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Hasta La Vista - iMac for Business or Home |
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by Richard Meagher
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Friday, 04 January 2008 |
 iMac
My colleagues in our IT department have given up and finally downgradeiMac for Business or Homed
their PCs from Vista back to Windows XP. Like the latest Apple
commercial with the PR lady - "they upgraded to an older way of new
Windows experience". Many companies that have upgraded their systems to
Vista have held off due to many glitches found since its release.
Microsoft is now pleading with its business customers to give it
another look.
Why take that chance? Say Hasta La Vista to Windows and get
a big screen iMac desktop. Right out of
the box - your new iMac is ready to go.
The new thin single piece all-in-one design
with its avante garde aluminum shell only requires one cable and that's for
power. Gone are the monitor and ethernet cables that have snaked behind your
desk and gathered dust bunnies. If you select the wireless keyboard and mouse
configuration, you only need to plug it into your surge protected power strip
or outlet and you are good to go.
Windows never looked so
good
Cannot live without your favorite Windows
applications? No problem; with the
Intel Core 2 Dual Processor, your new
iMac can run Windows either virtually or using Boot Camp (included in Mac OS X
Leopard version) which allows you to boot your iMac into Windows. That's right - all of your Windows
applications that you ran with Windows-XP will run natively in the Mac once it
is booted into Windows even your 3D games.
You can boot back to your Mac anytime or stay in Windows. One caveat is that you will need to purchase
a licensed copy of Windows or use the Windows CD from your old PC if you are
not using it anymore. The new iMac can
run Vista as well as the more reliable Windows-XP operating system. If you are
a fan of Linux, you are also in luck as it can other operating systems like BSD
or Linux.
Dual Boot or
Virtualization?
All new Macs now come with Boot Camp as part of
the latest Leopard operating system. Boot camp allows you to partition your
hard drive so you can install and boot into Windows or Linux everytime you
start up. If booting is not your style - you can actually run Windows while
running your Mac. This is known as software virtualization where your Mac will
load Windows virtually and you can continue to perform your Windows tasks as if
you are running your PC. Two popular
packages are available - Parallels and VMware Fusion. They are both easy to use
and of course require a licensed copy
of Windows and your favorite Windows applications. One downfall to software virtualization was its ianbility to support
advanced graphics for gaming. Now they offer support for both DirectX and
OpenGL graphics, but I will evaluate
these packages later and write about it then.
Security
Blanket
One big selling point about the Mac
besides the fact that it can run Windows and that is the Mac OS itself. It has
just released its newest version - Leopard this fall and I can assure you -
this new cat lives up to its name. It continues to be immune to viruses and
email attacks due to its highly secure and reliable Unix operating system.
Get so much for
so little
The Mac OS also includes as
standard some of the best and highly rated photo and video editing tools
available- iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD.
These applications are designed to work with any USB or Firewire
connected camera and get this - they work right out of the box. If you are a
novice photographer - plug your digital camera into your Mac with the camera's
USB cable and iPhoto launches - walking you through every step from uploading
your pictures to posting them in a web photo album.
That's not all either. All the new
iMacs come standard with iSight, a video and still camera built-in on top of
the monitor and an application that you can launch to capture your face and
apply many effects. You can log into iChat or AOL AIM and chat online using the
camera.
Also standard is a very capable
email program and of course the Safari browser which offers many nice features
like tabbed browsing. There is also iTunes which manages your music, video and
TV episode collections as well as keeping your iPod synchronized and up to
date. There are too many other features to mention but I am sure you will be
tempted to at least check this out at your nearest Apple Store or online.
Recommendations
The iMac not only comes in two
desktop configurations, but also two
notebooks, MacBook and MacBook Pro, a powerful stand alone CPU with a Quad
processor and a mini that requires keyboard, monitor and mouse sold
separately. I own both a desktop 20"
and a 13" Macbook that I can take with me.
The 20" is big and very sharp even though I was tempted to buy the
higher end 24" with its fast 2.8ghz processor.
If you do buy the the 20" - dig in
your wallet a little deeper and get the faster 2.4ghz processor. After you
bring it home - get online and order more memory up to 4gb RAM which you can
save by purchasing separately from online retailers like OWC, MacZone or
Crucial. The more memory you can get, the merrier (no pun intended).
Along with my purchase of the
hardware - I also got some software - Apple iWorks - for only $79.00 instead of
MS Office which retails for nearly four times more. iWorks is very different but does provide plenty of features that
even rivals that of the Office applications. I will also save this for another
time.
Hasta La Vista!
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v4i1
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