Comments on: Refurb 20” Intel iMac? Or should I just sit on my hands?

By: Lee Parry

Lee Parry — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 09:58:28 +0000

I’m in roughly the same boat. I’ve been eyeing up the refurb store, but I think I’m gonna try and wait for WWDC, maybe even MacExpo Paris in September.

I’m very glad though to read the positive comments about CS2 being faster than on a PowerBook G4, removes one hurdle for me, now it’s just the matter of is it worth waiting for Core2 Duo/Merom or whatever it’s called.

By: Jason

Jason — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 02:52:46 +0000

I’ve got a 20” Intel iMac, and am very happy with it. Photoshop CS2 runs just fine, with only the occasional (and very slight) lag. And all of the other apps that I use on a regular basis are faster than fast. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that I upgraded the RAM to 2GB, and I would definitely recommend upgrading RAM just to offset any potential issues with Rosetta.

All in all, it’s a fantastic machine.

By: Mark Bowen

Mark Bowen — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 02:51:38 +0000

Hi Mark,

Just to hop in on this and let you know that I just bought a 17” MacBook Pro not long ago. I got the dual 2.16GHZ machine with 2GB of RAM. The RAM was a free upgrade from the standard 1GB as the machine was the 6th I had been given due to problems with the screens on the other 5!!!

Apple said after the 3rd replacement that I just must have been unlucky although after 5 machines I don’t quite think that was true.

All Adobe programs run like the wind on the MacBook. Never seen anything faster in fact. The only problem I do have is that when using InDesign if I try and create a new A4 documentat 21 * 29.7 it comes out at something weird like 29.699696996969 or something!!

Not too sure why this is and no one has been able to offer any advice on this as of yet.

All that being said and done you can’t go wrong if you buy one of these machines as they are simply sublime!!

Best wishes,

Mark

By: Damien

Damien — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 13:13:51 +0000

Sit tight for the WWDC next week – you’ll be gutted if you fork out some hard cash on something that gets flattened by a new machine in two weeks like the rumoured newer, higher powered Powerbook (sorry MacBook pro) or new PowerMac (MacPro, whatever). Happens to me every time. I’m waiting til’ next year to upgrade my G4 PB as I don’t want to run either Adobe or Macromedia Studio under emulation and I figure by then the PB’s available will be well developed with much faster processors than the current first crop and I srtongly suspect the same for iMac.

By: joe

joe — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 00:05:33 +0000

Just adding my voice to those heartily recommending the apple refurb store - I’ve had both an ibook and imac without any problems whatsoever. The only difference of note is that the ibook came in the utilitarian plain brown cardboard version of the standard packaging, the imac came in the usual box which I understand is unusual.

Only heard good things about the intel macs from the bods at work with minis and macbook pros…

By: Dave McFarland

Dave McFarland — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 08:03:44 +0000

The intel Macs are really great. I just bought a 17” mac book pro and I love it. It’s very fast, and I’m not having much problem with Adobe apps in Rosetta, though I’m only using them for Web design and development not for manipulating 400MB files in Photoshop.

One other great benefit of the intel macs: you can run Windows on them. My Mac Book Pro is replacing both my G5 tower and my Pentium IV. I now have a completely integrated mac/windows environment. For Web designers it’s fantastic! I’ve got OS X and WIndows XP Pro running side by side for web design, development and testing. Here’s a video showing the two OSes running together: http://www.sawmac.com/tutorials/ultimate/

By: Kyle

Kyle — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 05:55:51 +0000

I had that whole stupidly loud fans thing back at the start of the year, and I got it fixed by Apple with little quibbles.

Insisting that the tech guy listened to the noise alone for a few seconds led to him confirming it did indeed sound like a hairdryer. When I informed him the phone was a foot and a half away from the computer he decided to call it in.

This was outside of warranty too.

Might be worth a try, but if you’re after something shiny and new regardless, definitely go for the refurb store. If you don’t mind not getting a proper box and the risk of a few scuff marks and an ‘endearing’ history, the savings are well worth it.

I’ve only ever heard good things about that little corner of the Apple store, although I tend to get my savings via the NUS area.

?200 off MacBooks! Just for being a dirty student.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 01:50:30 +0000

I have been thinking, seriously thinking, of moving over to the intel iMac, I am at the moment using a AMD based PC, the only thing stopping me is the lack of finances.

By: Caspian

Caspian — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 06:25:52 +0000

We plumped for the machine you’re thinking of about 4 months ago and despite being very worried it’s running very well across the board. It’s faster than the previous iMac and some tasks actually beats the G5.
My not-very-scientific pre-purchase performance tests can be found here:
http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/imacintel/topic2074.html
Last week my MacBookPro arrived and I’m loving that too. Sure I’ll be over the moon when Adobe releases the new software and it runs even faster, but as we charge by the hour we win both ways :o)

By: Dottie

Dottie — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 10:04:28 +0000

I have purchased a new Intel MacBook Pro and I am very happy with the performance of the machine running Adobe apps. I did receive some advice from a programming collegue in choosing which version of Adobe to run. He suggested that I use my older versions (pre CS) until the Universal apps are available. The programming choices made for CS and CS2 were because of the G5 chipset. The older versions are closer to running natively on an Intel processor. I have heard of others running CS and CS2 with extra RAM and still having Rosetta slow things down a bit. I have not encountered the same problems with only 512 RAM and the older versions.

By: Feaverish

Feaverish — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 04:40:32 +0000

I bought a 20” Intel iMac a few months ago, and I couldn’t be happier. It’s nearly silent, fast as can be, and runs the Creative Suite just fine. Faster, in fact, than my G4 PowerBook. Granted, I’m mostly using it for web design and four-megapixel digital photo editing, but speed has never been a problem. Make sure you get the full 2GB of RAM, though, as Photoshop will eat as much as you can throw at it.

I bought a refurbished eMac several years ago, and it did develop a problem after a few months (a well-documented screen shake), but a trip to the Apple store fixed that, and I haven’t had any problems since. I’d definitely recommend AppleCare, though.