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This being my first post, let me thow out some credentials: I have been in the computer buisness for over 15 years. I am CCNA and A+ certified, and have expierence with a multitude of OS's, website creation (i.e: flash, dreamweaver, notepad, PHP) software. I have used apples from the Apple IIe -> present. Although my main focus of work has been wtih PC.
I just recently bought a 17in intelMac, the 1.83ghz dual core, 1GIG ram, x1600, etc. (im sure many of you know the specs on these machines) The systems that I can compaire this to are:
iBook G4 1.1 ghz, 512mb ram, 32mb radeon m7500, etc.
Desktop PC: Amd 64 3000+, 1 gig DDR 400, dvd burner, GeForce FX 6600 256 MB.
I am getting to the jist of theses systems, but if any of you would like more info on them, please feel free to ask.
Upon initial startup, I was not completly impressed, infact, it seemed slower than the intial startup of my iBook, but since this was my new toy i decided to give it a chance. after I went through the initial setup and booted into the OS, I noticed a few things right off the start, first the screen size and brightness was beautiful even on the small screen (I had played with a G5 20" iMac befroe i purchased this system) and I started off by installing the most recent OS updates. The system did a restart and that is when I noticed a Huge speen increase over my G4, and it even booted faster than my AMD 64 system. next, I installed office 2004, Firefox, and Toast 7 titanium at the same, while adding my 30+ Gigs of music to the iTunes on this computer and surfing the web. It all went smoothly, aside from a small time of lag opening iTunes and Safari, which can be attributed to the program installs. This operation I would have never attempted on my PC, and certianly not on my ibook (although im sure the iBook could handle the chore, it would just be painstakingly slow. ) I ran the updates for the software, and it all worked well. I then Purchased Macromedia studio 8, installed 4 programs included in the package at once and again, flawless operation. (I have not yet been able to use Adobe CS 2 because i ran outtta $, but when i do i will update this post) However, when opening these programs (which dont have the universal binaries yet) I noticed the intel macs major weakness: Rosetta, opening these programs was slower than it was on my desktop, and about the same speed as on the iBook. Mozilla Firefox, again to open it is painstakingly slow (compaired to the potential of the machine) and i seem to have issues with downloading on the browser, the program will freeze unexpectadly (as with many non-intel native apps. with the exception of the Macromedia software.) Then I ran some games, as many of us know games are a good way to give your system a workout. I installed World of Warcraft, Halo, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Doom3, all of which have thier requirements far surpased by this particular machine. WoW ran very well, almost, if not better than on my PC, the coloring was rich, and the textures were beautiful, I wish i could say the same about the rest of the games I install (with the exception of DOOM 3 which had the native patch on it. It looked better than on my PC, but did not run quite as fast.) Halo and UT 2k4 were choppy at best, and it didnt matter if i dropped the res from highest to lowest, and the acceleration features such as Anti-Aliasing, dynamic showdows, Trilinear filtering, etc . . . had no real effect on performance either. I suspect that when these programs become native, then this problem will be resolved. Over all this computer is FAST. It's multitasking capabilities far surpass any other computer I have used.
Conclusions:
- Strong performace, which can get faster over time, once universal binaries are implemented throughout MAC software.
- Not for hardcore gamers, but has the capacity to be able to play many mainstream games (assuming they have the universal binaries are applied)
- Great multitasking ability, super fast speed for video and audio.
- If you use programs like Photoshop and Macromedia Studio daily or even a few times a week, hold off and wait for universal binaries to be released for the software.
(4/5) - due to the software incompatabilities/glitches.
