IndyMac support

May 16 2008

My 3.0.6 mhz iMac

Quietly now people!

We wouldn’t want everyone to know at once now, would we?!

Apple says on their home page that the iMac now has “More Power. Thinly Disguised”… they are now pricing the 2.8ghz model at $1,799.00 – $500 cheaper than nearly the same model was last week, with the base model coming in at $1199 for the 2.4ghz. Listen to me now, this base model is a scorcher already! What’s next? 30″ iMacs with 16GB Ram? I’d pay to see that ahead of it’s time.

APPLE® announced through it’s website and notified us crusty Consultants, that there is a new iMAC line up with the top end machine now at a blazing 3.06ghz and 512mb nVidia GeForce 8800GS graphics processor.

The rest of the lineup acquires a speed bump as well AND (drum roll please) and a price drop of $100.00 at the top end AND a twenty four (24″) inch model starting at $1,799 ($500 below cost of pervious 24″ models).

I have been hankering to get the 24″ for my desktop

machine to replace my aging G5/MP, but I have resisted because of the memory limitations on the iMAC. My current G5 has now been relegated to acting as a file server, while I use my speedier Macbook Pro & 20″ AL Display, for my “all around” machine.

I occasionally “bump my head” as it were, on a memory ceiling it seems, as the Macbook Pro offloads some task or another to VR (Virtual Ram) disk on the hard drive. It happens without fail when I am running Dreamweaver and Photoshop CS2 at the same time. I might get around this, if I set up the Photoshop scratch disk to an empty Firewire drive, but I cannot think the bus speed would really help or hinder the process. I have an earlier Macbook with a 3GB memory limit.

That new nVidia Graphics processor just might be the key though. Some of that Photoshop processing could be off-loaded to that chip, freeing the VR and main memory from the task. I’ll be anxious to read more of the comments from folks, when these machines make their way into the mainstream.

The other 24″ model has the same 2.8ghz prcessor speed as the previous “TOP” model, but a smaller 320GB hard drive. A 500gb hard drive is only $50 more and a 750gb is $150 more. Read More at WWW.APPLE.COM.

So, one thing that I am missing here, and this would be a significant improvement. I, like many other professionals, use iMacs in professional situations. I often run Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Parralells (Winblows) at the same time, like I am right now. If I adjust Parralells to favor or give better performance to Mac programs.

However…

These diagram some new Apple products I’d like to see. Starting with a super slim Macbook Pro (Air?) with 8, or better yet 16gb of base ram with another 16gb accessible or when plugged into this NEW DOCKING STATION. It would be cool to see a 24″ or 30″ ‘docking machine’ set up this way containing an additional 1TB hard drive, Optical drive (Blue Ray Burner?)!

It would be triple cool if there also was a slot to pop in your iPhone, iPod Touch or any iPod with some sort of adapter, rather than wires. The Shuffle could just use the USB port as it does now. [click zoom]