become with the Mac stuff, the more I like it. As I update applications, I'm purchasing the Mac versions and can see the day when I'll just keep windows around for the applications that have no Mac substitute.

Hope this helps.

Brian

[Stuart Sweet]

1. I would not worry about the processor speed for this device. It will probably have everything it needs to run Office 2008 and whatever programs his school needs.

2. Upgrading anything in an iMac is an adventure which must be undertaken with care and courage. Do not plan on upgrading anything. I do not believe you can upgrade anything at all but the HDD and the RAM, everything else is on the mainboard.

3. Concur that you should look at a product like VMWare or Parallels rather than Boot Camp. I would not use Vista at this point, although it has been done, I know that XP can be solid in a case like that, and how much support time do you want to commit to this project?

4. You have to treat this as a low-end device. If you have hopes or expectations for it as a hotrod, game machine, or web development box you will be disappointed.

5. Do not believe what you read about Macs being immune to spyware and viruses. In fact they are more susceptible, it's just that no one writes viruses for them, because of the low market share. A parallels or boot camp installation is prone to the same things a PC is.

Personally I think it's a shame that schools use Macs because as much as they are nice machines they are still only 4-6% of the market and that hasn't changed in almost 25 years. Why would a school intentionally cripple kids with the burden of having to relearn a new OS to join the real world?

[Earl Bonovich]

Personally I think it's a shame that schools use Macs because as much as they are nice machines they are still only 4-6% of the market and that hasn't changed in almost 25 years. Why would a school intentionally cripple kids with the burden of having to relearn a new OS to join the real world?

I can tell you that one. $$$

Apple almost gives the equipment away to the schools... for that purpose.
So that the kids get used to that and the parents will want to keep it the same...

Problem is... up till recently, the price difference between PC and MAC was so large... it wasn't even a consideration..... And with investiments in software and other hardware pieces over the years....

And I still thinking of going with a PC based unit, as I can get just as powerful of a system for about half the price...

But I do want to at least try a modern Mac... and just simply can't beat the look of the iMAC right now... espically for a high traffic area like our living room.


Oh... as for the software, he is 6 right now... so we are not talking high needs on the software.
The MAC Office, I can get for $20 here at the office, so it is more to have on there... "just because" then it is for any specific needs.

[bjdraw]

Welcome to the dark side, I made the switch myself about 3 years ago and I'm a MCSE by day!

Bootcamp works well and is easy, it is great combined with Parallels which will allow you to boot your bootcamp partition in a virtual machine so you don't need two windows partitions. I use XP, haven't tried Vista.

The iMac is hard to upgrade. The RAM is easy, but even the hard drive is a crazy amount of work. Whatever you do, don't buy RAM from Apple, the priced are much cheaper somewhere like crucial.com.

OS X is really a great operating system and the more I use it the more I hate windows, but it is very different and won't be easy at first. It doesn't matter how great something is if you don't know how to use it.

Also there are great free apps for the mac, but it can be hard to find what you are looking for, check out versiontracker.com and email me and I'll point you in the right direction.

[Earl Bonovich]

To go to 4gb... it was only $120 at Crucial.Com
OR to get the 1gb extra (total of 2), $25

Learned a long time ago... that memory doesn't have to come from the company that "makes" the computer.....

[Earl Bonovich]

Here is another question...

While in "MAC" mode...
Can it talk to a Windows 2003 file share?
Can it talk to a Windows 2003 Printer share?

[Stuart Sweet]

Here is another question...

While in "MAC" mode...
Can it talk to a Windows 2003 file share?
Can it talk to a Windows 2003 Printer share?

ABSOLUTELY YES. I do it all the time. OS 10.5 will not authenticate to an Active Directory server but that's a bug and I'm sure it will be fixed. Previous versions did do so very well. (see below)

To connect to a Win2003 server you have two choices:

If you want to, install Services for Macintosh and share the volumes out that way. This will give you the fastest performance.

If you don't want to, then you can still connect using Samba, it's pre-installed.

To connect to an Mac-shared volume, go to Go>Connect to Server then put the following in the address line: afp://xx.xx.xx.xx or afp://hostname.

To connect to a regular shared volume use the following addresses instead: smb://xx.xx.xx.xx or smb://hostname.

To share a printer you will definitely want to set the printer up as an LPR mode printer if you can. I know this is doable with Windows Server 2003 and I just don't do it but once a year or so. Then you can connect to it by IP address of the server and choose the active printer.

[Stuart Sweet]

Oh and about that $$$ thing, I know that Apple heavily discounts their hardware but so does Dell, perhaps not as much. I know of two school districts here that actually changed from Mac to PC because the PTA and the rest of the parents complained that the students weren't getting a good computer education. One is even a very poor district.

I would hope (as opposed to expect) that school districts, even poor ones, would not choose bad materials over good ones just because of price pressure.

[Ron Barry]

Personally I think it's a shame that schools use Macs because as much as they are nice machines they are still only 4-6% of the market and that hasn't changed in almost 25 years. Why would a school intentionally cripple kids with the burden of having to relearn a new OS to join the real world?

Hmmm this must be very regional. My son's school is Dells and so is my nieces.

Personally I don't see a problem with kids learning on a Mac. To me I equate it to learning two languages. it is always a good idea and sorry but I for one don't want a one OS world and think Mac offers an excellent product and given how easy I have seen Windows boxes turned into doorstops by kids, it appears Mac can be a better choice in a Kid heavy environment.

I have lived a lot in the Windows world not by choice but because I developed software in a enterprise space and this is the nature of the beast. Windows definitely is in a dominate position but not because it is the OS that makes you most productive, I personally hope for more diversity in this area and in terms of Consumer space the Mac is the only reall threat at this point and I think it definitely deserves a look.

From my vantage point... My 7yr old uses a Dell at School and my mac at home and it appears that he adapts well between the two so I don't see the PC vs. Mac as big of an issue and infact I think it is good for people to use both. Sorry for ranting a bit there..

Now.. I got a an iMac for xMas for the living room. I faced the same 2.4 vs 2.0 choice. I went with the 2.0. Reason was simple... CPU usually is not the bottleneck in these days for most applications (Video Editing). Where people usually hit their first performance bottle neck is Memory and I choose to go with the 2.0 and then get a 2GB memory module from Crucial and run at 3GB of memory.

I also got VMWare Fusion to run Any Window apps. One of the things I ran into was Kids Games. Got to be careful... MOst of the Mac ones run on something called Mac Classic which Leopard does not support.... I tried running them through a Virtual instance on VMWare and screen resolution caused havoc. What I ended up doing was installing bootcamp and toggling between the two. Not the ideal situation, but is definitely a workable workaround.

As for networking.. I was very much impressed how easy it was to connect to my XP Home computer upstairs and print through it.. Also was a snap to grab some photos of my windows share...

Earl... I have my iMac in my Family room next to my Home Theater. Perfect fit and I am definitly happy with my purchase. If you plan on using it just for surfying the net, kids homework, etc. The 2.0 will be more than enough horse power. If you plan on doing some heavy video editing and processing the extry hours power and the DVD DL writing might be worth the investment.

Well that is my 2 cents... As for educational aspects... Like I said earlier... Kids using multiple OS environments to me is a good thing. They learn the concepts and it will keep there minds flexiable rather than always thinking there is only one way to close a window. :D

[SP Jon M3]

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/08/10/new_imacs_post_modest_gains_over_predecessors_benc hmarks.html

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/12/20/parallels_vmware_trade_shots_in_mactech_virtualiza tion_shootout.html

http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/20060511/mac-virus-threat/

http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20071025/leopard-faster-easier-than-vista/

[SteveHas]

Earl,
This side is not so dark anymore.

Welcome to the "enlightened" side



:lol::lol:

[Stuart Sweet]

First one to say "I'm a Mac" gets put on my ignore list for a month. I hate those ads, I hate that character.

[Ron Barry]

WHich one..... The one with the glasses? ;)

[Stuart Sweet]

Oh you did not just do that.

[Earl Bonovich]

First one to say "I'm a Mac" gets put on my ignore list for a month. I hate those ads, I hate that character.

As much as I prefer Windows to Mac...

I will be first to admit, that particular ad campaign is one of the most creative ones out there....

Sometimes based very very very loosely on facts, but creative none the less.

[Stuart Sweet]

um, I think a few (hundred) more "very's" are in order there, my robot-armed friend.

[Mindhaz]

An adept Windows user can make the switch to a Mac fairly quickly. Once you realize the menu bar is always at the top and that the hard drive on the desktop works like the start button, it's all downhill.

I write Windows Applications for a living and use Macs at home exclusively. I am not an old-time Mac junkie. I made the switch once OS9 bit the dust. To me, its my linux box that just works. I like UNIX but don't have time to keep up with linux distros.

I have used Boot Camp and Parallels and they work great. For me Remote Desktop into a Windows box works just fine. Of course, that won't work for gaming. I still use a PC to back up DVDs and host a media server for the XBox 360 and the HR-20s. There are mac solutions, they're just not as well supported. Everything else I do on the Mac. I find that I spend time actually working and not working on the computer.

Make the switch. You won't be disappointed.

[Stuart Sweet]

Seriously, though, Earl --

looks like today is your lucky day, or at least mine. OS X 10.5.2 was just released and supposedly fixes the Active Directory problem. I should be able to start upgrading my Macs (all nine of them) to 10.5 now.

[tomcrown1]

I am mac and tranformed from Windows cant go back I am a mac.

[machavez00]

I went with the 2.4 model for the larger HDD. I have a mirror door (dual 1.25) Power Mac that i had networked with PC at my mother's house via wireless bridge. I did not install anything and could transfer files between, run videos, and view photos both ways.

As far as being a low end device, my Al iMac out performs my mirror door by miles. When I bought it, it was Apples top of the line Mac

[Phil T]

Come on in the waters fine! :)

My twin daughters wanted laptops for college. I agreed to buy them for graduation. I got one a Gateway laptop, but the other who is taking communication wanted a MacBook and agreed to pay for the difference.
She took me to the Apple store to look and I got her the Macbook. Then I started to play with it a home and within a month I had to get a Macbook Pro. Now looking forward to getting a I-mac, after I get a LCD HDTV for my family room. :D

Not sure I will ever get another Windows machine for home use. My upgrade to Vista on a one year old HP was a total PITA.

[Earl Bonovich]

Well....

It is done, I have opened the door to the dark side...

So here's to hoping I don't have to find out if Best Buy's 14 day return policy starts the day I purchase, or the day it is delivered... :D

[Chris Blount]

Welcome to the Mac side Earl. As you know, I made the switch in late December to the 20" 2.0 GHZ iMac. First thing I did was upgrade the memory to 2 GB. Only cost about $30. I purchased mine through Amazon so it saved on taxes.

As others have said, don't even bother upgrading anything except the memory. Quite frankly you won't need to. The machine runs more efficiently.

I am using VMWare Fusion to run Windows. Works great and I can even play a few of my games.

As Mindhaz said above:

"Once you realize the menu bar is always at the top and that the hard drive on the desktop works like the start button, it's all downhill."

That pretty much sums it up. The Mac OS is very easy to use.

The only other thing I would recommend is buying an external burner. Inserting and removing discs from the iMac's Superdrive can sometimes scratch them but run a few tests first with your kid to see what happens. As long as the discs go straight in and out, you won't have a problem.

Best of luck and let us know how it goes.

[Earl Bonovich]

I'll probably end up just spending the $100 on the 4gb at crucial sometime in the next few weeks.

As for the burning... I'll probably still do all that on "my" computers in the office.. :D

[R8ders2K]

I'll probably end up just spending the $100 on the 4gb at crucial sometime in the next few weeks.

As for the burning... I'll probably still do all that on "my" computers in the office.. :D

If you haven't already purchased your DDR2 SDRAM, check out OWC (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/53IM2DDR4GBK/). Their prices are usually the best for Mac users and that's where I make most of my purchases for my Macs.

And if you need any assistance, I'll be more than happy to exchange e-mails and telephone calls. Been using Macs since the Mac 512K and I used to do tech support for a previous Apple Developer, SuperMac Technology.

[machavez00]

I bought my 4Gb(2x2) from OWC