Apple iMac ME086LL/A 21.5-Inch Desktop (NEWEST VERSION)

CUSTOMER REVIEW



I doubt that I'll ever go back to Windows again (other than the machine that I use at work). This is something that I've wanted to do for a while but I didn't want to take the time to learn it. I finaly bit the bullet and did it. I ordered it on a Saturday and it arrived on the following Wednesday (free shipping).



Within a few days, I'd figured out most of what I care about. I bought a book but found it only marginally helpful. In the several days bewteen ordering it and the arrival, I watched tons of YouTube videos on the iMac and that's where I learned most of what I know so far. Note: FINDER is to the iMac what Windows Explorer is to a PC.



I keep all personal files on an exernal drive, the only thing on the internal drive is the OS, applications, etc. That's a holdover from my Windows days.



Music is loaded although I don't like iTunes so I downloaded WinAmp. Pictures are loaded including some old photos that I've scanned, retouched and then saved back to disc (not just in iPhoto). It has a fairly decent photo editor;basic but good for someone like me who doesn't have the patience for spending 2 hours fixing a picure. Disc formatting and partitioning is quick and easy. I downloaded SuperDuper (free) and created an image in one of the partitions of an external drive. I'm used to using things like Ghost and Acronis on Windows platforms so this SuperDuper image is comforting.



It goes to sleep and remembers how to wake up. I don't think I ever owned a Windows machine that could handle that through several sleep/wake cycles, they always seem to get confused and need a forced shutdown. I attached a watt meter to it and it uses about 40 watts when awake and about 2-3 watts when asleep. The battery in the keyboard is still at 100% but the batterry in the mouse is at about 90% after 10 days. That's understandable considering how much more the mouse is used. A wired mouse would fix that but I like not seeing wires anyplace.



It's incredibly quiet and I'm very sensitive to PC noise.



I bought MS office because it's so much easier (for me) than using what the iMac came with or things like OpenOffice. The interface is not identical to the Windows version; it's close but not identical - don't know why Miscrosoft couldn't have done a better job of that.



It comes with some parameteers set in 10.9 Mavericks that didn't make sense and I thought I was stuck with them until I figured out that they could be changed. The 2 that come to mind are (1) the vertcal scroll bar is not always visible on a web page and (2) a right click on the mouse is not active. I changed both of those things.



I was able to play with the 27 inch version at a local library and found the sceeen too big. Maybe I would have gotten used to it but the 21.5 inch version that I got seems just right.