Santa Came Early - G5 iMac with Intel Core 2 Duo

[ChasUFarley]

One of the perks about being married to a teacher, other than free child care for the summer, is that I've discovered he gets an education discount at the Apple Store.

Hubby had a nice little G3 iMac (Blueberry) that looked like it should belong to our 5 year old son. However, the 5 year old would have NOTHING to do with it. Not because it was a Mac - but because it was "the slow computer". He'd bug me to use my computer (an HP Pavilion w/ 1+GB RAM, etc.) rather than wait for pages to load, etc. on the G3.

Hubby wanted something that would work for home recording. I wanted something that would work for video editing. We tossed around the idea of getting a G4 or G5 on eBay (used) and decided that for about $300 or so more, we could get this:

We got the 17" screen with:

Processor: 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo / 4MB shared L2 cache

Memory: 1GB (2x512MB)

Harddrive:160GB Serial ATA, 7200 rpm

Opticaldrive: 8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

Graphics: ATI Radeon X1600 with 128MB of GDDR3 SDRAM

OS: 10.4 Tiger

We got a printer, iWork, iLife, and AppleWorks.

The thing screams online - downloads are fast. Graphics pop. It's super intuitive, as Macs are - you'd swear it has a brain. Downloading and installing drivers for the first day you have it doesn't happen here like it does with a PC.

My only "complaints" are that (1) it's a pain to plug in a USB becuase they're behind the monitor, so you have to move it everytime and (2) the speakers are a little cheesey - but easily upgradable.

I'm a software junkie and I'm really enjoying iLife - lots to play with there.

Nice ride - I can't wait to boot Hubby off it later tonight! LOL!

Edited December 5, 2006 by ChasUFarley

[dmiller]

Hey!! Congrats!

And -- if you have a Mac keyboard, there are two USB ports at the top of it --

one on the right side, and one on the left, and easy to plug into.

(but maybe you knew that already?)

Speakers -- I hear that! :(

I've got one of those old G3 thing-ama-bobs too.

(here's a pic of it from online --- but identical in looks to mine).

A dinosaur for sure -- but has a Panther 10.3.9 OS.

I see Mac is coming out with a Leapord OS, that is *one up* on Tiger.

I envy you and your new *toy*!! ;)

Edited December 5, 2006 by dmiller

[ChasUFarley]

I'm back at the PC after playing with iPhoto and iWeb for an hour. I designed half a website and created an iMove in just that short time - and all on new software.

iThink I'm iTired and I need to get to iBed now...

[pawtucket]

There are numerous USB hubs out there that will plug in the back and sit in front so that you don't have to do the going around back thing.

[ChasUFarley]

Paw - thanks for the tip - I'll check into that...

I'm really loving the iLife suite - we've designed a book in iPhoto for the family back in Greece and we're just going to ship it directly to them. I don't know if it will make it in time for 12/25, but it should be close. They've never met the boys so it's a great way to keep them up to date on how the boys are growing up!

Hubby was playing with Garage Band tonight - I'm not sure how that turned out - I'll have to check... :)

[pawtucket]

I'm not a musician and I can do a lot with Garage Band. I add all the music and intros for GS Radio in Garage Band.

[Kit Sober]

Chasufarley -- Congratulations!

Maybe for (1) you could get one of those usb hubs -- a multi-plug outlet (like an electrical power strip, only usb connections).