20" iMac Questions

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I am looking at purchasing a 20" iMac within the next few weeks. I originally wanted the specs of the 24" but decided that the monitor is just too big! So. have chosen the 2.66Ghz iMac with 4GB of RAM and 320GB Harddrive. My question is, for someone who deals with internet browsing, photo and video editing (Final Cut Express) and gaming, will these specs be able to cope? Also, how will the graphics card in the 20" iMac handle Windows games run thru BootCamp?

Any help much appreciated! :Smirk:
 

cwa107


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Your Mac's Specs
14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD
That machine should be just fine for the tasks you're looking to do with it, just note that the 24" panel is of much higher quality overall than the 20" panel.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
20" iMac 2.66 GHz... Running 10.5.7
I recently got the SAME exact imac, so you are in luck.

Oh, and, do you already own a mac? Any mac?


Web browsing, it depends on your connection. Are you using dial up, DSL, broadband...? If using broadband, you have the best connection for macs. My iMac exceeds my standards for web browsing. Download Firefox, though... it is much faster and safer than safari. You get ease of use too. If you were using safari and had several windows open, you would have several pages open. This is hard to deal with. Of course, you could always use expose, but it is much more convenient with Firefox, where you have tabs for each page open. Firefox can be downloaded at www.mozilla.com. NOTE: Safari is included with your iMac.

Photo and video:

As you might know, when you get your iMac, iLife '08 is included. iLife is very fun and convenient. iLife '08 includes:

-iTunes
-iChat (an IM application)
-iMovie
-iPhoto
-iCal
-Address book
-Garageband
-Photobooth

These are all very useful programs. For your photo and video editing, iPhoto and iMovie are included. iPhoto is a good editor, quite basic yet advanced photo editing tools. These tools include:

-Cropping and Leveling
-Saturation and other basic color correction tools
-Sharpness and Noise reduction

It is also very easy to use, as is everything mac :).

iMovie, I haven't used that very much, nor have I used Final Cut Express, but Final Cut Express is most likely better than iMovie. iMovie has some very useful features, such as:

-Color Correction
-Transitions
-Event makers
-The ability to directly publish videos to youtube
-Cropping frames
-Many many more features that I have probably not found yet ;D.



I don't know about gaming on the iMac's (I don't play video games on my mac). Macs have cutting edge graphics cards, but, really, it is probably not a good idea to do gaming on these, and, with bootcamp, they will probably run even slower. I say no t gaming on macs. It will REALLY slow it down. Especially if you are playing multiple games. But don't let this get you down. PC's are better at gaming. It's a common rule. So all I can really overall say is: Don't buy any virus software for your mac. Get Firefox. If you have any questions about this specific imac, I am available for PM. I should be able to help you. Also, PM me if you have an AIM screename, I will be able to help via that medium also. Hope I helped.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
::24" 2.8ghz iMac w/ nVidia 8800GS::2.4Ghz Unibody Macbook::
Download Firefox, though... it is much faster and safer than safari. You get ease of use too. If you were using safari and had several windows open, you would have several pages open. This is hard to deal with. Of course, you could always use expose, but it is much more convenient with Firefox, where you have tabs for each page open.

Safari has tabs too. Correct me if I'm wrong (on a windows box now) but you click file-new-tab. There's probably a command to do it from the keyboard, and if you right click on a link (if your settings enable it to) you can open link in new tab. Firefox isn't the only web browser that does that. IE 7 has it too.
 

eric


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yeah, even opera had tabs, a long time ago.

as gixxersean was saying...
in safari command+t should open a new tab, and you can set links to open in a new tab in the forground or background.
 
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What specifically do you mean when the 24" panel is better quality than the 20"? Is the 20" not very good?
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Al iMac 20" 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
The 20" panel has a slight difference in brightness between the top and the bottom of the screen. You don't notice it after a while though and images are amazingly bright and vibrant.

The Radeon 2600XT copes admirably with games in Windows. I play Call of Duty 4 on near full settings and Crysis on medium settings. Make sure you get the latest drivers though.
 

cwa107


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Your Mac's Specs
14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD
What specifically do you mean when the 24" panel is better quality than the 20"? Is the 20" not very good?

When the latest iMac model was released, Apple dropped the 17" model, instead introducing the 20" model at the same price. In order to do that, they use a lower-quality panel in the 20" model than they typically use. Aside from being not quite as bright, the 20" doesn't have as great of a viewing angle (if you're looking at it off-axis).

IMO, you only want to buy this thing once - and since the monitor is not upgradeable, go for the best one you can afford. If you feel really strongly about the 20" display, I'd urge you to compare the two side-by-side at an Apple Store to see if you can live with the compromises.
 

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