New iMac

16 Nov 2009 08:04:53

Trevor Hewson

With Snow Leopard marking the end of Apple's support for PowerPC machines, we are looking to replace our faithful old G4 iMac (well, it's as good an excuse as any for a new Mac!)

We had a quick look at the new 27in iMac the other day and were most impressed with the display - very clear and not as intimidating as I feared. The magic mouse felt good too, and the keyboard was okay - what there is of it.

As always the Apple Store offers various customisation options which only serve to aggravate my normal indecisiveness. Has anybody got any opinions / experience / advice on choice of model and specification?

Trevor

Re: New iMac

16 Nov 2009 10:27:25

Tony Sullivan

Get as big a hard drive as you can afford - you WILL grow into it, even if it seems huge now. And the 27inch is really nice...

Re: New iMac

16 Nov 2009 14:55:09

John Surtees

Personally, I find the Extended Keyboard is worth considering.

Re: New iMac

16 Nov 2009 15:16:48

Mark Ford

What a nice position to be in!
I love the small wireless keyboard - particularly as I can put it on a lap-tray with the wireless mouse and sit back from the screen. Batteries seem to last ages.

Re: New iMac

24 Nov 2009 16:07:23

Trevor Hewson

Thanks for the help - we placed our order on Sunday - and then saw that tomorrow's Salisbury meeting looks just a little bit relevant! We have never been to a Salisbury session before but are hoping to get to this one.

I have been looking round for a bit more information on using the Migration Assistant and still don't think I really understand it. My problems centre around this sentence in the Apple support article on the subject (HT3322):

"Select the hard disk and user accounts from which you want to transfer, and select whether you want to transfer applications, files and folders, or your Library folder."

Essentially, I don't know whether the selection of applications etc. is to say how much of the selected user account's data should be transferred or whether it is an entirely separate set of questions about what non-user-related data should be transferred?

To pose my question another way: If I select two user accounts to transfer, and then don't tick any of 'Applications', 'Files and folders' and 'libraries' on the next screen, will anything be transferred or not?

I'm quite happy to wait until tomorrow evening to have my question answered but, since I find it quite hard to pose the question clearly, I thought trying to write it down ahead of time was no bad thing!

Trevor

Re: New iMac

24 Nov 2009 17:50:53

Derek Wright

Have a read of
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=435350&tstart=10

I more or less followed it when I moved from the G5 Powermac to the Mac Pro a year ago

Re: New iMac

25 Nov 2009 12:19:27

Mick Burrell

Trevor, I'll be happy to see you tonight and hope the demo will answer any query you may have

Re: New iMac

8 Dec 2009 08:31:52

Trevor Hewson

Our new iMac arrived yesterday. My best laid plans fell apart fairly quickly when I discovered that my Firewire cables didn't fit the socket on the back of the new machine! It seems that my cables are all the 6-pin (Firewire 600) variety whereas the new iMac has a Firewire 800 port. Mick - worth adding this pitfall to your presentation, maybe?

I then clicked on the 'Use Ethernet' button but got nowhere with that either, and finally got a result by opting to import User data from a Time Machine backup. For reasons of disk space, this backup didn't include my iTunes library or our iPhoto libraries, the latter being on our Firewire drive, of course!

Once up and running, Software Update identified 760MB of downloads for me. Not bad for a machine which was shipped directly from the factory!

It is beautiful, though.

Trevor

Re: New iMac

8 Dec 2009 15:49:21

Douglas Cheney

You can buy an adaptor from Amazon which will alow you to connect your old firewire drive to your new iMac see it here
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sonnet-Technology-FireWire-800-Adapter/dp/B0000CDJPQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1260287234&sr=8-1

Re: New iMac

9 Dec 2009 14:21:20

Trevor Hewson

Thanks Doug. Having done the data transfer now, I was planning jsut to order a Firewire 9 pin / 4pin cable for use with my video camera. However, I have just ordered the adapter instead so that I can plug any Firewire 400 device into the new iMac should the need arise.

Trevor
P.S. Just about completed the re-install of my Applications now. The only stumbling block so far is scanner drivers for our Canon MP760. Oddly these seem to work from Preview and from Photoshop Elements but not from Canon's own MP Navigator. I seem to remember Canon being a bit tardy in responding when Leopard came out, so I am not altogether surprised if they are dragging their feet over Snow Leopard too. At least their Printer driver is okay.