Digital Trends

Apple iMac Core Duo 17-inch

July 11th, 2006 | by Jason Tomzak

Features and Design

The design of the 17" Intel iMac is nearly identical to its last-revision G5 predecessor.  As the old saying goes, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."  Apple wisely stuck with the stunning all-in-one design of the iMac; a design that no other computer manufacturer has been able to duplicate or even approach; a design that had industrial designers and consumers all atwitter with excitement.

The 17" iMac has a tiny footprint for a full-featured desktop - 114.24 square inches (maximum width times maximum depth).  In comparison, a small form-factor eMachines or Gateway computer plus 17" LCD screen has a clown-like footprint of 240 square inches or more.  The iMac takes up less than half the space without sacrificing components, speed or style.

The front and sides of the iMac are surrounded in a thick, moderately scratch resistant, clear resin mold.  The clear resin mold gives the iMac a gorgeous shine and protects the brilliant-white body from stains, mars and grubby fingerprints. 

Even though most leading-edge computers on the market come with 16X DVD burners, Apple held back by supplying the 17" iMac with an 8X SuperDrive.  Of course, the 8X SuperDrive burns CDs, DVDs and even Dual-Layer DVDs quickly and stably and produces few or no faulty burns.  In my opinion, Apple really should have gone all the way with a 16X dual-layer DVD burner.

The USB keyboard that comes with the Intel iMac is the same keyboard bundled with G5 iMacs and Power Mac desktop computers.  The keys are spaced properly and the typing action is very smooth and responsive.  It also matches the iMac perfectly, which is a huge plus for fashion conscious geeks.

Apple's product page for the Intel iMac states that the Intel iMac has "Twice the Horsepower" of the fastest G5 iMac.  Some people equate this statement with the idea that the Intel Core Duo architecture will make your computing experience twice as fast as the G5 architecture - everything from opening documents to editing photos and encoding movies should take half the time on the new desktops than it did on the old.  While this logic works out in some cases (especially common benchmark tests), it cannot be applied universally. 

Using the "horsepower" analogue, consider that the fastest purebred racehorses run upwards of 40 miles per hour.  If you harnessed together two of the fastest horses in the world, would they go 80 miles per hour?  Absolutely not.  They would continue to run 40 miles per hour.  Of course, if a single race horse was given a 300-pound load to carry - like processors are given heavy tasks to perform - that horse would be heavily burdened and would struggle to reach even half its potential.  If the same two horses shared the 300-pound burden equally, each horse would be able to run significantly closer to its full potential.  Similar logic applies to the Intel Core Duo processor.  Some tasks, when shared by the two cores, allow the processor to be much more efficient and produce faster results. 

There are many analogies that can be used to describe processing speeds, but the final and perhaps only significant argument is how a new processor affects your overall personal computing experience.  If GarageBand used to open in 10 seconds and now it opens in 5, then you've experienced a doubling of speed.  However if your everyday applications open only 10% faster - or in the case of Rosetta, 70% slower - then 'twice the horsepower' could be misleading. 

Image Courtesy of Apple