Pros: Screen, movablity, price
Cons: Mouse, PC compatibility
The bottom line: Another gem in the Apple line. If you need a maneuverable computer with power and functionality ( know how to use a Mac), then the G5 is for you.
As I have mentioned in my other reviews, I am a first year medical student and spend a lot of time studying. One of the places I do a lot of studying is the anatomy lab here. The lab, like those at many other schools, has augmented its teaching through pure dissection with computer based modeling. To accomplish this, the school has installed an Apple iMac G5 computer next to every body. As I have said before, I am not a technical specialist and as such my review will not relate to the inner workings of the computer. I will only deal with the interface and those aspects which affect every day users.

The specs of the computer (for ease of comparison only) are 1.6 GHz, 17 inch LCD, combo drive, 80GB hard drive, and 512 MB RAM. These specs are fairly current and I believe the school purchased on the high end when they got these computers 6 months – I year ago.

One of the first good things about these computers is that everything is housed within the tiny 2 inch thick screen. This may not be helpful if you are just keeping it on a desk, but it is incredibly useful for our application. We have the computers mounted on swing arms so that they can be moved anywhere around or over the body. With the addition of a wireless mouse and keyboard, the computers can go anywhere with almost no wire tangle. The absolute only wire plugged in is the power cord which drops from the ceiling and runs along the arm and so is not any hindrance. This application would be impossible, or at the very least very difficult if a box had to be stored somewhere nearby and connected via a jumble of cables to the monitor.

The display is the next thing you notice immediately. I have been using laptops for a long time and have been very impressed with the low voltage screens they have. There is no way though, that a laptop screen can truly stack up against a high voltage desktop screen. The screen on this monitor is beyond impressively vivid. I spend a lot of time watching prosection videos on it and it is probably the nicest desktop screen I have ever seen. That is saying something as I have been known to stand and stare at the monitor display at Best Buy for some time while contemplating the pros and cons of each screen. Everything really looks DVD quality on this screen and there is never blur or lag on the screen.

A nice feature, which I believe common to all Macs (don’t quote me – I am no Mac expert), is the built in speakers. This further contributes to the moveable application of the computer. It is one more thing you need in a computer, which normally requires a few cables, that won’t get in your way on this machine. As far as clarity goes, I have heard better quality on my cell phone. The speakers simply do not have a lot of power to them and I find that I rarely, if ever, have them below full volume. At this relative volume, there is usually some distortion and I find myself missing some words. Then again, if there were no built in speakers, I would have nothing to listen to and would have to have headphones with me at all times. But then, the ubiquitous iPod has ensured that everyone always has a pair of headphones with them, just like I do (http://www.epinions.com/content_211306843780).

As I already mentioned, we use a wireless keyboard and mouse so those are not plugged in, but if you did want to plug something in, there is plenty of space right behind the monitor. There are three USB 2.0 ports, Firewire, Ethernet, optical out, VGA out, composite out, and even a modem port. While not in use most of the time, these ports come in handy when transferring dissection videos as I talked about in the above mentioned video iPod review. The transfer speed over the USB 2.0 is very fast. It is in fact so fast, that even though I can pull videos from the Mac straight to my computer over the built in wireless, it is more convenient to physically plug in and transfer the movies. When we tape our dissections to hand in, the ports are again very useful and allow us to transfer our movies as we record them right to the video editing software on the computer.

This brings us to the installed programs on the computer. I am not familiar with all the programs as I am a PC user but the ones I have used are all comparable to PC programs that I have used. The OS is OS X Panther and the installed programs include iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie and a number of others that I have not yet used. iTunes is a standard program that works on Mac and PCs and is a great music organizer. I have used the iPhoto program but only to mess around. In the little that I have used it, I can say that I have not seen the functionality of Adobe Photoshop, but it is much easier to work with for the casual user. The iMovie program is the one I use most. The other movie editing experience I have had was with Sony’s movie editors and I have not found them to be nearly as good as iMovie. With Sony’s video editor I found that I was never able to finish a project. I would always run into some sort of error I could not get around. With iMovie, I make a movie every week of that week’s dissection and I can usually finish the whole thing in less than an hour.

I have been told that the Macs are especially quiet. This may well be the case but I cannot comment conclusively on that since the lab is often fairly loud anyway (there is always the hum of the air removal units) and I am not sure I could pick out the sound of the computer from the background noise. I can say that I have not noticed the sound of the computer. So, while it may or may not be quiet, it is certainly not very loud.

There are some problems with the computers. The first is what happens to it after it has been on for a while. Usually these computers are left on all the time – I know that I have never had to boot one up. They also get quite a bit of use with people uploading and downloading videos as well as editing videos and playing music on them. I have noticed that since the beginning of the year, which may be the last time they were restarted, there has been a decrease in performance. Although they still handle all tasks (most importantly video editing) quite well, they often lag now in opening programs and in accessing data.

My biggest beef, as with all Macs, is the mouse. Perhaps it is because I am a PC user normally, but I have never been able to get used to the single button mouse. I don’t understand why Apple keeps making these when two button mice are so clearly superior. Because of the one button, there are so many keyboard shortcuts that must be learned. These are a way to speed things up on PCs (and impress your friends) but on Macs you cannot perform certain functions without using them. This becomes a nuisance if you aren’t an experienced user and don’t have someone around to help you learn.

Overall, the computer performs quite well and for a very reasonable price – I believe the school paid around $1800. The Macs are of course impressive aesthetically, as always, but are also very functional. If they are to be used in any work application that requires movement, these computers are well suited. Macs are known as good computers and this is another model that upholds the standard.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks for reading!