Apple® - iMac® 2.66GHz with 24" Display

DeJuan from Cary, NC wrote it only has a one button mouse. This is incorrect; it actually is a 4-button mouse. (left top, right top, center ball, side grips) Just go to system preferences in the dock, then keyboard & mouse. Then you can set up the 2nd button. There are a lot of people out there that don’t know about it. Also: The ultrathin, compact wired Apple Keyboard comes standard with your iMac. Or you can choose the Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad for the same price if you build your computer at the apple store online.

I am a software Engineer with 8 years of PC repair tech experience and this machine provides me with everything I need for work and play. I am also an active musician and I use this machine for home recordings and the performance is great. This is my first Mac (been using Windows PCs for 18 years) and so far I prefer OSX over Windows now. If you build a PC with similar specs and add a 24" monitor with similar specs, you will find this machine is priced competively. You get what you pay for. Pros: Large vibrant screen (decent specs). Fire wire 800 iLife 09 (I photo, imovie, and Garage band perform with outstanding speed) Time machine is the easiest backup software I've ever used. Bluetooth Built in wireless Boot Camp (if you must use windows you can) Built in support for AIM, GMAIL,and Facebook Stability, Stability Stability. This machine is rock solid. Massive list of software features. Ram can be upgraded to 8GB Works well with my M-Audio studio equipment. Cons Have to purchase the external display connection separately Keyboard takes a little getting used to and has no number pad Mouse only has one click button, but any usb mouse can be connected. Only Ram can be upgraded easily, but with fire wire 800 internal hard drive upgrades aren’t needed.

I have been using PC's since the late 80's and after recently purchasing a new 64 bit PC found myself constantly frustrated by continual problems. I have reloaded the OS on this and my other 32 bit desktops countless times over the last few years. I have always been very tech savvy and have gotten to the point where I no longer want to spend my time troubleshooting problems. I want to browse the Internet, listen to music and share photos with my friends and family as I am constantly shooting photos of my children. I have been using my new Mac for two weeks with no virus protection and have not encountered a single problem. I had 3 devices that would not work on my great new PC. Within 5 minutes, they were all working on my Mac. I burnt music and photos to separate CD's and guess what they played fine in my PC laptop. This Mac is incredible! Stop wasting your time troubleshooting software & hardware problems. You CAN use a computer without the constant concern of viruses. Pay a couple hundred more dollars and buy a Mac, you will NOT be sorry! My time is valuable and the Mac has made me a much more efficient computer user. By the way, I never thought in a million years that I would buy a Mac. Last, I know that some people don't consider Macs because of PC software not running on it. I downloaded OpenOffice for free on-line and have a full applications suite, it comes with photo software, music software, a browser and more. Also, I understand that the software that allows you to install PC software on your Mac actually runs faster on the Mac. Personally, I have no interest at this point to load any PC software as the Mac handles all of my needs, but it is nice to know that I will be able to do this down the road if I need to. I hope you find this review helpful!

This is my first Apple computer which I bought a month ago. I don't know why I didn't buy it sooner. I have 2 Sony Vaios running XP. This iMac beats the Sony PCs hands down. The operating system is superior, boots up and shuts down quickly. The iMac quickly goes to sleep (1-2 secs) and wakes up (in 2-3 secs). The web pages seem to run much faster. A download speed test on speedtest.net confirmed my suspicions. iMac performed at 17 Mbps (vs 12 Mbps on the faster desktop Vaio). For a computer with a 24 inch monitor, it surprisingly takes very little room. My desk now has so much space. Using an iMac is not that much different that using a PC. It will take some time for you to get used to the menus and some keys on the key pad, but you will find it to actually be more intuitive. The standard small keyboard is also surprising comfortable. All new iMacs come standard with iLife 09 which has lots of useful photo, movie, music, calendar, address book, email, and other apps. It also has GarageBand, which is a musical instrument audio editing app. It has many features including providing the ability to buy lessons for learning various instruments. It comes with a bunch of free lessons too. iMovie is very easy to use and pretty sophisticated. The face recognition feature in iPhoto to identify people is nothing short of pure astonishment. The dashboard widgets are very practical and come in handy for getting relevant information very quickly. I bought iWorks (for word processing, spreadsheet and presentations) which costs a fraction of MS Office and is much more powerful and easier to use. iMacs come with a built in camera which works perfectly with Google’s Video chat. You NEED to try it out. I video chatted with my out of state friend who also has an iMac for free. The picture and motion were clear. We used our phones initially to go through the setup process, but found that the sound on Google was better than our cell phones, so we hung up and talked and saw each other. My friend said that he felt like I was sitting in his living room! He said that this worked much better than on his Dell computer. I am a very frugal person and took me a long time to justify paying more for a Mac, but this iMac was worth every penny. I had a very positive experience at every step in the buying process -- research on apple.com, buying from Apple Genius, packaging, setup and use. I am already eyeing another iMac. All I can say is that “it just works”.

Went to a store in VA over the long weekend planning to buy a quad core PC. This store also happened to carry the macs (not all bestbuy stores do though it is available online). Looked at many PCs multiple times and went over to the Mac station and wow what a difference! The iMac simply wowed me and blew me off! Be it the display, speed of it or even the relative ease of using it especially for a novice user. Initial 2 days were of course not pain free especially the paradigm shift from a PC as you realize you have to do quite a few things differently. After that it is all a breeze and I started wondering "why did I ever use a PC in the first place"?!! I gave it 5 stars for most but reliability ratings should be done by someone who has used it for sometime, which is not me as of yet and I still gave it a 5 based on opinions of friends who were long-term mac users, looking at reviews here as well as other sites. I gave it a 4 stars for value for price as these are still more expensive than the PCs and with a display like this would have liked to have a bluray player support. Also one notable omission is a card reader which of course can be bought for dirt cheap these days. Being a university employee, bestbuy offered to pricematch either the 100$ off or the iPod Touch free offered on apple (but as an instant rebate unlike a mail in rebate on apple). Of course, took the iPod option as a bonus which my daughter wanted to have. Cannot be happier!

Pros - All-in-one design reduces clutter - Large, clear screen - Useful software included - Built in wireless - Compatible with a wide variety of devices - Plenty of storage space, almost eliminates need for external hard drive Cons - Difficult to transition from Windows to Mac OS - Expensive compared to other desktops - Some software programs not Mac compatible

I've been a life long MS DOS/Windows user and have grown increasingly more dissatisfied with windows instability and thought I would give Apple a try. After looking objectively at my home needs I felt the iMAC would work well for me and I am very impressed. Setup really is a no brainer, it really is plug and play and there is no need to spend hours removing unwanted software like with a PC. Performance is very impressive, fast and graphically excellent. This machine comes fairly well populated with software and for my purposes only need the addition of iWorks to meet all my needs. If, like me, you've been a PC user it takes a bit of getting used to with the mouse and the keyboard is not very desirable but is functional. Some may not care for the limits in upgrades (memory can be upgraded) but what this system comes with coupled with my computing needs I see no needs for upgrades in the foreseeable future. Thus far, this has proven to be the best computer decision I've made. Highly recommended.

I have always used PC, for past 15 years or so (since windows 3.1) and decided recently about switching to Mac. I can't over emphasize how pleased I am. This is how all computes should be built, from it's start up/shutdown time (just a few sec); it's intuitiveness, and it's speed. I run many apps at the same time and have not seen any perf issues. Mostly I am using this for pics, videos, word docs, all standard stuff and I gotta say in every aspect it blows away anything I've ever used on a PC. I've even switched browsers, and I used firefox on PC. I've installed in on my Mac but find myself using Safari, I love the way the search works. I am sold on the iMac.