Here is my slightly delayed, but finally complete review of my brand new iMac!

Two weeks ago, I took delivery of my brand new, shiny, superfast iMac. It’s my second iMac and 5th Apple computer in the last 3 years. You could say, I’m a bit Apple-mad!

You could be onto something if you did…

I fell in love with my last iMac, I’m talking serious techo-geek devotion. The previous one I had was a 20”, 1.8mhz G5 model, which I still have and is still going strong. I might try to sell it, or it might become the media centre in the bedroom. I haven’t decided yet.

The system replacing my old iMac, is a 24” aluminium, 2.8mhz Core Duo Extreme model, with 2gb of RAM and a terabyte of hard drive. It’s quite a technological leap from my old one.

First of all, it’s big…considerably more screen real estate than my 20”, around 30% bigger I think. The screen is glossy, the same as my MacBook and I do like the way it makes things look. It’s very bright and the colours are very deep. The downside is that it shows smudges very well, but Apple give you a cloth to keep it nice and shiny. I haven’t found glare to be a problem and I do have a double-window right behind me.

It’s also considerably thinner and sleeker than my previous model. The ports run along the bottom of the back and not along the side.

It is also much quieter than the last one, with the fans barely audible.

I prefer the aluminium case much more than the plastic. It has a more substantial look and feel.

I miss the sleep light, which has been omitted from this version. I liked the way it pulsed, almost like a visual version of snoring.

Unboxing my new computer took no time, as it lifts out in one piece. All I had to do was connect the power cable and plug it in. I also had to put batteries into the wireless mouse and wireless keyboard, but that wasn’t complicated either.

I plugged a firewire cable into my new iMac and my old iMac and used the Setup Assistant to transfer all my data and accounts and that was the only hitch I experienced. The old iMac rebooted about 2 and 1/2 hours into the process and I had to start again from scratch. Had that not happened, with would have only taken 3 and 1/2 hours to transfer around 120 gigabytes of stuff.

When I finally started OS X on the new iMac, my desktop looked identical to the old one in every respect. My desktop picture was there, so were all my files, applications, home folders, even my login photo! It worked perfectly and was relatively painless.

It was actually kind of strange, having a brand new computer, but it looking and responding like the old one.

My new computer is lightening fast, and will only get faster when I max out the RAM to 4 gigs. It was a bit pricey to do that now, but in 6 months of so, it will be a lot cheaper. Even with only 2 gigs, it still performs exceptionally well.

I’ve played with some of the new applications that shipped with my iMac and from what I’ve seen, I’m very impressed so far. The new iPhoto ’08 is amazing and a giant leap forward for the program. I’ve also had a look at the new iMovie, and I can see the direction they are trying to take with it. I think, in time, it will be regarded more highly than it is now, but it will take several revisions to get to that point.

I haven’t had a chance to use the other iLife app’s yet, but will get there eventually. I have used Final Cut Express and Logic Express and both run exceedingly well. I’m going to be upgrading Logic Express to the full version of Logic Studio 8 in the not too distant future, which will give me the full version of everything in Apple’s audio production suite of software.

I’ve also been test driving iWork ’08 and I like it very much. I’m using Pages right now, to write this and I think I’m going to drop MS Office in favour of it. I’ve also used Keynote and think it is very powerful, yet simple to use and could see using it for simple animated graphics again in the future. I’m going to buy a copy of iWork before my trial runs out.

Overall, I’m glad I upgraded my desktop system. I can see huge performance gains already and I really do appreciate the extra screen space. Leopard is shipping later this week and I’m sure it will run like a dream on my new machine.