Apple 20-inch iMac

It's got the size, but how about the performance?

While PCs are finally looking better, they still get their bottoms spanked by Macs in the style stakes, and this 20-inch widescreen beauty will widen the aesthetic gulf even further. If you're looking for a desktop computer to use for home entertainment as much as for study or data-crunching, the new iMac is an outstanding choice - with certain caveats, mainly to do with raw speed and gaming performance.

What's immediately impressive about it is the care of the presentation. The packaging, for instance, encourages you to lift out the machine by the screen arm,thus getting an instant sense of its lightness and strength. As well as the looks, the big selling point is the home cinema screen, and superb it is too. Brightness and pixel response times are outstanding for the money. The maximum resolution of 1,680 x 1,050 is ideal for watching DVDs, and the display has a 16:10 ratio, similar to that on widescreen tellies. Even fonts look sharper, thanks to clever anti-aliasing technology and the monitor's relatively high dots-per-inch setting.

So far, so good for the machine's home entertainment credentials, although a multichannel on-board sound card has been omitted, and those adorable transparent speakers don't sound as great as they look.

As a games machine,this model is hobbled by its pedestrian GeForce FX 5200 Ultra graphics card with 64MB of video memory,which isn't a lot these days. The GeForce is fine for playing Halo, and the screen definitely helps, but don't expect your gamer mates with PCs to be impressed.

The same goes for the processor - while the G4 chip breezes through everyday tasks, this computer feels slower than a similarly priced, Pentium 4- equipped PC. That said, iMacs are rarely bought for raw power alone, and the presence of two FireWire 400 ports will really speed up data transfer if you use a digital camcorder.

The software package is limited, but Panther, the latest version of Mac OS, is a gazillion times nicer to use than Windows XP. So is this the best ever iMac? Yes. Is it worth the money? With that screen, yes.Would we buy one? For sure, although the range is likely to be upgraded again in the summer.

Posted by T3 Online on 2007-11-01