tlarkin
VIP Member
Yeah, let me give you some examples of the pros and cons of the iMac, from real life experience.
Now looking at upgrading computers on a massive scale, like enterprise level networks. This is two fold. For example lets say you have 5,000 desktops at your company. Now, your desktops have a 4 year replacement cycle. That is typical for any company or organization to keep technology replacement cycles, that way you can budget and plan for it. Some places do it yearly, some places do it every 5 years. Depends on needs for the users of your company. Most places I have worked it is 3 to 4 years. Also, most of them are deployed in phases that way you aren't stuck deploying 5,000 at once. It is all about project management really.
So, you are at a replacement cycle for 1,000 of those 5,000 computers and you are looking at the new desktops. Now, you already have monitors for these desktops so you can save some cash by just buying desktop replacements. That is a plus. OTOH, a lot of times it is more cost effective and more efficient to just replace everything. So, with the iMac you don't get the price slash of just buying a desktop and not buying a display for it. You don't get that luxury.
Now, what you do it, is it only takes one power cord, real little space and has everything built in and the powerful management of Unix under the hood. In one of the buildings I admin, it is very old and in fact it is historically preserved and is part of some historical society. The building is awesome I will have to take pics one of these days, and it even has a fall out shelter in the basement and tunnels from the whole cuban missile crisis and the cold war stuff. Anyway, back on subject. Since it is historically protected we can't drill holes in walls, or hang anything or do anything with out some sort of approval from whomever controls the historical society in my city. So, instead we have race tracks running cables all over the place. We also have limited power plugs, and that is where the iMac fits in perfect. We needed half as many power outlets because the iMac only needed one power plug, instead of two like most desktops. Of course we can't be running tons of surge protectors and extension cords either, you know if the fire marshal stopped by and saw that we could get fined for breaking fire code, but it is dangerous to begin with.
So, people can sit there and complain about it not being upgradeable, but to me that is moot. I am going to build a new PC here soon because my current one is about 4 years old now and is not cutting it for modern games. The only thing I need/use it for is pretty much gaming. Everything else I prefer OS X or Linux, and in my experience they are both more stable than windows. Now, I can't upgrade my 4 year old PC. They no longer make AGP video cards, the RAM I have in there won't support the speeds of a new processor, and of course my motherboard won't support a new processor because of the difference in sockets. I will need a new power supply to supply proficient enough power to my new video card since the new ones like to consume a bit more power. So, really in all, you can't really upgrade your computer, you are always pretty much building a new one. So, I don't fully understand how people cling to that argument like it is a valid reason to not like Macs.
The only thing I can agree with is not being able to say, choose to have a better video card in them. I agree, that is lame, but then again that is not entirely Apple's fault, though I definitely hold some of the blame on them.
Whenever I save up enough cash I plan on buying a Macbook Pro and use it as a desktop replacement pretty much.
