New iMac

After months of having to use a Windows based PC for my home computing needs due to my broken G5 I finally pulled the trigger and bought a shiny new iMac.

I waited so long since I knew iMac's were due for a refresh based on the relatively new Sandy Bridge processors from Intel. Sure enough Apple updated them earlier this month and with the previously unreleased Intel Z68 chipset.

I ended up getting the base 21.5" model from Amazon for $1139 with free shipping since it seemed to offer the best bang-for-the-buck based on the latest MacWorld review. According to their testing it even outperformed the top of the line 27" model from last year.

The first application I installed was the Steam client and my initial results from Left 4 Dead 2 have been simply outstanding. Playing the game at the native 1920 x 1080 resolution with all the graphical goodies turned on runs at a super silky smooth frame rate. I can't believe how much better that game looks on my iMac than when running on my old Pentium 4 Dell with the Nvidia Geforce 6800 GPU. Portal is next on my download list and you can bet I will get Portal 2 during the next Steam sale even though I already have that game for my Xbox 360.

Although I've only used it for about an hour I can tell that I will need to replace the mouse with something more ergonomic than the Magic Mouse. I don't know what it is about mice that Apple can't seem to get right. It's a bit too flat for my large hands and the middle scroll gesture doesn't quite work as well as a real scroll wheel.

It's amazing the number of cables that are reduced with an all-in-one system. I ended up ditching the wireless in favor of a hard wired Ethernet cable since I still have a 802.11 G network and LfD2 was taking too long to download. Upgrading to a N wireless router is next on my shopping list.

Dave wanted some unboxing pics but since Rob still refuses to open a FaceBook account, I'll need to setup something on Flicker later on.