MacMost Now 74: New iMacs Today

Gary Rosenzweig takes a look at the new iMac configurations released by Apple today.

Check out MacMost Now 74: New iMacs Today at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.

Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary Rosenzweig. Well we've got some new iMacs from Apple today. Let's go and take a look at the specs on this episode of MacMost now. Well as you can see here the new iMacs are pretty much the same as the old iMacs, matter of fact they look exactly the same. They come in two sizes, the 20 inch and the 24 inch screen. So they are the same on the outside, but on the inside everything's been a little bit upgraded. Going down the list, we've got new processors. You can go up to 3.06 Giga Hertz on your intel core two duo processor. Although the standard is 2.4 Giga Hertz on the low end model. You've also have a faster front side bus and you've got faster memory.
And you can get between one and four gigs of memory. Most importantly are probably the video options. You can now go all the way up to a 512 Meg Nvidia card inside of you iMac. Although the standard comes with a lowly 128 Meg ATI card.
And the prices are pretty good. They start at about 1200 dollars. 1200 dollars, you get the basic model with the lowest Nvidia card with 1 gig of memory. But if you opt for the highest which is a 3.06 Giga Hertz processor, you maxed out the memory and you've got a terabyte drive in there. You've got only 2649 dollars which is pretty good for a pretty high end machine. 
I wanted to compare this to the PC world and Dell has an all in one computer that looks kind of iMac-ish. Their base model is a 20inch screen, just like the iMac and their base model comes with 2 gigs of memory, instead of 1 gig and its 1300 dollars. So hundred dollars more but you get 1 gig more of memory. Now you could also add a gig to the mac and you get 1300 dollars, exactly the same price.
So then the only hardware difference appears to be an actual ATI card in the mac where on the Dell you get an integrated video on the motherboard, but their speed may actually be the same in the end. So apple's very competitive here. Dell vs Mac,of course the big difference being on the Mac you get OS 10 Leopard. On the Dell you get Vista.
Now I'm trying to price out a reasonable machine, I came up with something pretty interesting. The 24 inch machine, the basic model, the one that probably ships quickest, is 1800 dollars, comes with 2gigs of memory, a 2.8 Giga Hertz processor and 256 megs of video RAM. Plus a 320 Gig drive. That's not that bad of a deal. If I needed a single Mac to do everything for me, that probably will be a good one to choose.
As a matter of fact that 1800 dollar model compares really well to my Mac Book pro. I mean its a slightly newer machine so its got a little bit of a faster processor and its got a much bigger hard drive. But its a pretty good option if you don't need the portability.
So with these new models out this is probably a pretty good time to buy an iMac if you've been thinking about it. And you can get them now online or in the retail stores apparently immediately according to the Apple website. Until next time this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.

MacMost Now 74: New iMacs Today

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