I’m a Mac AND a PC

As you may know already, I recently purchased an iMac. It arrived this past Thursday and I’ve been waiting to post about my experiences until I had lived with my new friend for a few days.

I’m no stranger to the Macintosh – I was once a “die-hard Mac guy” – in fact, during my college days, I was a downright rabid ”fanboy”. That was, until I discovered two things – first the First Person Shooter, “Counter-Strike”, and secondly Linux. This is, however the first Mac I’ve had as a “main system”  in – I guess, 8 or 9 years now, and is the first Mac I’ve owned that was faster than a G3! I do still have my old PowerMac 7200/120 in the closet – I created some awesome music on that guy, and I can’t bear to let him go – there are a lot of memories in that plain beige desktop!

A while back, I was loaned a MacBook Pro from my job which I used to get a taste of what the Mac has become in the last 10 years or so, and I really “dug it”. It was as if the best of two worlds were merged for me – the power of UNIX, with the commercial application support of a truly mainstream Operating System. I was able to use that system for about 3 months (although as a secondary system) and I really liked it – it sparked an interest in both the Mac OS as well as Apple Hardware again.

At home, on a couple of different systems, I toyed around with doing “Hackintosh” installs – I really liked the OS, and I got it working pretty well on two different boxes, at two different times, but it never really “felt” stable too me. It always felt kinda like a house of cards in a hurricane – I knew it was a matter of time before something (probably an update) would send the whole thing crashing down around me. It just never “felt right” – it wasn’t a “real mac”. It was like having a Jetta and pretending I had an Audi.

My biggest problem was I had just built a new PC – two in fact (I wasn’t satisfied with my initial AMD based build and sold it) and also had another very decent PC in the house. So, as you may have read in a previous post, I took the two systems, intertwined some of the parts and came up with both a nicely sellable Core2Duo system which hit eBay, and a nicely equipped Core2Quad which stayed here as the “downstairs” family PC (and my CS & CS:Source box).

So much for the backstory – on to the new family member!

Once I decided I wanted to get a Mac it was a very difficult decision deciding what I wanted to get. First, I didn’t have much more than $700 I would be able to spend, and I wanted to get the most performance and “best experience” I could buy for that amount of money. I considered two options - either a used Intel iMac or a new Intel Mini. I didn’t even consider a used, refurbished or clearance Mini since I most definitely did NOT want Intel GMA graphics. There were two things I wasn’t crazy about in the Mini – first was the use of a notebook hard drive. Even the 7,200RPM notebook hard drives aren’t nearly as speedy as their desktop counter-parts (to make matters worse the Mini’s ship w/ 5,400RPM drives), and secondly even though the “new” Mini’s support Nvidia graphics, it’s a low-end chip that still shares system RAM…a big no-no in my book. Even with those shortcomings, it appeared that I was going to end up with the Mini. All of the Intel 20″+ iMac’s I came across were above my spending limit. 

(Note: The resell value of Mac’s have always amazed me – 7 year old G4 PowerMac systems are still going on eBay for the cost of a new entry – mid level Dell!)

In a recent post I blogged about my frustration with Paypal, and how I’ve never bought into the “good things come to those who wait”, yet this time it came true for me. One the very day all of my funds were secured, I went to eBay – into the “Apple Desktops” category and sorted by “ending soonest” and I came across my new friend. It’s previous owner obviously wasn’t a “Mac Guy” or better yet, probably not a “computer guy” of any sort. He had a very confusing listing, and even had this machine listed with the G5 iMacs, and bidding hadn’t really shot up on it into the range of other similar systems. After reading through some answers he’d posted to other bidder’s questions, I determined that this machine would probably work for me, but I had to act quick – the auction ended in 3 minutes…in a brief moment of insanity, and the knowledge that I could re-list it with a sane product description and recoup my funds if needed, I bid $3 higher than the current bid, and told myself I wouldn’t bid any further – I would either win it, or I’d buy the Mini from Apple. Well, sure enough, I won it, and I’m happy with what I got. It’s the “last of the white iMacs” a C2D 2.0 with 2GB of RAM, a 250GB HDD, SuperDrive and an ATI x1600 Graphics Chip. I also invested a small amount into a MiniDVI to DVI adapter which allows me to use my 22″ Hannspree LCD as a secondary monitor in Extended desktop – I’m loving having 3360×1050 resolution at my disposal as both my “old” 22″ and the 20″ iMac display both run at 1680×1050.

First impressions? Well I love it! It’s not “cutting-edge” but is more machine than I “need” at the moment – it’s running very well, even using VMWare Fusion to virutalize an XP and Ubuntu install. It “feels” much better than either of the “Hackintosh” systems I’d set up – and boots very fast (EFI is so much better than a BIOS)…not to mention Sleep/Resume works so much better on a Mac than any PC I’ve ever used. The great thing is – buying used, I’ll lose even less resell value, and I’m 100% confident I can use this system for at least 2 years, and still sell it for more than I just sold an 1 year-old PC for on eBay, and by then I’m sure many great things like SSD’s will not only be standard but WAY down in price, and who knows what the Mac line-up would look like! Even though this system is already a year and a half old, there really isn’t anything (outside of the Mac Pro Xeon powerhouse) on Apple.com that out-specs this guy in a way that it would provide a drastically different computing experience, which makes me feel a huge amount of added value by purchasing a “previously loved” Mac.

Expect lots more blog-posts to come as I learn my way around better – I’m loving lots of the features of Leopard, specifically TimeMachine, so I see a blog post on that in my future for sure!

So, although according to the commercials, you’re either a Mac or a PC, I can say I’m both – I’m a Mac AND a PC depending on where I’m sitting at the moment!