Mat on Macs

Here he is, my new 17″ Intel iMac which I’ve named BONAVENTURE. He’s pretty much straight out of the box except for one obvious addition–the Dell 2005FPW, 20″ widescreen LCD running in extended desktop mode (no Dell haters please; I got this display for more than $400 less than the equivalent ACD and have been very pleased with it). This required purchasing the mini-DVI to DVI adaptor (originally made for the 12″ Powerbook). One surprising thing I noticed is how much better the Dell looks than the built-in 17″ LCD on the iMac. I adjusted the color settings and that improved things a but, but side-by-side there’s really no comparison; the Dell is much nicer looking (interestingly, the actual LCD panel inside the Dell is apparently the same one as the 20″ iMac and 20″ Cinema Display, so I assume those screens would also look much better than the 17″).

The main problem with this iMac out of the box is that (at 512MB), it’s memory starved. That makes switching between applications quite tiresome, so much so in fact that I’m making this post from my 15″ Powerbook G4. I have already ordered more RAM from Data Memory Systems but they haven’t even gotten their stock in yet (hopefully I’ll get my part next week). I had a good experience with Datamem in the past and their price was very good; I just hope they can deliver soon, because I really need it.

The iMac uses a DDR2 PC2-5300 SODIMM which are evidently new enough that they’re hard to find. My normal preferred supplier Newegg doesn’t even list that part in their database. I find it rather annoying that Apple chose to use SODIMMs (i.e. notebook memory) in the new iMacs, which of course makes it cost more than the corresponding desktop size DIMMs

[update: I installed the new 1GB stick and it makes all the difference in the world! Running a new iMac without at least 1GB just isn’t going to cut it]