Gadget World Review - Apple iMac

We already had a review on this year's iPhone 3Gs, and iTouch, but what about their big brother iMac? Read up to see what Apple has in store for us with its 2009 iMac! Let's say you decided to get an iMac and show off to your friends. If you were to go to the store with these thoughts in mind, you might get very surprised, and even spend a little more time looking for the new iMac where the old one used to be.

To everyone's disbelief, Apple hasn't changed the appearance of the new iMac at all. It's still the same white case with a silver touch, plain white wired keyboard, and same old wired mighty mouse! What did change - is the price. A $300 price reduction has been at the top of Apples priority lists. Better hardware at a cheaper price. We've been looking at this exterior since August 2007, but how about we get a closer look at what comes at the heart of this new price.

A look inside the mighty iMac

This year's iMac comes in 4 different models, which can be customized a little to your liking right at the store. Starting at $1199 iMac has a 20" screen, 2.66Ghz Intel's Core 2 Duo (last year's iMac came with 2.4Ghz kick to it), 2GB of ram, 320GB Hard Drive, and nVidia 9400M video card. It is definitely cheapest at $1200, but doesn't really have the VALUE tag attached to it.

Next in line, and probably best positioned, is the 24" iMac with the same 2.66Ghz chip and nVidia 9400M video card, but with 4GB of RAM, and hard disk space at 640GB. This model is priced at $1499. At $200 more expensive than the 20" model, it surely screams "value!" with double the ram and twice the hard disk space and most importantly 24" masterpiece. The drawback is that $1500 is not exactly on everyone's budget, and $1200 is not exactly a value pick here. But let's see how well the top models fair.

Next in line is also a 24" iMac, with 2.93Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU, 4GB of RAM, 640GB HD, and nVidia GeForce GT 120 (256MB), priced at $1799. Slightly better CPU and video card do not exactly justify a $300 price increase in today's market.

At the top of the food chain however is 24" 3.06 GHz, 4GB RAM, and 1TB HD iMac. It comes with either GeForce GT130 (512MB) or ATI RADEON 4850HD (512MB) [+$50] but probably for people who know what they are doing. If you need a machine optimized for graphics or gaming, iMac would do the job well, however if you require an upgrade to 8GB of RAM, it will cost you another $1000. Otherwise stick to the $1500, 24"! Its nVidia 9400M is more than capable of handling current apps and games!
Final Words on iMac

So. If you wanted to buy an iMac last year and didn't, this year it's the same thing but a little faster and $300 cheaper. But watch out, keyboard comes without a Num Keypad (they will however include it for free if you buy an iMac at Apple store). Best value is the $1500 model, comes with a huge screen and a powerful hardware. The only drawback is the glare that comes off this glossy screen, and can get really annoying in well lit places! Apple could have at least tried to make it a little dull. Maybe next year they will come up with a better design, for now enjoy better price and beefier system.

 Reference:Alexei Budco