Goodbye Sawtooth...

As you might already know, I finally upgraded the Power Mac after an amazing eight year run. Why so long of a wait? I would say it was a combination of the longevity of the Power PC chip, the resourcefulness of every impressive OS X upgrade and periodic storage and memory upgrades. Additionally, Rika switched careers in the later years and no longer needed a workstation for graphic design but rather a computer for simply e-mailing and web browsing. 400MHz is fast enough for that.

But with the recent release of Leopard and the aluminum and glass iMacs still just three months old, I felt the timing was right and pulled the trigger on a 24" model. I couldn't be more pleased with my decision to purchase this instead of the 20". What was I thinking? The screen is simply stunning.

I'm most happy about finally getting rid of the enormous boxes taking up so much valuable closet space, as well as reclaiming the space from the desktop. I took a few pics to illustrate the difference.

I was planning on either recycling the G4 or donating it since I haven't seen much interest in machines this old on eBay, but have instead decided to post a $100 offer on Craigslist to see what happens first. I mentioned to Mark that I paid $1900 for the tower and $1500 for the monitor back in 2000. (I later upgraded the peripherals to the Apple Pro keyboard and Apple Pro mouse, added an additional 768MB of RAM and replaced the 10GB hard disk drive with a 120GB one.)

Waiting so long between upgrades has made me appreciate features that other modern Mac users have probably become accustomed to. Burning CDs or DVDs is one example. Lightning fast Cover Flow scrolling, 3D enabled user switching, and A/V Chatting would be others. I can't praise the new "scissor-switch" keyboard enough - it rocks. My horrible mistyping that I'm becoming famous for in iChat has improved tremendously since using it.

The killer app that has instantly changed how we use the computer though is one little stand alone program that gets lost in the 300 new features of Leopard. That app is Front Row 2.0. I had no idea that this would be the answer to solving my problem in watching downloaded DivX/Xvid encoded HD videos on the couch. After giving up on transcoding these AVI files to MPEG-2 for DVD playback (as well as creating the DVD menus screens), I had to find a better solution. I considered options such as purchasing Vista with Media Center along with an XBox 360, stand alone media extenders, DVD players with Xvid support, and even the Apple TV. But with Front Row, the included remote, and the built-in HD display I decided to forgo watching downloaded video content on my dated 27" Sony TV and watch them straight from the iMac. (Thanks to Mark for tipping me in the right direction.)

FWIW, Leopard is unable to play back DivX/Xvid encoded videos out of the box (same as Windows XP) but Perian came through to save the day with the necessary QuickTime component support. Open source FTW!

Mark questioned my Samsung SCX-4500/XSS purchase, but it turned out to be a great find. I had no idea this printer existed until I was at the checkout. Apple apparently has an exclusive deal to sell this multi-function unit (along with a print-only version) until early next year. They are also offering a special $100 rebate when you purchase a computer and a qualifying printer such as this one, so it was a no brainer for me. The Samsung is pretty basic as far as features go but it's whisper quiet and looks stunning IMO, even in piano black. It would perfectly complement your Samsung TV Mark! It does have cutesy sounds and touch sensitive sapphire blue LED displays that remind me of unrestrained electronic gadgets from Japan (or Korea in this case), but I can live with it. Not to keep praising the brilliance of Leopard but as a side note, setting up the Samsung to print across the network was a breeze. Apple purchasing CUPS was a very smart move. In comparison, I could never get the Epson Stylus Photo 820 to network print in Tiger.

Mark had asked how long it took for my computer to ship. I placed my order on a Monday but had problems using the Juniper card because I forgot to register the shipping address. Once I squared away everything by Wednesday, I asked for two day shipping and Apple customer service offered it for free. Both the computer and printer arrived at my work the next morning- less than 24-hours later. Rewarding negligent behavior- Apple deserves an award for that!