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Zebu Fellenz
Joined: 21 Dec 2006
Posts: 2567
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| Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 2:19 am Post subject: IMAC? |
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Ok Guys,
I have a family member who has an Intel Imac and would like to gift it to me as a high school graduation gift. It is only about six monthes old. He just want to see it get used as he already has a PC and doesn't want to spend the time learning the Mac.
I saw it before at his house and I believe it is a 20" with a Core 2 Duo 2.4ghz and 2GB or ram. Looking on the apple site it looks like the video card may be a 2600XT or 2600Pro. I am wondering if this Mac will have the speed to play Blu-rays? It comes with a copy of Vista and some VM-ware software to run it in. I could either stream the files over a network (gigabit?) or use a Blu-ray drive in an external enclosure.
Anyone know if this will work? I am *very* green to Macs. Heck it took me a few minutes just to find the power button when I was using it at his house 
Thanks Guys.
Erik
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AnalogRocks
Forum Moderator
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 26706
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
TV/Projector: Sony 1252Q, AMPRO 4000G
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| Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 2:23 am Post subject: |
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On the PC you can add a Bluray drive via USB 2.0 and play blurays so it should work. Guess you would need the proper DVD/BLuray playback software too.
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Mr. Green
Joined: 23 Feb 2007
Posts: 1394
Location: Calgary
TV/Projector: Marquee 9501LC / NEC 9PG+
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| Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 2:39 am Post subject: |
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http://fastmac.com/slim_bluray.php
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ecrabb
Forum Moderator
Joined: 13 Mar 2006
Posts: 15909
Location: Utah
TV/Projector: JVC RS40, Epson 5010
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| Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 2:51 am Post subject: |
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HHAHAHAHAHA... Did you notice that silm BD drive was $999.95?!?!??!?! That's pure insanity. You can pick up a bare BD drive from Newegg for $100-150, and a very nice external FW and/or USB 2 case for $50.
Erik, that machine will most certainly be able to play Blu-rays, but if you want to do it under Windows, you'll probably want to boot into Windows natively with Apple's Boot Camp (as opposed to using virtualization). Boot Camp will already be on the machine if it came with 10.5 Leopard.
I haven't done it, but according to Chuchuf, if you want play already-ripped BD's in OS X, you can do it with VLC or Plex.
SC
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Zebu Fellenz
Joined: 21 Dec 2006
Posts: 2567
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| Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 3:02 am Post subject: |
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| ecrabb wrote: | HHAHAHAHAHA... Did you notice that silm BD drive was $999.95?!?!??!?! That's pure insanity.
Erik, that machine will most certainly be able to play Blu-rays, but if you want to do it under Windows, you'll probably want to boot into Windows natively with Apple's Boot Camp (as opposed to using virtualization). Boot Camp will already be on the machine if it came with 10.5 Leopard.
SC |
Thanks for the replys so far. Yeah I saw the $999.95 price tag  I wonder how many they sell at that price 
Good to know the machine has the grunt to play BD's. I'm looking at possibly using it as my main machine and moving my current PC to move of file serving/ media transcoding duty.
Thanks,
Erik[/i]
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MikeEby
Joined: 24 Jun 2007
Posts: 5237
Location: Osceola, Indiana
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| Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 3:20 am Post subject: |
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All this Mac talk I decided to fire-up my older 17" table lamp style iMac. Well came up no problem but I tried to install FireFox. But mine has only 10.3 Panther so it won't install....GRRRR
SC, My question if I pop for the $129 upgrade, how well is this thing going to run 10.5? I think it's just a 1.0Ghz G4 PPC with 750Mb Ram. The only thing I would like to do with it is play around with some app development with Mono, which also requires 10.4 or higher.
There are some used copies 10.4 on Ebay but they are already up to $86 with day remaining so it doesn't seem like any great bargain, yet I don't want to install 10.5 if the system requirements are so high it will slow to a crawl.
Mike
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ecrabb
Forum Moderator
Joined: 13 Mar 2006
Posts: 15909
Location: Utah
TV/Projector: JVC RS40, Epson 5010
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| Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 4:07 am Post subject: |
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Leopard should run just fine on that machine, Mike. 750MB of RAM is also fine, as long as you're not trying to run lots of apps simultaneously or work in Photoshop with big files or something (as if).
As a point of reference, I didn't notice any performance hit on my old Dual G4 going from 10.3 to 10.4, or 10.4 to 10.5. In fact, boot times actually went down and things were generally just as snappy...Well, as snappy as a 6+ year-old machine can be, anyway. RAM utilization did go up, IIRC and disk space consumption (for a full install) went WAY up. You can do a custom install and turn off the non-English languages and most of the printer drivers you know you won't use and save a couple of GB of disk space, I think. I think the HP printer driver set alone is over 500MB. You can always install them later if you need them.
I'd probably just grab a copy of Leopard... If it isn't up to your expectations on the older iMac, you can always resell your copy for pretty close to what you paid for it. Newegg and MacMall both have it for $110 w/free shipping, and Amazon has it for $107 w/free shipping. Another seller on Amazon has it for $84.49 w/$3.99 s/h... supposedly new/sealed. Must have "fallen off a truck".
SC
Last edited by ecrabb on Sun Feb 15, 2009 4:16 am; edited 1 time in total
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Nashou66
Joined: 12 Jan 2007
Posts: 16171
Location: West Seneca NY
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| Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 4:08 am Post subject: |
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| MikeEby wrote: | All this Mac talk I decided to fire-up my older 17" table lamp style iMac. Well came up no problem but I tried to install FireFox. But mine has only 10.3 Panther so it won't install....GRRRR
SC, My question if I pop for the $129 upgrade, how well is this thing going to run 10.5? I think it's just a 1.0Ghz G4 PPC with 750Mb Ram. The only thing I would like to do with it is play around with some app development with Mono, which also requires 10.4 or higher.
There are some used copies 10.4 on Ebay but they are already up to $86 with day remaining so it doesn't seem like any great bargain, yet I don't want to install 10.5 if the system requirements are so high it will slow to a crawl.
Mike |
Mike you can use Xpostfacto to run higher OSX version on older legacy macks that should not suport it also some will run the older OS 9 too
http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/Framework.cfm
I have panther running on an old 1997 G3 and still use some os 9 apps. I did upgrade the G# to a G4 chip and might go higher if possible but i have not ooked into it yet, soem say why spend the money....its not the money its the cool factor telling people you have lopord running on a 12 year old amchine ...kinda like telling people your running 1080p on a 15 year old CRT !
Athanasios
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MikeEby
Joined: 24 Jun 2007
Posts: 5237
Location: Osceola, Indiana
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| Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 4:21 am Post subject: |
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Thanks Athanasios, I'll look into that.
Mike
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WanMan
Joined: 19 Mar 2006
Posts: 10270
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| Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 10:55 am Post subject: |
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| Mr. Green wrote: | | http://fastmac.com/slim_bluray.php |
And this one is $99.
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Spanky Ham
Joined: 22 Mar 2006
Posts: 5643
Location: Comedy Central
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| Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 12:52 am Post subject: |
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Crabb,
Give me a break!!!! You say that Macs have no viruses. What do you call Mike buying the latest Mac OS? Social Engineering?
Winning the Window's owners hearts and minds one at a time. 
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MikeEby
Joined: 24 Jun 2007
Posts: 5237
Location: Osceola, Indiana
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| Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 2:42 am Post subject: |
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| Spanky Ham wrote: | Crabb,
Give me a break!!!! You say that Macs have no viruses. What do you call Mike buying the latest Mac OS? Social Engineering?
Winning the Window's owners hearts and minds one at a time. |
Actually I did some reading and it is because the switch to Intel processors, like SC said in the other tread. It's sort of not Apples fault. The ISV's are taking the easy way out rather then offering 2 versions-pre 10.4 and current. Microsoft did the same thing with DX10, they said no XP support. The only difference is nobody has bothered developing DX10 apps so it hasn't bothered anyone that much.
Mike
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