Amazing uptime with my iMac...

I just went 6 straight days without rebooting my iMac. All I did was put it to sleep when I wasn't using it. How many of you running Windows (any version) could do that? So what finally forced me to reboot? A power failure. The stability is miles ahead of Windows PC's. However, Safari does crash just like Internet Explorer. I suspect it has something to do with flash websites.

I also upgraded my iMac 4 GB of RAM (the maximum). It's a joy to use now as everything happens instantly (other than slow network or moving large files).

iMac: Bootup times....

As I have said in a previous post, my iMac boots a lot faster than my Dell Inspiron 1705 laptop running Vista. How much faster is it? Well, I actually timed it today. It takes 35 seconds for my iMac to boot up from a cold start. That is the time it takes between pressing the power button to where I can move the mouse pointer and launch a web browser. For Vista, it took 1 minute 35 seconds to get to the same point. However, that doesn't tell the entire story. The iMac was very responsive at that point. Vista was still busy loading stuff in the background, so the system was very sluggish and unresponsive. I'm really impressed with the responsiveness of the Mac. It seems much faster than an equivalent PC running Windows. The specs on my iMac as of today are as follows:

• Intel Core 2 Duo running at 2.4 GHz
• 3 GB of RAM (just upgraded with a 2 GB module)
• 320 GB 7200 rpm hard drive

It's pretty much the lower end 24" iMac with the aluminum case as pictured here. My Dell laptop has the following configuration:

• Intel Core 2 Duo running at 2.0 GHz
• 2 GB of RAM
• 80 GB 7200 rpm hard dive.

My iMac does have more memory, but it was already booting up that fast before I upgraded the memory from 1 GB to 3 GB.

iMac: Running VMware Fusion...

I've been playing around with my iMac a lot lately. I just got VMware Fusion running on it and a copy of Windows Vista. I have to say that I am amazed! I've got Windows Vista running inside OS X! Of course, running two operating system really slows down the system because I only have 1 GB of memory, but it's really amazing that I can run 2 operating systems at the same time like this. I just went out to Fry's and bought a 2 Gig memory module to install into my iMac. Now I have 3 Gigs in my iMac!

It's really a sight to see how I can run an entire operating system within another one. So far, I'm really happy with this purchase. The Mac seems much more stable, and faster than Windows. Now that I can run Windows within a Mac, I have the best of both worlds! There are some limitations like Aero, Windows Movie Maker don't work. Also, playing back MPG's and other video is a bit jerky and not smooth.

I've been having some trouble playing back some mpg files that I've downloaded. They play fine in Windows Media Player, but they don't play in Quicktime. Strange...

iMac: I got one!

I finally got a Mac! I've been wanting one to try for a while now. I got the 24" iMac with 2.4Gz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. I've only been playing with it for a couple hours and I have to say I'm impressed! Everything works right out of the box! No spyware or junk ware like so many Windows PC's. The screen is beautiful. First thing I ran was the system update, Safari, iTunes, iChat, and played a few DVD's. So far, I have a really good first impression! The first thing I noticed is how fast the boot up times are. Also, the sleep and wake up functions are immediate. It's not like in Windows where it takes 10-20 seconds for the computer to go to sleep or wake up from a lower power state.

With Windows, so many things go wrong like searching for the correct drivers, strange error messages, viruses, spyware, and system performance gradually degrading over time. But I have to learn the keyboard shortcuts because they are quite different.