Yes, another iMac thread.

Time to upgrade my aging Windows Athlon system. I want to give Apple a try, more out of just wanting to try something new. I'm looking at one of the 20" iMacs. Without getting in to the glossy vs matte debates, am I going to see much of a performance difference between a white 20" refurb and one of the new aluminum 20 inchers? Much of a speed difference between 2.16 ghz and 2.4 ghz on the core duo's ? How about the graphics cards. White iMac would come with a 128mb X1600 card vs a 256mb HD2600 card. Not doing games, no video, just basic post-processing. Is it worth the extra $400 for the newer model?

i had similar dilema ...but i would never go for old imac ...had one already ....way to slow ...new core 2 duo is suppose to be the whole new story ....the glossy part worries me though

white iMacs come with either G5 and intel. I'm still using a G5, it works great, but at this point I'd go for one of the intel ones. CPU model and megahertz speed is generally not the limiting factor in computer performance. Get lots of RAM and you'll be happy.

10 years ago, I approached the mac switch the same way you do (probably the same way all PC'ers do) -- obsessing over hardware tech specs. Once you get used to the mac, you'll forget these details and stop worrying about what's under the hood. It frees you up for what's important.

Quoting myself from another thread:

Here is a comparison of the present & previuos generation iMacs compared to a bse machine (iMac 1.8 GHz Core Duo).