Pros: Footprint, speed, beautiful LCD screen, quiet as anything, good value.
Cons: One button mouse from hell.
The bottom line: Quality, performance, and ease of use. The closest I've ever seen a computer come to becoming an appliance.
Being employed makes people do rash things. Check that, being employed, single, and without children makes people do rash things.

And so it was that I was staring at the 15 inch monitor of my 7 year old PC last month, shopping around online for a new computer. With only 4 GB of space and a 400 mhz Celeron processor on hand in my old computer, everything looked good. EVERYTHING. Even the eMachines were looking tempting, and having used an eMachine in the past and have it break down, this is saying a lot when it comes to me.

And then I saw it.

The iMac G5.

I stumbled upon a picture of it, and was immediately impressed enough to head on over to Best Buy and pick one up. Just like that. Having NEVER used a Mac outside of fiddling around with one at a previous job, to say this was a leap of faith is an understatement.

I opted for the 1.6 ghz iMac G5 with the 17 inch LCD monitor and the combo drive. I passed on the SuperDrive with DVD writing abilities because I don't have the time and/or need to burn DVDs, and I passed on the 20 inch screen iMac because I didn't feel the extra 500 or so dollars in price was worth a bump in processor speed, larger hard drive (considering that I've survived with 4 GB for 7 years now), and 3 inches in screen size.

The Computer

What's so special about the iMac that made me make such an expensive impulse purchase? Well, the tagline in the advertising for the current generation of iMacs has been 'where did the computer go?', and with a point. The entire computer is housed right behind the LCD screen, taking up 2 inches of depth. TWO FREAKIN INCHES. The CD drive is a slot load type on the upper right side of the unit, and apart from the power cable and the USB cable for the keyboard, there is nothing to connect and/or plug in. If you go for Bluetooth, you have even less...just the power cord. The design itself is akin to an iPod. Simple white with a clear plastic enclosure ensuring that the white plastic doesn't get scuffed up (like iPods are wont to do), an aluminum stand, and that's it. Elegance in simplicity. All the I/O spots are located on the back of the computer, lined up on the right hand side. You get 3 USB 2.0 ports, 2 Firewire 400, 2 USB 1.0 ports on the keyboard, a traditional modem jack, an Ethernet jack, an optical out, a VGA out and a composite video out. The speakers are house UNDER the screen pointing directly down- you don't see them and they don't see you.

The Specs

My iMac came with a 1.6 GhZ G5 processor, 256 MB of DDR RAM, 17 inch LCD screen, combo CD drive (write/read), 80 GB hard drive, Apple keyboard, Apple one button mouse, OS X Panther, iLife 2004 (iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie, iCal, iChat, Apple Mail, Safari), Appleworks, a 30 day trial version of MS Office for Mac, and a host of other small apps.

After one week with my computer, RAM went on sale at a local outlet and I was able to pick up another 256 MB RAM chip for $50 CDN. That's an outstanding deal. Everything I've read suggests pairing RAM in Apple computers- it apparently opens up some sort of pipeline or something or other.

Using It

The second thing you'll notice after the size of the iMac is the screen. This is simply a gorgeous LCD monitor. Very bright, great colour, and a wide range of resolutions available.

The third thing you'll notice is that the computer isn't making any noise. And then, it does. 90% of the time I'm using my iMac, it's literally whisper quiet. No fan noise, no whirring, no nothing. It's eerie, especially considering that I just came from a PC that sounded like a 747 at takeoff. The other 10% of the time? Split between a faint whirring of the hard drive or CPU fan, and an occasional full out fan assault under heavy CPU load. Even at it's loudest, it's about on par with most every other computer I've ever used. How they do it, I don't know, especially considering everything is right there in front of you rather than down on the floor somewhere.

Probably the biggest and most important change for me in going to an iMac was OS X. We're not in Windowsland anymore Toto. OS X on first glance, blew me away. The biggest change in using OS X from Windows is the lack of a Start button. In OS X, everything is launched froma Dock located at the bottom of the screen. All pictures. Put your cursor over, and it magnifies it so you can see exactly what it is. It makes computing idiotproof. As a Windows 'power user' this may not apply to me, but it's nice not to have to worry about things like that anymore. The other amazing thing about OS X is the way you remove programs from the computer. Don't like an app? Drag the folder to the trash can and poof, it's gone. Again, simple and effective. The rest of OS X is very intuitive, and one can tell where Microsoft cribbed from Apple and vice versa. In my month of use thus far, I have encountered no crashes, and everything has run smoothly, especially after my RAM upgrade. Before the upgrade, the system would bog down when 5-6 apps were running at once, especially something CPU intensive like graphics editing. After the upgrade, no hitches at all. In fact, in every instance, the computer has run extremely quick.

As mentioned earlier, Apple includes a host of programs as well, with the two most notable being Appleworks and the iLife suite. Appleworks, as the name would suggest, is much like MS Works- lite versions of office software. I'm quite happy with it and have no issues with it as I don't need all the power features that full MS Office requires.

iLife is another animal altogether. It might just be the perfect selection of apps ever. First you get iTunes, the fabulous music player/organizer/everything tool. I've transferred by entire CD collection over to it, and even at 25 GB in size, it's easy to find exactly what you want to listen to, when you want to listen to it. Or you can just set it to shuffle and be surprised. It quite simply wipes Winamp off the map, never mind the horrid Windows Media Player. iPhoto is another huge favorite- easy to edit, and easy to categorize all your photos. No more DSC12933943.jpg as your file names, leaving you wondering what the hell you're searching for. I have not used iCal as I installed my Palm software instead. iMovie and iDVD I have not had much time to play around with, but seem easy to use. iChat is bascially AIM with some nice features. Apple Mail is easy to setup, especially with Google, and uses the same 'threading' feature for email that I love about Google. Very easy to categorize and store email. Finally, Safari, the Apple web browser- in a months time, I've only encountered one site that wouldn't play nice with it, and oddly enough it was Hotmail, a Microsoft site. CONSPIRACY I TELLS YA.

The last huge plus about the OS X platform and Macs in general would appear to be the lack of worrying about viruses, spyware, or popups. I've yet to see anything. Life is greatly simplified!

Something Has To Be Bad, Right? Right?

My one and only beef with the iMac is the stupid mouse. Maybe I need to outgrow Windows habit, but the one button mouse with the Mac is useless. What's even more annoying is that a two button mouse works absolutely perfectly with the Mac (I've tried it). Having one button necessitates using keyboard shortcuts in conjunction with the mouse- not exactly user friendly. It's the one and only gripe I have, and it's exacerbated by the fact that I can't find a decent Apple branded 2 button mouse to match the computer, so I'm forced to use a hideous black mouse which just clashes with everything. Sorry, I let the inner interior designer in me out there for a sec.

The Verdict

Sure it's pricey. But then again, price out a PC with equivalent specs, and a 17 inch LCD monitor the same quality as this one. Even if you did find a price difference, in my opinion it's negligible because you can't find a PC with the all in one design that you get with the iMac, plus you can't find a PC with OS X, which is quickly becoming second nature for me. Add in the host of useful applications, and the only reasons NOT to buy a Mac would be because it's out of your price range, or you have too much invested in PC software at this point.

Regardless, this is a jewel of a machine, and I am pleased beyond belief with my purchase. Consider me switched.