06-20-2011, 11:31 AM

I am sure this is said a lot here, but I've owned PC's for about 12 years and just bought my first iMac over the weekend. I got the 1199.99 model from Best Buy on sale for 1159.99. It has the i5 2.5ghz, 4gigs of ram and a Radeon 6750 512DDR5. So far I have played WoW, surfed the net, watched Netflix and played City of Heroes.

I was wondering if I am suppose to physically clean this machine every so often. I take my PC's apart once a month and clean them with compressed air. Also, I am use to powering off my PC's since I am away at work for 10-14 hours /day. Is it ok to power my iMac off while I am at work?

Last question is towards gaming. If I decide to play other games that are PC only, is it a lot of trouble to get Windows 7 running on it?

Thanks, Christopher

06-20-2011, 01:29 PM

first things first, lets get your iMac into gaming mode. To do this, turn your iMac on and let it fully load. Once you do that, go to the top right hand corner and type in bootcamp. This nifty little program will help you install windows onto your iMac, I would suggest 300gigs, sure sounds like alot, but heck, I like to game alot, so the space goes fast. Just follow the directions and your on your way to windows on iMac, once its installed, use your Leopard DVD and find bootcamp assistant, this will let you use your bluetooth keyboard and magic mouse as well as install ALL your drivers for you, wow easy, trust me, its a apple product. Now, onto your next question of cleaning, the ports on the bottom of the screen are the best place to start. Thats pretty much it, you could vacuum the top ports, but thats up to you. As far as leaving the iMac idle, you really don't need to turn it off, when its running in OSX, it will go to sleep by itself, if you look at the energy efficiency there really is no reason to turn it off. Heck, most people leave it on for months to years at a time. Its a iMac, not a pc. Readjustment should be pretty easy, alot of normal maintenance you use to do aren't so much now. Trust me, I fix PCs all the time lol.

06-20-2011, 02:30 PM

Is the Leopard DVD in my box? Not sure I saw that.

06-20-2011, 02:37 PM

Yeah, the small box that housed your keyboard and mouse.

06-20-2011, 02:42 PM

Ah, thanks! I'll try to figure it out later this week. Do I need Windows 7 64-bit so it reads all 4 gigs of ram?

06-20-2011, 02:49 PM

I would say just run windows 7 64-bit because you never know when you might upgrade to more ram and you want to take advantage of it. Its a pain to have to uninstall windows and reinstall over such a trivial thing. By the way, you should have tried WoW on the 27 inch, looks marvelous...

06-20-2011, 03:18 PM

I bet it does! I just couldn't bring myself to spend almost 2 grand. I pondered it! I still have 6 PC's so I may skip the whole BootCamp thing all together.

06-20-2011, 03:24 PM

Originally Posted by Fenanorn

I bet it does! I just couldn't bring myself to spend almost 2 grand. I pondered it! I still have 6 PC's so I may skip the whole BootCamp thing all together.

Get rid of the 6 PC's and just have the one PC that will run all OS's . . . .

06-20-2011, 03:32 PM

Well, I already told my wife that i'm spending some cash on building a gaming computer and plugging that bad boy into my iMac, so thats what i'll essentially upgrade per year. I don't use the iMac for anything but gaming anyways lol, adobe cs5 master collection and final cut studio 3 sit on the osx collecting dust.

06-20-2011, 03:44 PM

I think it was like a snowball. I got me and the wife iPhones, my son an iPod 4th gen. And now this. Of course my PC friends are flaming me already.

06-20-2011, 03:54 PM

Well, could have been worse, I told my wife I was buying a iMac, but neglected to tell her the price, until she found out, of course after the 30 day return period Was well worth the pain mwa ha ha

06-20-2011, 05:03 PM

Awesome strategy, lol!

06-22-2011, 12:08 AM

@fenanorn
Same scenario here. Started with Ipod touch 3rd gen, then to one iphone, then to 2 iphones, then the imac, then the APBS... but i knew WAAy before i had the money to spend on the imac that the next comp would be a Mac. love it all

06-23-2011, 08:00 AM

Originally Posted by Fenanorn

I was wondering if I am suppose to physically clean this machine every so often.

No. This is unnecessary for a Mac. If you live in a REALLY dusty environment, get an air purifier or ioniser and put it on the OPPOSITE side of the room from the Mac (as far away as possible).

Also, I am use to powering off my PC's since I am away at work for 10-14 hours /day. Is it ok to power my iMac off while I am at work?

Yes, but not necessary. Just put it to sleep. Sleep mode uses very VERY marginally more power than shutdown (yes, computers still use trickle power even when turned off).

Read my essay (link below) and congrats on the new machine!