Tag Archives: iMac

My new iMac 27″ i7 MC814LL

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My work was kind enough to replace my aging 24″ iMac (MA456LL) with a new 27″ iMac (MC814LL). It’s a huge difference, not just screen size but performance as well. I’m coming from a Core 2 Duo processor to Intel’s i7 Quad Core Sandy Bridge. This has Hyper Threading so I get up to 8 threads. It’s very nice and fast. I’ve been able to run multiple Virtualbox VMs without slowing down.

This is the latest version of the Apple iMac line (Spring 2011) and comes with 2 Thunderbolt ports – which I don’t have any compatible devices to play with. The have removed support for Firewire 400 which I thought was not a good move. I still have devices using that port. I can still use it with a Firewire 400 to 800 cable. They should have at least added USB3.0 support but of course Apple doesn’t like using mainstream ports (also no support for eSATA or Bluray). Oh well, that’s Apple for you. I also have to replace my mini DV cable if I want to use a secondary monitor. An SDHC card reader available on the right side. This is a great addition, consider my Macbook Pro 13″ has it, it’s another way to transfer files between devices. It’s also convenient pulling images off my camera if needed.

 

Here’s a screenshot of the About this Mac.

As you can see, it comes with an 8GB ram running at 1333. My desktop at home (PC clone) with the same CPU is running 16GB at 1600MHz. I’m not sure if it will recognize the 1600MHz, but the great thing about my desktop at home is I can overclock the ram and CPU if i choose to – which is one of the limitations of Apple hardware.

Here is a screenshot of the details on the ram. As you can see, there are 4 total slots and can go as high as 16GB.

This iMac comes with an AMD Radeon 6970M 1GB video card. Based on the System Profiler, it’s running on the x16 slot and has a maximum resolution of 2560×1440. As with all iMac design, it isn’t something that can be replaced and upgraded. Notice the “M” on the model number. That stands for Mobile which is the same type of card you’ll find on laptops and is embedded on the motherboard.

The iMac is configured to have a 1TB hard drive. It’s a Western Digital 7200RPM. Based on the model number it’s a Caviar Black with 32MB cache. Not bad at all. The System Profiler also reveals that  the max speed supported is 6Gbps – so it can use SATAIII drives. The drive it currently has is SATAII – 3Gbps.

I don’t know much about the the Thunderbolt ports nor do I have any devices I can plug in it. So I’ll just post the screenshot of its section in the System Profiler.

 

Using Geekbench I got a score of 11809. The free version only runs in 32bit. I’m not sure if there’s a big difference if it’s running in 64bit. You can check the details here… http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/426677. I also ran Geekbench on my old iMac and got a score of 3210. It’s almost 4x faster but keep in mind, it’s a Core 2 Duo with no Hyper Threading and 4GB ram plus it’s slower ram. You can check out the details here… http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/426690.

Snow Leopard upgrade surprise

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My work recently ordered our Snow Leopard DVD so we can upgrade our iMacs. I did my usual Time Machine backup and upgraded. I didn’t worry much about compatibility since my personal 13″ MBP has been running SL for a few months now and it had the same apps installed – no problems at all.

After I upgrade my work’s iMac, there were problems. I kept getting errors from my Symantec antivirus (I had to install it, work policy even though it isn’t necessary). I reinstalled it and it warned me to install Rosetta. I thought that would be the “aha” so I installed it. It looks like it fixed that problem, but now my Adobe CS3 apps crashes when I launch them. I Googled and it turns out there is an existing compatibility issue with CS3 and SL. It’s weird though since my MBP runs CS3 without a problem.

So now I got another external firewire hard drive. What I’m going to do is restore a backup that I made in Time Machine before upgrade onto an external hard drive. This way I can make sure that’s a clean copy before formatting and restoring it onto my iMac’s hard drive. This is why I love using Macs. When running into problems, I have several options to restore without losing data – as long as you back up data.

Once this is complete and I’m satisfied with the restored data, I will restore the backup onto the iMac. Then I’ll format the external drive and install a clean copy of SL and migrate my Leopard over to see if it’s SL or just my iMac configurations.

Upgrading my iMac MB324LL/A

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My 320GB hard drive is starting to fill up on my iMac so I decided to get a 1TB hard drive. I knew opening the iMac is going to be a pain. I’ve seen videos from YouTube on how to open the previous plastic models and it looked hard. Nevertheless, I needed to upgrade my hard drive and I want someone else to do it. Besides, I wanted to know how to do it and do it myself. So the first thing I needed to do is look for videos on YouTube. I kept getting the plastic iMac model but kept searching. I found 2 pretty good videos: by lexusnut and by Zenn3k. Those were my starting point.

It took my cousin and I two hours to finally access the motherboard area. I cannot stress enough on how careful you must be. Apple has placed wires in many areas where if you lift something quickly, you may pull it out of place or unplug it – leading to damaging your device. We documented the process and uploaded it on YouTube to help others.

So now I got the new 1TB hard drive installed. How do I get my old system on the new drive? There are 2 ways to do this. The first way is to use Time Machine (if you actually did use it). You can install a fresh copy of Leopard on the new hard drive. After installation, you get an option to use a Time Machine back up to restore. I’ve tried this but since I have over 200GB of data, my iMac ends up sleeping while trying to load the data to restore.

The second option is the image the old hard drive and restore it on the new one. This option took me about a day to complete. What you will need is an external hard drive, your old hard, and the new hard drive. If you image your old drive before installing the new one, you don’t need a second external enclosure. The first thing you’ll do is to boot your computer using the Leopard DVD. Open Disc Utility on the Leopard DVD. Do not do this while booted on the hard drive. It’s possible that it will not work because the drive you are imaging is in use. The external hard drive is where you will save the image file. Once finished, restore the image onto the new hard drive. That’s pretty much a brief summary of what I did.

I did run into some errors while formatting the new hard drive. This post helped me out http://macosx.com/forums/hardware-peripherals/290989-disk-utility-problem-erasing-large-external-hard-drive.html.

The image/restore process took most of the day. It may be quicker or longer for you, depending on the size of the data. Make sure you take any necessary precautions before working on your expensive Apple hardware ;)

My new iMac Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz

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I finally pulled the trigger on a new iMac. I’ve been wanting one since I heard Apple’s future OS’s will stop supporting non-Intel Macs. I still have my old PowerMac G5 (dual 2.0GHz | 2.5GB ram). It still works flawlessly but was concerned of its support in the future. So now with my new iMac, I just have my G5 do video conversions and soon I’ll update the OS to Leopard server.

Some things that caught me by surprise after I using it for a couple of days.

  • No magnetic remote rest for remote control (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306284) – I was bummed out about not having this. I have this feature on my iMac at work.
  • With my G5 (since it uses a separate monitor), I was able to leave the computer on overnight and just turn of the monitor. With the iMac, you have to set up the screen saver timer and the display sleep option. Not a big deal but I have to keep changing it if I plan to leave the iMac on overnight. I change the settings to the lowest minutes possible but can’t have this option while I’m using it regularly.
  • The 2.66GHz model came with 320GB. I thought this would be enough but after transferring my data over from my G5, I’m left with 130GB. I guess I miscalculated how much data I had. I was thinking I had a little over 100GB of data only. No worries, I have over 2TB of external hard drives.
  • Upgrading the memory is a little different from the previous iMac models (non Aluminum). After removing the screw for the memory area, there now tabs instead of the levers. You have to pull the tabs in order to remove the memory. The first one was somewhat easy to pull, but the second was a little harder. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1760
  • The ATI Radeon HD 2600 (256MB PCIe) is a great upgrade from my G5′s ATI Radeon 9600 Pro (64MB AGP) video card. My frame rate on WoW has at least doubled and in some areas it tripled.
  • The startup of my iMac is a little faster than my G5 but would’ve thought it would be faster.

I haven’t really got too much into it to feel the difference. But if you are still running a non-Intel Mac, I would suggest getting a new one with an Intel CPU. Not only will Apple stop support on non-Intel CPU’s in the future but programs like Parallels and VMWare run great on the new hardware (requires Intel CPU).

my messy desk

my messy desk

iMac info

iMac info