Hey there,

I've been holding out for the 20" Intel iMac and couldn't believe it when they made their entrance at Macworld... Anyway, I just have a few questions that I couldn't find the answers to elsewhere...

Q1 - Is the built-in iSight camera exactly the same as the previous one on the G5 iMac? The reason I ask is that I read a review of the G5 iMac with built-in iSight and they said it was quite noticeably poorer in picture quality than the standalone iSight cameras.

Q2 - Does the superdrive on the new iMac burn double-layered DVDs? I heard the Macbook doesn't, but I am unsure about the iMacs...

Q3 - I've been looking for cheap RAM for it, and found a few places where you can get 2x 1Gb DDR2 667 chips for around $290 ($145 each). This looks attractive to me, as it's $170 cheaper than buying from Apple. But the brand is Corsair. Is this a dodgy brand, or should it be just as decent as any?

That's about it at the mo. Any answers would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
g.

yes it does! Not sure about the rest!

corsair (from what i remember in my pc-obsessing days) are a fantastic brand, the bentley of ram :P

not sure if they'd be compat with macs though, let alone under the applecare regime, err i mean warranty...

i heard it was a better isight but im yet to confirm it

Yes its dual layer

Corsiar are a good brand and will work fine

oh, I'll add a question...

how's the speed of apps running under rosetta compared with previous macs? same as G5? G4?

(Just wondering if those apps will take a speed hit compared to my current mac or be about the same or better)

edit: typo

No problem with Corsair, but be careful! The iMac (Intel) takes laptop RAM - that is, 200-pin SO-DIMMs. At that price you probably got a quote for the 270-pin DIMMs (which are the full-size variety) - you would need a hammer to install one of those.

In Oz, you will find the SO-DIMMS will be around the $270-290 AUD range for 1x 1GB. If you buy online from the US, you can find them for around $190 AUD (including shipping). I've had a good experience buying from Memory to Go or check Deal Ram.

And no, I didn't have to pay any additional duty on the RAM (which I think remains true if you keep your total order cost [including shipping!] under $500 AUD).

I just checked the specs and it seems that, like PPC iMacs, the Intel version still only burns DVD+R DL discs - it will not do DVD-R DL. A bit strange given that Pioneer and other maunfacturers have had burners available to do both formats for quite awhile now. OTOH DL blanks are still pretty exy, so only problem if you _really_ need the capability.

http://www.everythingapple.com.au/catalog/...roducts_id=1423

The cheapest 1GB chips I've found in Australia. $199.95 I'm ordering before they bump the prices up...

With regards to the built in isight, it has better resolution, but according to wil shipley (developer of delicious library) apparently its fixed focus (not auto focus like the firewire ones), they had to re-work delicious library slightly for the in-built isights.

Edit: here is some more infro: http://www.apple.com/imac/isight.html
If you look under multi-way chat, it says that the new in-built isights have four times the resolution of the old ones....... the old ones were 640x480 (0.3 megapxels).

Yeah, when I made the original post I didn't realise they needed the SO-DIMM laptop RAM so my prices were off. This looks good though.

g.

[edit: thanks for the isight info The_OM]