I would define it as: Being at the beginning of a new cycle rather than the end of an old one.
That’s not the definition of good for the intended user of the product.
The CRT iMacs were fine for what they were, basic computers for general use (word processing/Quicken/light DTP, casual gaming) but they did have a few technical flaws
Limited internal expandability- one hard drive, one optical drive, and only two memory sockets, one of which was already occupied by the factory RAM
poor thermal cooling design- one small fan pulling hot air away from the CPU card, but that fan sat directly below the CRT tube, and a metal shield surrounding the power supply board and Analog board, reducing heat dissapation
the slot-loading CD/DVD “Keihei” series were even worse, as the cooling fan was removed and they relied on convection to cool them (hot air rises, pulling cool air over the hot components), a good idea in theory, it just never worked well in practice, I actually worked up an external fan setup for the Keiheis that improved their reliability dramatically, I could take a machine prone to overheating, slap on my “iCooler” and have it run indefinitely with no signs of overheating
the CRT iMacs had a pretty major flaw that plagued them through their entire production run, from the first tray-loader Bondi Blue machines to the last run of Keihei slot-loaders, it was euphamistically called the “Tint Issue”
basically, the Analog Board (the Power/Analog/Video board on the Keihei slot-loaders) was known for going bad, specifically, one or more of the electron gun driver circuits in the video board would go bad, and the screen of the affected iMac would take on a predominant tint (pink, purple, yellow, or blue were the most common), and the only way to fix the issue was to replace the Analog/PAV board, the slot-loaders weren’t too bad to repair, as the Analog board was mounted vertically in the case, but the Keiheis had the PAV under the CRT, in order to replace a PAV, you had to strip the machine to it’s frame and REMOVE THE CRT ASSEMBLY!
Dear Og I HATED performing PAV replacements…
the upside of this was, Analog/PAV failures typically happened within the first two year, generally, if your iMac made it past two years without needing those parts, you had a good one, any functional CRT iMac you’d find today should be okay, however, bear in mind that there are no longer any repair parts for these models available from Apple, and the Analog/PAV is a proprietary Apple part, even when you could get them, they were generally a $300 part, and that’s not taking into account the labor involved and the inherent risks of the LIVE adjustments they needed…
Sorry for such a long post, but I’ve worked on so many of these things I could do it blindfolded
for a second/backup/guest computer for light websurfing and the like, they should be okay, not great, but serviceable
I don’t know… I’d say my iMac DV SE (I just found that DV part!) was pretty much on par with a Power Macs at the time, general performance-wise. I mean, I went to it from a Quadra, and could have gotten Power Mac instead. That was about the time I lost interest in expanding my desktop machines (but not my Linux server), so expansion wasn’t a concern for me. I got bored with the Quadra because I’d added a video card, a new processor, a video input card, SCSI, and other crap. Enough was enough, and the iMac represented a clean start. I admit, I replaced it with a Power Mac (Quicksilver), but since then, I’ve been only on clean, elegant iMacs.
Oh, performance: the DV SE was a video machine. And it did a fantastic job. I did a few vids on the Quadra for school (hey, I was a pioneer!), but coming to the iMac was a true pleasure!
I refurbed a couple of older iMacs for my brother’s family recently. Sure, given what we have today, they’re sloooow, but at the time, they were speedy little machines.