My 27" iMac - It's not bad.....

[fluffmeister]

As part of a project I am involved with in Hamburg that involves using lots of maccy software I talked them into buying me an iMac so I can do some studio work from home. So here is the spanky new 27" iMac, so far it's been flawless apart from being a smudging nightmare, non of the horror stories I have heard with other iMacs have materialised ......... yet. One thing I have to say is that Apples packaging for shipping is ****e, the iMac box just inside a triwall, no bubble wrap, packing etc etc, no wonder so many are turning up with customers DOA.

Specs

Core I7 Quad core

27" LED backlit screen

8GB DDR 3 Ram

ATI Radeon 4850

Wired keyboard (I need a numeric keypad)

Magic mousey thing (diabolical to use, hence the Razer Lachesis in the picture)

It's not bootcamped, I run windows in a VM with VMWare fusion 3, and the displayport input for my PC which is now used almost solely for gaming. There have been many ramblings about the input not working, it does as you can see here and my MW2 session on 27" of OLED goodness, you need an ATI Card in the PC though, the only one that seems to work is the HD4890 but the results are outstanding (for gaming porpoises). It's the best screen I have used for Photoshop / Aperture as well, so at the moment I am fairly impressed, and it has plenty of horsepower.

So some pictures .......... macist's will want to avert their gaze for the last couple you are not used to seeing proper mans games running on your hardware :)

Windows 7 input

MW2 and Steam

Edited 6 January, 2010 by Fluffmeister

[vRS Carl]

Very Nice Tony

Personally i think that the Magic mouse is brilliant.

But then i don't have cumberland sausages for fingers :p

I'm still yet to talk the missus into letting me have one. Apparently i don't need one with us both having MacBook Pro's

So im searching for an excuse but will get their in the end. It's all about Jedi Mind tricks

Carl

[AlphaPapa]

Think i just... yep.. i did.. in my pants!

Lovely bit of kit, lucky sod!

[andypandypoos]

looking very swish but LED backlighting ≠ OLED :p

[vRSLen]

One day................

[fluffmeister]

looking very swish but LED backlighting ≠ OLED :p

ooops, my bad

[fluffmeister]

Very Nice Tony

Personally i think that the Magic mouse is brilliant.

But then i don't have cumberland sausages for fingers :p

I'm still yet to talk the missus into letting me have one. Apparently i don't need one with us both having MacBook Pro's

So im searching for an excuse but will get their in the end. It's all about Jedi Mind tricks

Carl

I thought you already had the Jedi mind tricks off to pat

The mouse is great function wise, it just needs to be 5 - 10mm "taller" for my hands. The mrs loves it, but she has got girly mitts

[andypandypoos]

ooops, my bad

either way, it's still looking f'ing good

[Robshaw]

Who on earth do you work for? They looking for more people?

[vRS Carl]

I thought you already had the Jedi mind tricks off to pat

I do. But a womans mind goes into overdrive when planning a wedding and it took me a lot of my repertoire to get her to agree to something im not making public till after the wedding (trust me you will all love it)

So i got to wait for now.

My plans for Jedi tricks are:

Something i want done to the car (again secret plan)

A diff for the Car

A 27" iMac

And all working up to the piece de resistance…….. A New Car - that way the vRS can become my toy :rofl:

[fluffmeister]

Who on earth do you work for? They looking for more people?

I'm a scumbag contractor Rob, but part of what I do is create training video's for the likes of MS through 3rd parties. The guys in Germany, do everything on macs with Adobe CS4 and have some specialist capture software that they developed for the mac platform, we use that for screen captures and powerpoint narration. It's mostly for the US market but all produced in europe, it's cheaper to have me do the screencam's / narration which is 80% of the storyboard for a typical course at home than fly me out, feed me and put me up in hotels. This way I only have to go out for the actual green screen film / recording sessions in the studio saving them money and me some of the travel ......... simples.

They tried an American for some of the narration but his accent was to localised and they found that a brit with my "non geographic" accent works with anyone speaking english. When I am talking I have a neutral accent, even though I am from Wolverhampton originally, I had that accent beaten out of me the first week of basic training as a squaddie

Anyway, this here iMac, it's actually pretty swish, this I7 core on OSX seems to be encoding video almost twice as fast as my Windows 7 Q6600 machine with 8GB RAM. I should tidy the office to take the pictures really, I left the iphone in the pics to give an idea of scale.

[fluffmeister]

I do. But a womans mind goes into overdrive when planning a wedding and it took me a lot of my repertoire to get her to agree to something im not making public till after the wedding (trust me you will all love it)

So i got to wait for now.

My plans for Jedi tricks are:

Something i want done to the car (again secret plan)

A diff for the Car

A 27" iMac

And all working up to the piece de resistance…….. A New Car - that way the vRS can become my toy :rofl:

I am off to the states in August if you want a Peloquin bringing back, I have contacts there that I got all my stuff from when the £ / $ was well in our favour......

[David 8]

You have an awful lot of apple pridocts there, which means two thing

1. You're Gay

2. Your no longer welcome in my house.

[fluffmeister]

You have an awful lot of apple pridocts there, which means two thing

1. You're Gay

2. Your no longer welcome in my house.

ooops (ducky)

The iPod shuffle is Debbie's can I come in now

[The Ors]

can I come in now

You're just confirming his suspicions!

[vRS Carl]

I am off to the states in August if you want a Peloquin bringing back, I have contacts there that I got all my stuff from when the £ / $ was well in our favour......

Now that is a good idea and will bear that in mind. Remind me nearer the time and I'm not joking.

[David 8]

ooops (ducky)

The iPod shuffle is Debbie's can I come in now

Only if you don't mention it too anyone I know, ok

[Babs]

They tried an American for some of the narration but his accent was to localised and they found that a brit with my "non geographic" accent works with anyone speaking english. When I am talking I have a neutral accent, even though I am from Wolverhampton originally, I had that accent beaten out of me the first week of basic training as a squaddie

There's certainly no midlands in there, mate!

You have an awful lot of apple pridocts there, which means two thing

1. You're Gay

2. Your no longer welcome in my house.

Well done, mate! Correct use "you're" I see things are improving in Cardiff!

[fluffmeister]

Well it's time for a 5 month update on the iMac experience.

Firstly, as an all in one computer product, I love it, however it has not been without it's problems.

For Photo and Video editing it has proven to be a real powerhouse of a computer, with the Core I7 CPU chewing up and spitting out anything thrown at it.

The display really is gorgeous, photo's are more vibrant and when in target display mode with the windows 7 box, games are fantastic.

The Bad stuff.....

Build quality ...... IT"S ****E!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So far I have had to load it up into it's box and drive to Manchester for the following

CD/DVD ROM Drive failed - Replaced

Replacement Failed - Replaced

Replacement now no longer reads anything other than Audio CD's (Not got time to go down again in the near future so am using a shared drive from the Win 7 PC)

Display - Failed after firmware update - 2 vertical bands down the screen - Display replaced

New Display has dead pixels - They won't replace as of course it's under the permitted amount

Thank god for Time Machine because the hard disk .......... failed - replaced

Carl won't like reading this, as will other Apple fanboys, but I loved Apple products for a while, MacBook Pro, 3 x iPhones and the iMac but now the CD/DVD has just gone on the swanny again, this is the last straw, I am fed up of lugging the ****** thing to Manchester and should be compensated for the fuel I have used by Apple.

Back to Windows and Open source for me I'm afraid, sorry.

[vRS Carl]

Carl won't like reading this, as will other Apple fanboys,

Back to Windows and Open source for me I'm afraid, sorry.

How Dare you jump ship :o

Im on the Phone to Steve right now.

Im not as big an Apple Fanboi as you Tony. I've only had 2 MBP and 2 iPhones.

Im holding off gettting a 27" iMac until all the Screen issues are sorted out.

Anyway enjoy being back on windows and enjoy the amount of time you will spending patching this and fixing that (although by the sounds of it your iMac has been pretty similar)

[The Ors]

The Intel iMacs seem to have a shocking reputation for unreliability.

Were the PPC ones better or is it just that the (slightly) increased market share means more people are moaning?

[fluffmeister]

I wouldn't call it moaning, it's £1700 quids worth of computer, one should expect it to work for more than a month or so at a time.

When it's working I love using it, it's superb, the reliability throws a question mark over the whole experience though.

[cheezemonkhai]

It just works!

Do not deny the marketing speak. All who deny it will be cast aside come jobsment day!

All hail the Mac.

Beware the evil Microsoft, controller of your systems. Mac's let you be free.

What you can't see does not exist!

BTW, totally agree with you, at £1700 you could have had 2 PC's with nice monitors and a bit spare and you would expect them to work for >1 year each without problems. Hopefully 3.

At that price for 1 machine, I want it flawless for the 3 years, with maybe a hiccup. I certainly don't want to be beta testing a first run of the product.

Edited 13 May, 2010 by cheezemonkhai

[The Ors]

t's £1700 quids worth of computer, one should expect it to work for more than a month or so at a time.

I totally agree. Didn't mean you were wrong.

I'd expect at least 5 years with little or no problems if it was mine. I bought a G3 iMac in '99 & it was flawless for 8 years. I only changed it because it was outdated. My 2nd-hand G5 has also been flawless.

If I'd bought a new 27" I7 and had the problems you've had I would be seriously

[SideshowBob]

I think you've been a tad unlucky mate. We've got at the moment:

12 x intel xeon mac pro's

16 x core2duo iMacs (24in)

8 x core i7 27in iMacs

they all get a 24/7 caning and aren't looked after. So far not a single problem.