# Getting an iMac **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 11, 2011, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-an-imac/581472 "2011-05-11T03:22:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hippy\_Hollow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hippy_hollow/32/4841_2.png) [@Hippy\_Hollow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hippy_Hollow)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2011, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-an-imac/581472/21 "2011-07-11T16:27:34Z")
> [@MeanJoe](#): > > Prior to purchasing the iMac I was using Win7. I had upgraded to Win7 from XP. In Win7, and I believe in XP, anytime I connected my iPhone to my computer via the USB cable it detected and displayed the iPhone as a connected device under My Computer. I could, within My Computer/Explorer, explore the iPhone as if it was another drive. I did not do this regularly mind you, but I would occasionally go looking for a specific picture on the iPhone and copy it to my PC. huh… Are you sure that wasn’t with an iPod, where you can switch into “disk mode?” I’ve never heard of being able to do that without some additional steps. The disk management system on the iPhone is undecipherable. You can find photos okay, but music is damn near impossible to find on it. I like VLC on the iPhone and you have to load the videos in one of the folders - it’s kind of a pain to use. If you do have an iPod, Floola on the Mac allows you to access music, drag and drop, etc. I get annoyed with iTunes so I add/delete/rename my music on the iPod this way. ---
**Author:** ![MeanJoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanjoe/32/5693_2.png) [@MeanJoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanJoe)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2011, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-an-imac/581472/22 "2011-07-11T16:36:56Z")
It was my iPhone, I do not have an iPod. I was unable to access music files at all this way, the only thing I ever accessed was photos on/taken with the iPhone. ---
**Author:** ![Kalypso](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/df705f/32.png) [@Kalypso](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalypso)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2011, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-an-imac/581472/23 "2011-07-11T21:41:28Z")
I usually get the nicest one I can afford every two to three years, and they hold quite a bit of resale value, so while you’re acknowledging you’re paying a premium, don’t forget to factor in that it will still be worth multi-hundreds of dollars in 3 years. Mine is 2 years old right now and is worth $700 on ebay. I love Adium as a chat client, except for facebook chat. I’ve installed Growl, it’s a useful pop-up notification app that works with other programs. I don’t use Handbrake all that often, but I have it. If you ever have to remote in to work there is a perfectly good and free remote desktop connection on the windows website that works flawlessly on the Mac. You’ll probably want to download Firefox. Safari is great, but once in a while I find a picky website that only works in IE or Firefox. Chrome works too, and I personally like Rockmelt as a browser. If you can afford it, get the 27". My model is the last refresh of the 24" ones, and I totally would have waited if I’d known the next refresh would have 27". Watching movies and playing games is AMAZING on my partner’s 27". Oh, if you still have your monitor from your windows box, you can get an adapter from Apple and run a second monitor on your Mac extremely easily. My partner and I both do this. I game and browse on the big screen and chat in the secondary screen. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/848f3c/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_Dunlop)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-an-imac/581472/24 "2011-07-12T02:59:42Z")
> [@digs](#): > > oops. Cause I was wrong on the year – I’ve got the first Intel iMac, whenever that was… 2006, so 5 years isn’t a bad run but quite a bit shorter than 13. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-an-imac/581472/25 "2011-07-12T03:31:47Z")
> [@Hippy\_Hollow](#): > > It’s going to be a 27" iMac, with the i7 processor, the highest available video card, and a SSD drive and 2 TB internal[.] This is the machine I bought opening day, except for the SSD (there was a one-month backlog for those machines. Perhaps I’ll add one later.). > [@](#): > > Any thoughts about the 2011 iMacs? I don’t think I’ll do Bootcamp, I’ll just run Parallels - should be fast enough for the mainly text-based programs I use in Windows. After the hassles with third-party memory being solved, it’s the best Mac I’ve ever owned. For reasons having to do with the memory, I did a Parallels install rather than a Bootcamp install. But you know what? I’ve not rebooted into Bootcamp for at least a year and half anyway, so I’ve had no need. Parallels runs Eve-Online just as fast as the Mac version, so that’s a good enough yardstick for me. > [@](#): > > Of course, I will buy my own memory and max it out to save a couple of bucks. I always do this as well. I wish I hadn’t this time, though, and I’m not sure I’m ever going to do so again. I bought Crucial memory, which had always worked for me perfectly in the past (I’ll say now before it sounds like a Crucial rant that they’ve made me whole, and all is well), and it apparently worked well now. It passed the Apple Hardware Test, no kernel panics, and no reasons to think that the memory was bad. Except… I couldn’t make disk images that checksum’d correctly. I couldn’t verify disks that checksum’d correctly. I couldn’t install Win7 in Bootcamp (I used a good image made from another computer to install via Parallels). I kept getting errors from new disks like Office and X-Plane. The Apple store replaced the optical drive, but that didn’t help, then replaced the whole computer, and that didn’t help. I was starting to think that there was a serious engineering problem. And it wasn’t just installing from disks. Syncing iStuff with iTunes gave weird “the package contents have changed” errors, and Parallels would sometimes just not start. And download files (system updates, Adobe demos, stuff like that) would mysteriously not work (checksum errors). It was the most frustrating experience I’d ever had with a Macintosh, and my simple words here can’t even begin to express my disappointment and frustration. Because the Apple Hardware Test and the Unix memtest both okay’d the Crucial memory, I had no reason whatsover to suspect that bad memory was the culprit. But it was. ---
**Author:** ![kbear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4491bb/32.png) [@kbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kbear)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-an-imac/581472/26 "2011-07-13T07:21:20Z")
[QUOTE] Printing to wireless printer (HP PhotoSmart Plus) rarely works even though iMac says it is connected to printer or takes over an hour to spool the print job to the printer /QUOTE] You mean I’ve been blaming the printer all this time? oops. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-an-imac/581472.md?page=1)