My Own Private Hollywood
Written: Jun 26 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: fast, easy to use, multimedia-friendly
Cons: crappy mouse, small keyboard
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| sjarvis's Full Review: Apple iMac DV Indigo 15 in. (M7639LL/A) Mac Deskto... |
First, other than the Commodore 64 I owned in junior high, I've never owned anything other than a Macintosh (this is my fourth in 10 years). The iMac DV is the (current) top of the line consumer desktop machine... period. Despite the sometimes smarminess of Apple's ads, you really can connect to the Internet in minutes and make your own really cool home movies in hours (assuming you also own a digital camcorder).
For the standard consumer activities: word processing, spreadsheets, Quicken, email, websurfing, MP3s --- it rocks. It's got great sound (even better with Harmon-Kardon's $100 kick-ass iSub subwoofer), ATI Rage video acceleration, a DVD-ROM drive, and a big hard drive (10GB). The 64 MB of RAM that's standard is adequate, but you can never have too much RAM.
But, it's usefulness doesn't stop there---
By day, I'm a web developer, and before I was hired to do it full-time, I freelanced. My iMac DV was the perfect machine for that price point. It's fast enough that I can run all the apps I need, and the 15" monitor is adequate. I still work 2-3 hours a day at home, and I never feel like I'm hampered by my iMac DV's performance, especially since I added 128 MB more RAM (but that wasn't *necessary*).
For editing video footage shot on my friend's digicam, the 15" is more than adequate. Apple's bundled iMovie software is easy to use and more powerful and flexible than I thought it would be. We've made several small shorts. With a USB CD-ROM burner, we can make copies and sell for millions of dollars.
I also use it to record my own music. I just added a microphone. Even with the built-in sound, it works great and I can record two tracks simultaneously. I can't record a full band at one time like that, but with the addition of a USB breakout box (like Swissaudio's Studio), I can have more inputs and more options.
With a few (admittedly not cheap) accessories, this machine becomes an entry-level pro multimedia machine and a top-dog consumer/hobbyist machine.
The MacOS is easy to use and new-user friendly.
It's true that there aren't nearly as many games available for MacOS, but that number is increasing daily. Plus, you can get a better game machine than ANY PC by buying a PlayStation for $150.
The bad: the mouse sucks and the keyboard is too small for a desktop machine.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
sjarvis
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Member: Steven Jarvis
Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
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