iMac Intel Core Duo

salival

salival

Registered
Greetings all,

I have a friend that is selling a brand new iMac 20 inch Intel Core Duo (not duo 2) for a really great price and im thinking about buying it. My question is, it being the first generation of Intel based iMac (or was it?) I would like to know if this model has any problems or issues.


Thanks in advance,
 
Hello salival,

as with any computer, there is no shortage of random problems some people have, however I take it you are after the more widespread issues. if you have used your friend's iMac and it works fine, then I would go for it. Any major problems it may have, such as hardware not working, would have been discovered by now.

There were random shutdown issues early on (though those incidents were usually constrained to MacBooks) but that has been solved now, just make sure you are running the latest version of your OS and firmware. the intel iMacs have actually been the best performers of them all as far as I can tell. It's been the laptops that have had all the battery exploding, high pitch squeeling, random shut down-ing fun!

Take it for a test drive -- try out the wireless card, bluetooth, iSight, microphone and disc drive -- and if all is OK then there is no reason not to buy it. I don't own an iMac CoreDuo, but I do own a MacBook Pro CoreDuo which has similar specs and it is plenty fast!
 
Is the price _really_ decent? Which model is it, how much RAM's it got etc.? RAM is a large factor in performance with intel Macs. 512 MB: Don't buy it (or immediately look for a RAM upgrade as well). 1 GB: Okay, but not if you're going to use a couple of high profile PPC apps which'll have to run in Rosetta emulation for now. More RAM: Good.

That all sure depends on how you're going to use the computer, of course. But RAM _is_ an issue. If you want to run Win XP in Parallels, for example, you'll have to reserve some memory for that alone. 256 or 512 MB, I'd say, at least. If you're going to run an Adobe app in Rosetta-emulation, you won't get very far with it unless it has enough RAM. (Of course these problems will be solved by Universal Binary versions coming out in Spring.) Same goes for Microsoft Office. It will _run_ with less memory, but memory helps speeding things up here.
 
fryke said:
Is the price _really_ decent? Which model is it, how much RAM's it got etc.? RAM is a large factor in performance with intel Macs. 512 MB: Don't buy it (or immediately look for a RAM upgrade as well). 1 GB: Okay, but not if you're going to use a couple of high profile PPC apps which'll have to run in Rosetta emulation for now. More RAM: Good.

That all sure depends on how you're going to use the computer, of course. But RAM _is_ an issue. If you want to run Win XP in Parallels, for example, you'll have to reserve some memory for that alone. 256 or 512 MB, I'd say, at least. If you're going to run an Adobe app in Rosetta-emulation, you won't get very far with it unless it has enough RAM. (Of course these problems will be solved by Universal Binary versions coming out in Spring.) Same goes for Microsoft Office. It will _run_ with less memory, but memory helps speeding things up here.
Click to expand...

It is the 20" model with 1GB of RAM and 2.16GHz and he is seeling it at around 1,000. I plan to upgrade it to 2 GB of RAM once I get it.

I will be using it for graphic and web design(Adobe CS2, Flash 8) mostly and the occasional video editing and animation(After Effects, Final Cut, DVD Studio).

I had an iMac G4 800 but gave it to my sister and have been using a PC for over a year, but I want a Mac again.
 
Thank The Cheese said:
Hello salival,

as with any computer, there is no shortage of random problems some people have, however I take it you are after the more widespread issues. if you have used your friend's iMac and it works fine, then I would go for it. Any major problems it may have, such as hardware not working, would have been discovered by now.

There were random shutdown issues early on (though those incidents were usually constrained to MacBooks) but that has been solved now, just make sure you are running the latest version of your OS and firmware. the intel iMacs have actually been the best performers of them all as far as I can tell. It's been the laptops that have had all the battery exploding, high pitch squeeling, random shut down-ing fun!

Take it for a test drive -- try out the wireless card, bluetooth, iSight, microphone and disc drive -- and if all is OK then there is no reason not to buy it. I don't own an iMac CoreDuo, but I do own a MacBook Pro CoreDuo which has similar specs and it is plenty fast!
Click to expand...

Well, the iMac is brand new, he only opened it to run Software update on it and it all went fine, everything seems to work fine. What I wanted to know was those wide spread issues you mentioned. Yet, I have owned three iMacs (the first 233 G3, the G4 400 DVD and the G4 800 15") and they all worked fine, so this one should be no exception.
 
salival said:
It is the 20" model with 1GB of RAM and 2.16GHz and he is seeling it at around 1,000. I plan to upgrade it to 2 GB of RAM once I get it.

I will be using it for graphic and web design(Adobe CS2, Flash 8) mostly and the occasional video editing and animation(After Effects, Final Cut, DVD Studio).

I had an iMac G4 800 but gave it to my sister and have been using a PC for over a year, but I want a Mac again.
Click to expand...

*coughs*

Can I buy it?
 
Thanks for all the comments. I got it and have it at home now, transfering all my files from the PC and running Software Update.

I'll comment later on how thing go after I have used it for a while.
 
salival said:
Thanks for all the comments. I got it and have it at home now, transfering all my files from the PC and running Software Update.

I'll comment later on how thing go after I have used it for a while.
Click to expand...

Congratulations! Consider that even the Core Duo is still a capable processor. My wife has the same processor on a Dell Inspiron E1705 and it's quite snappy, even it if IS running Windows. ;)

I hope that it all goes well for you with the new purchase. I'm pretty sure it will. :)
 
nixgeek said:
I hope that it all goes well for you with the new purchase. I'm pretty sure it will. :)
Click to expand...

And well it has gone! I have tested practically everything: bluethooth, ethernet, dvd, front row, isight, mighty mouse, the ports, etc. All works as it is intended to be. The machine is also insanely fast and everything moves fluidly. I'm taking it to 2GB of ram soon. I'm also really liking the Bluetooth, since I had never used it before, it is so easy to set up and use.

Another thing, this iMac is GORGEOUS. I have owned three iMacs previously, one of each design and this one is by far the best iMac design ever.

Im not sure what was on my mind when I switched to Windows...
 
If I've got a word of caution it is about trying to run Windows on the Mac machine - I have got the same model, and running windows is just not viable - it crashes all the time, and is very, very, very, very, very slow.

It might be just a RAM issue (I have 1GB), or my own incompetence (very likely...). But I have now disabled Windows and will not use it on the Mac again. Luckily I do also have a PC if I want to run Windows things.

Cheers


David
 
hills david said:
If I've got a word of caution it is about trying to run Windows on the Mac machine - I have got the same model, and running windows is just not viable - it crashes all the time, and is very, very, very, very, very slow.

It might be just a RAM issue (I have 1GB), or my own incompetence (very likely...). But I have now disabled Windows and will not use it on the Mac again. Luckily I do also have a PC if I want to run Windows things.

Cheers


David
Click to expand...

Well, I have not tried BootCamp yet, but I have Parallels intalled and tried running Windows XP Pro in it and it runs at native speed. My iMac runs Windows faster than any of the PCs that are in the house. The ironoy nearly killed me. The best PC is a Mac.

lol
 
Good on you - glad it is working for you.

The software I tried was called 'Virtual PC for Mac" (it came bundled with something else, and I thought I would give it a try). It was a total failure - I did manage to get "Minesweeper" for Windows working, but that was all (and it took a long time, and crashed a lot, even to get Minesweeper happeing).

Trying to run any other Windows software using Virtual PC just led to crashes, freezes and EXTREME slowness, so I gave it up as a bad job. Maybe the packages you have mentioned would be better.

Happy new year from Australia

David
 
hills david said:
Good on you - glad it is working for you.

The software I tried was called 'Virtual PC for Mac" (it came bundled with something else, and I thought I would give it a try). It was a total failure - I did manage to get "Minesweeper" for Windows working, but that was all (and it took a long time, and crashed a lot, even to get Minesweeper happeing).

Trying to run any other Windows software using Virtual PC just led to crashes, freezes and EXTREME slowness, so I gave it up as a bad job. Maybe the packages you have mentioned would be better.

Happy new year from Australia

David
Click to expand...

That's bloody brilliant!!!!

You were actually EMULATING an EMULATOR. Virtual PC was made for the PPC processor, not an Intel processor. Wow. So, you were -quite ironically- emulating Minesweeper, twice!

:)
 
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