I like having multiple drives so I can copy cd's...one for the car, one for the stereo in the apartment...
The only complaint I have about Macs in general is VERY small: the lack of a multi-button mouse with a scroll wheel being standard. But considering that I could go out and buy a third-party mouse with these features, and considering I have never done so in all the years I've been a loyal Mac user shows how small a complaint this is. Also, the "hockey puck" mouse that so many complained about has never bothered me one bit. As for removeable media: I'm typing this on my original iMac which I bought when they first came out in 1998. At first, I was upset by the lack of a floppy drive, so I bought an Imation SuperDrive to go with it when they were made available. I've NEVER used it, even once. The "Megahertz myth": Megahertz doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of processor design. My iMac came with a 233mhz G3 processor. It's still plenty fast enough to run everything except Mac OS X. To this day, PeeCee buddies will check out my iMac, and they're always amazed that its only running at 233mhz. This is from people running a 500-800mhz Pentium III system. Complaints about MY iMac: I always hated the lack of decent graphics horsepower. This has kept me from checking out many games since 1998 as I don't want to buy some game if I can't enjoy it to its fullest graphical capabilities. Also because of this, I know virtually nothing about graphic/video cards and what I'd need to get the most out of a game. Anybody know how good of a card this "NVIDIA GForce2 MX graphics processor with 32MB of dedicated Double Date rate (DDR) video memory" is? Also, can anyone tell me what the hell all that means?? Yeah, I know: Wintel dominates the games market. But.....all of the most popular games are available on both platforms. If I was a super-hard-core gamer, I might relent and buy a PC just for the games. But I'm not a super-hard-core gamer. I'd just like to be able to play some cool games once in awhile. I'd like to check out Baldur's Gate and Unreal Tournament, and I'd REALLY like to be able play ShadowBane when its finally released. As for iMacs not being upgradeable: They ARE upgradeable. My iMac has several options available to me to upgrade to processor and the hard drive. Third parties make processor upgrades in G3 and G4 configurations. I see no reason why the same won't be available on the new iMacs in the future. I bought my iMac when my old Mac finally wouldn't cut it anymore. That old Mac ran at 25mhz (that's right: twenty five megahertz) on the old 68040 processor and had 24mb of RAM. It still ran MacOS 8.1 before I finally got rid of it. I really wanted a bigger Mac, but it was high-time for a new one and the price of the iMac is the main reason why I bought it. Now, I'll be looking into getting a new Mac within a year or two, and I'd like to get a G4 tower (or a G5, if they're out by then), but if the iMac does everything I want it to do, including playing some good games, the I might just get another iMac. So can anyone explain that graphics/video stuff?
From being in the Mac world for a while, this is what PC people don't seem to get. Most Mac people really have no need to upgrade their systems for 3 or 4 years. I know people still using 3-6 year old Macs and doing well with it. About the only reason you need to upgrade a PC is to keep up with the gaming industry and their bloated software. Jeff, you said you don't care about modifying your system because 99% of the work you do is software-based. That's true of most PC users, too. PC users upgrade to keep up with Microsloth's OS's and DaDakota's freaking graphics. If you actually pull apart and take piece by piece most of the components in a G4 for example, you'll find that they are inferior and more expensive than in a PC (all except for possibly the CPU). If they can bring their prices down, Apple will be around for a while, though. Of course the better they do, the better Microsloth does since MS owns a piece of Apple.
Multiple drives are very useful and most people wouldn't have multiple CD-R's, they'd have a DVD or a CD ROM and a CD-RW. Makes copying cd's or moving files from one CD to another easier without having to rip them to the hard drive first, then move them again to the CD-R. Note to PC users, the G4 can do this although this iMAC can't...
The GeForce2 MX chipset is an older GeForce chipset. It's basically a "value" edition of the Geforce2 chipset. DDR memory is just a type of memory... they're only plugging this because it makes it sound cool. The average user wouldn't give a flip about it. In even more layman's terms, if you were talking about processing horsepower, the MX chipset is about a 4-6 on a scale of 10. If you want to play games, the MAC platform ain't it. It often takes months after a PC version release for a comparable MAC version of a game to come out. And that's even if one comes out. But like I said, if you're buying a MAC, you're not buying it for games... at least I hope not.
Do they make a sticker with a dude pissing on a Mac or PC? Sounds like a good idea for a screensaver. The Mac vs PC debate is right up there with Ford vs Chevy. OS
Can someone please clarify for me why the new iMac does not support an external CD drive? Sure, it might be dumb to buy an external since all three models come with a burner, but if you really must have the extra drive for ripping CDs, can't you just hook up an external drive to either the firewire or usb ports? Or will it explode? Just curious.
You could hook up an external drive through the Firewire or USB ports as long as the drive had Mac drivers.
There are numerous companies that make external CD burners for Mac that will work with all Mac models. I have one sitting on my desk right in front of me.
Thanks for the reply. As a consumer machine, I wouldn't expect the iMac to be a "gamer's" machine. What I ultimately plan on doing is getting a G4 or a G5 tower next, so I can load it with all the goodies, including a top of the line graphics card and a bigger LCD flat screen monitor. And no, I'm certainly not Mac-faithful to play games. The delay between platforms does have a silver lining: By the time it comes out for the Mac, I usually know whether I want it or not, and it is often cheaper since its been out on PC for so long.
I want to switch to Mac just so I can use one of those big Cinema Displays they have. Too exensive for me right now, though (the cinema display that is).
