Apple iMac Desktop 15" M8672LL/B (700MHz PowerPC G4, 128MB RAM, 4GB HDD, CD-RW drive)

[Archived in Apple, Apple Computer, Products, iMac Desktops]

Manufacturer: Apple Computer
Price at amazon.com: Used from $1025.00

Product Description:

Average Customer Rating:

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Comment: Great Computer, Go Check it Out For Yourself Rating:
I think most people who've placed a review here do not actually own or use this computer, so I'll just run down my experience. First, the machine. I got the middle of the line iMac as soon as it was available (and waited two months, two months too long.) I upgraded the sdRAM to 512, had 40 gigs of room, and the rest just basic. Since then, I have added an 80 gig external drive (for my 6300 mp3 files imported at 192-320 kbps,) the harmon kardon(SP?) iSticks speakers (awesome!!) the iPod, an m515 palm, and external floppy drive, office X, and a .Mac account. This computer can do quite alot without adding too much. I play Return to Castle Wolfenstein constantly on this machine while running the iTunes software in the background and it handles the graphics beautifully. (For those who experience slow/poor gaming, try increasing the sdRAM within the wolfenstein program code-- it runs much faster and better.) Basically if you take the time to figure out how to use this machine properly it will do everything you want without creating any problems. I have yet to experience a crash or serious problem besides a slow floppy drive. If you have a digital camera and a .Mac account, you can publish a webpage in less than ten minutes (even with dial-up)-- it is that easy. iTunes is the perfect MP3 software, with so many options and capabilities that I am always tinkering with it. I have a dial-up connection so I don't often do much with internet movies and never believed in downloading music, so no problems there. Now that there are mac stores all over the U.S. you can get a great feeling for what these computers can do from really sharp folks. Even the guy at comp usa was impressed with my machine and was hangin out showing me even more things I could do with photoshop and digital cameras. Do you have tons of negatives from normal film that you'd like to email or publish on the web or even print out at your leisure, or create a movie or slideshow or book? You can do all of this with great ease (and a scanner that scans film- probably the better alternative for digital cameras since film will always be better quality) on this machine. Every program is intuitive and easy to use, I have figured out how to do everything on this computer without ever opening any software manual (and maybe asking help maybe 3 times total.) Apple is definitely a company to partner with for your computing needs 'cause everything is intuitive, easy to use and they've taken care of it before you find a problem. Check it out, you'll be happy you did.

Last thing: If I hadn't already waited six months to find out what Apple might possibly release Jan. '02 just so I could get the overhauled iMac instead of the old box forms, and was going to buy one today, I WOULD DEFINITELY SAVE MY MONEY FOR THE 17" beauty with DVD and CD burning capabilities!! Drool...

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Comment: A great all around computer Rating:
I really love my IMAC. The good looks are obvious, the operating system is wonderful. I enjoy using it everyday. I have several Mac's. Two at home and 5 in my practice running the business.
I noticed one very bad review, where slowness of the OS was a serious problem for the writter. I'm sure if that fellow had bothered to keep up-to-date with OS updates (10, and 10.1 were slow), he's be using OS 10.1.5, like all the rest of us and loving the speed, beauty, and utility of the this OS. And with 10.2 (which Amazon sells, so you can buy it at the same time) being released in a few days. There is no way anyone would be able to say any windows operating system is superior to OS 10.1.5 or greater.
In short,will all windows people enjoy the change to the Mac OS? Of coarse not; we all resist change, and it's more comfortable to stay with what we have and thoroughly understand. But the people who open their minds to change will be rewarded by a superior system. My computer has been on with a number of programs open and running with out a single crash for many months. And I have never in 8 yrs had to reload an operating system EVER...

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Comment: No good for games Rating:
I bought my iMac just a few months ago with the expectation that I would get a few good years of use out of it. Instead with the very first game I installed (Warcraft Reign Of Chaos) I found I couldn't run it a the top quality settings. Oh the game will run, but I found the best I could get out of Allied Assault was vastly inferior to what my friends could get out of their PCs. It was embarrasing. It appears that the problem is not the CPU speed, but the graphics. This iMac comes with built in nVIDIA GeForce2 MX video card. This card does not support all of the latest video standard. To get that you have to get a computer with a new ATI or nVIDIA graphics cards. Apple sells systems like this, but they cost twice as much as this computer. Now the insulting part is that the new graphics cards only cost about fifty bucks more! Apple could easily put better graphics in this iMac, but then it would be as good it's more expensive offerings. Other than that I have enjoyed my system. I find it works great for ripping MP3s and surfing the web. It just burns me up that the day it arrived at my house it was unable to run at least one new game at the top settings. Was that too much to ask? Now I just have years of even worse gaming performance to look forward too.

Posted at November 11, 2003 07:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)