iMac

A few weeks ago I bought myself an iMac.

My primary server developed faults which became too much for me to fix (it would lock up regularly). A second server also developed faults which led to the loss of a 220GB RAID5. The first machine was a proper server, with IPMI, watchdogs, multi-SCSI ports and a huge, well built chassis. But it was only a dual P3, capable but very slow for a primary machine.

So the decision was made to repurpose an existing desktop machine into a server and virtualise as much as possible onto it with VMWare Server. It's a consumer grade 939 motherboard in a 7 year old ATX case, with an Athlon X2 3800. It maxes out at 4GB of RAM, but that'll do for now. It's not bad in terms of speed, but I'm getting spoilt by some new dual Xeon Dell 1950s in work which are stunningly quick in all respects (we're talking 12GB/s disk buffer compared with 1GB/s on my machine, and Gentoo emerge --syncs which complete within seconds rather than minutes).

The replacement for this machine on the desktop was to be a Mac.
I wasted weeks deciding which to choose: a highly specced Mac Mini or an iMac. Both had stuff going for them:
* A highly specced Mini would cost as much as the entry level iMac, yet be less well specced and have a slower, smaller hard disk, and of course not include a 20" TFT.
* I have more than one machine on the desk in question, but really only want one monitor. You can't plug other machines into an iMac's screen.

Anyway, I obviously went for the iMac.
I should have pondered for another week. Exactly 8 days after I placed my order, Apple refreshed the iMac range. I could have had a 2.4GHz processor on a faster bus instead of the 2.0GHz 667Mhz machine I have. But never mind.

The iMac is fast. Although the basic spec seems very much similar to my MacBook, it is much faster in every respect. I suspect this is mainly the hard disk (the display is quicker on the ATI chip, but I'm talking launching programs and the like). Naturally the 3.5" SATA2 disk in the iMac is going to be quicker than the 2.5" laptop SATA2 in the MacBook. But it really does pervade everything you do.

The build quality is excellent. Everything about the iMac says high quality; the metals and glass used in the external construction are solid and really give the impression that you've got yourself value for money. The aluminium keyboard looks initially as if it would be flimsy, but it's not - it feels like a slab of aluminium with good weight to hold it on the desk and good key feedback. Although essentially the same as the MacBook's keyboard, it's more solid. The MacBook keyboard suffers from being mounted in plastic, which can flex while typing.

On the Mighty Mouse:
* It's smooth, no problems with movement of the pointer on screen. The tracking is high quality.
* It feels very plasticky, because it is.
* The ball - the replacement for the wheel - is excellent! 2D scrolling is well implemented.
* Touch sensitive buttons: left clicks work fine. Middle clicks (on the ball) work fine. Right clicks can be very awkward - you must remove your fingers from the left side of the mouse completely. As a one button mouse, it's good, but the touch sensitive top needs work.
* Side squeeze buttons: do not work as advertised. Apparently, you should press both together to activate. Not on mine. If either are pressed a click is registered. They are very sensitive and right under my fingers, so I found myself sending spurious clicks constantly. If you really did have to squeeze both, it'd be fine. Maybe my mouse is broken? Anyway, the buttons are disabled in System Preferences.
* You can't hold both left and right buttons down together. This is a problem if you want to run (e.g.) an Amiga in emulation.

I virtualised the old desktop PC into a VMWare machine using the Converter software (as it was my mother's machine, it primarily ran WindowsXP). It was painless to do this. I bought VMWare Fusion with the iMac and WindowsXP runs really well in it - faster than on the AMD processor in the old machine! Unity mode, where Windows applications are brought onto the iMac desktop, is good but you can tell the windows don't belong as they slice and stutter when moved about. My mother mostly uses Windows - still :( - and tends to stick to the full screen mode.

I got 1GB RAM in the machine, Apple's costs for upgrades were very high at the time. I bought 4GB from work, using the free Apple SODIMM to bring my MacBook up to 2GB. I obviously don't push my Macs much as the only place I see a difference is in VMWare, where obviously two operating systems fighting over the same 1GB of RAM will cause swapping and slowdown.

So, my opinion of the iMac? Given that I've always built my own PCs and work at a company which has a strict "no Macs" policy (I've even inadvertently had companies switch from Mac or Linux servers to Windows 2003 - I hate that I am now part of the problem)?

Buy one. They are flippin' great.

But a caveat: my servers still run Gentoo, or FreeBSD, CentOS, Mandriva, ... :-)