The Motorola Xoom started life as a £399 10 inch tablet, competing against the iPad 2, the theory was it had double the ram for the same price as the baseline iPad 2. Sales were bad and soon they dropped the price down to £329 and in November 2011 brought out the Xoom 2. Recently a few retailers have slashed the price down to £249, such as PCWorld & Carphone warehouse (the same people who also slashed the prices of Blackberry Playbook). I thought I would pop along to local PCWorld and see if they had any in, online stated they had none in stock.

Selling the lie

I asked a sales woman about the price – she stated that the price was only available on-line and I had to buy the product (and have it delivered) on-line also. I went on to explain that it gives you the option at the on-line price to pick up from a store, so the only Online bit was me actually choosing it online. She went on to say that she has no stock and this was without checking in any form, we can assume that she has already been asked about these today or is in fact guessing. She went on to tell me about the brand new Xoom that is coming soon and this is why they have reduced the price, when I asked about which model, she was unsure but as soon as I mentioned Xoom 2, she said that was the one.

I went on to inform her that the Xoom 2 came out in November 2011 and can be bought anywhere and is not ‘coming soon’. The last bit of info she shared was the fact that PCWorld was the only retailer that is selling the Xoom at £249, once I explained Carephone Warehouse have the same model and price – she walked away, almost annoyed I guess.

Tablets going down in price

It stands to reason that as CES 2012 has been and gone, there will be a whole bunch of new Tablets coming out, these are faster (Quad core), better GPU (Tegra 3) and features Ice Cream Sandwich (V4 of android OS). The tablets that are left in the stores have two options, reduce the price to attract the impulse buyer / looking for a cheap tablet or not sell any more of them.

Let us not also forget the Apple iPad 3 is due out soon and this may be a game changer on what to expect in tablets. I am no hurry to buy a tablet and it seems its hard to get them anyhow, maybe the staff bought them all as they did with the HP, at least I have saved myself £250 once again.

BlackBerry Playbook

I currently own an iPad 1, wife has an iPhone 4S and I have a Windows Mobile 7 Phone, so I have enough devices to do what I need on the go. I have been looking at tablets for a while now and a few caught my eye such as Sony Tablet S, Blackberry Playbook and the Motorola Xoom. The end choice is always about money, splashing out £400 for an iPad 2 was too much money in my books and even the £329 price points of Android Tablets seem a bit high. The two machines that are at the £200 price point are the Blackberry Playbook and Arnova 9 G2.

Buying on Impulse

I had watched some YouTube videos already and was in two minds if this device would suit my needs or not, I was standing in the store and had they no 32GIG models in stock (as the online site told me) I would have happily walked away but they had 4 in fact. I bought the device on the grounds that I could take it back for a full refund, this would allow me to try it out fully and see what it can really do.

Packaging & Initial Boot

The box that it came in is very well presented and contains the Playbook, Neoprene Sleeve, Micro-USB Cable Cleaning Cloth and the Mains Charger. There is a piece of paper that tells you to make sure you have Wi-Fi Coverage, press the power button and follow the steps on-screen. The initial steps including connecting to a Wi-Fi, setting up a Blackberry account, country based settings and finally checking for updates. It took a while to download and update the device, nothing major but until this is complete, you cannot use the device. The last thing it does is take you through a guide on how the device works.

Specifications

• 7″ LCD, 1024 x 600, WSVGA, capacitive touch screen with full multi-touch and gesture support
• BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
• 1 GHz dual-core processor (Cortex A9 Processor), w/ GPU
• 1 GB RAM
• Memory: 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions to be available
• 5300mAh battery
• Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), supports 1080p HD video recording
• Video playback: 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV
• Audio playback: MP3, AAC, WMA
• HDMI video output
• Wi-Fi – 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts
• Open, flexible application platform with support for WebKit/HTML-5, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader, POSIX, OpenGL, Java
• Ultra thin and portable:
• Measures 5.1″x7.6″x0.4″ (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
• Weighs less than a pound (approximately 0.9 lb or 400g)

The Device – Connectors

This is a 7 inch tablet, a lot smaller than the iPad (9.7”) and it runs the screen at 1024×600 which compares nicely to the iPad 1024×768. There are very limited connectors on this device; there is a power button along with volume up and down and a play button on the top. Underneath we have a Micro HDMI, no lead is supplied but you can get this cheaply online. Given the low cost of the cables, I am not sure why RIM did not include this in the box? Next this this we have Micro USB connector and I guess another connector for the Dock you can buy.

Hardware – Camera, Speakers & Microphone

The Playbook has a better front camera than most tablets have back camera. Both cameras can do full HD (that’s 1920×1080), the back camera of course been better quality. They are rated as 3MP front and 5MP back (2592×1944). The microphone is just amazing and can pick up very clear and loud audio. Finally the speakers, unlike most tablets, they have placed them on the front and they are loud and have good bass, perfect for playing music. If you want to think of this device as a HD Camcorder, then that is money well spent in this regard and of course it can do so much more.

The Web Browser

I have tested many sites on this device and I would say that just about all of them work as they would on a normal desktop web browser. I could happily view a stream on Justin.TV and access many of the file sharing sites. The one site that did not work was soundcloud, I could not press the arrow to start the music playing for some reason. I noticed a lot of the applications were in fact just a short cut to the web site, for example BBC iPlayer. Using TVCatchup website allowed me for example to watch TV live which was handy. The reason why most work? Simple, it has a fully functional adobe flash built right in and in no way did the device slow down because of this.

Application Store

This is where the device starts to fall down, there are a lot of applications that are just not there and a lot are things you have to buy. I failed to find for example a decent Twitter program, teamviewer, Skype and so on. One of the reasons why there are applications missing is simply the fact you open a web page and do the same thing, such as Tweetdeck.

Gaming

Battery Life

This is one area where I heard was not so good and it is claimed an 8 hour battery life. With general use throughout the day, I went from 100% to 56% and that was with using it heavily. I agree the iPad has a longer life which means it can last for a whole week without charging but maybe as the iPad does not fully multitask and has no flash is the reason why. I did not feel the battery life was an issue since using this device over the last few days, maybe as I was plugged in via USB half of the time and it trickle charging it?

OS2.0 Beta & Android Applications

I followed a guide online which was as simple as going to the Blackberry site, typing in your PIN number plus email address and I soon had an update flagged on my device (511MB) to the beta OS, which is due out Feb 2012. Before I went ahead with this, I wanted to make sure I could go backwards and again on the same site, it tells you how to do this. One major update here was the fact that wireless which was previously connecting at 11Mbps was now at 65Mbps. You can side load BAR files (Android apps) via a tool called DDPBInstaller. I tested a handful of Android programs and some worked 100%, some looked like they were working but did not function properly and finally some just crashed straight out.

Using this method I was able to get Citrix installed and connect to my work Citrix farm and access the desktop without any major issues. I tried Skype but that failed as well as teamviewer. DS File & DSAudio (both Android Applications to access files from my Synology NAS) worked 100% and I was able to stream any of my music or watch any movie on my NAS box (as long as the format was correct). Doing some testing as to what video formats it can play, it copes with MP4 just fine, it can also play WMV & MOV formats as well. AVI and MKV was a no-go and instead of playing them, just copied them to the device instead.

Bluetooth Keyboards

I used the Apple Bluetooth keyboard as a test and set it to search for devices. It found the keyboard (I held the power key on the right hand side until the LED flashed) and asked me to type in a number on the keyboard. I typed it and pressed enter and the keyboard was paired. I tested an IRC application and was typing away at full speed. Any Bluetooth keyboard would work of course as would a headset.

Comparing it to iPad

Before I compare devices, remember that a 32GIG iPad 2 is currently £479 and this device only cost me £200. The iPad is bigger (9.7”) but no much more screen estate (1024×768 vs. 1024×600). As iOS has a wealth of application, you can normally find just about anything you want but the reason it needs applications in the first place is due to the browser on the iPad not been able to do flash or air stuff. A good example of this is either Ustream or Justin.TV, both need an application on the iPad (which is the iPhone version) while the playbook can not only use the proper website but also stream using the built in camera & microphone. If we add the ability to use Android applications then this opens up the playbook to a more level playing field.

Conclusion

I bought this device with the express thought that I could take it back should it be a waste of my time and for the first couple of days, the “swing-o-meter” was edging towards “take it back”. In fact I almost put it all back in the box and took it back just the other day as I felt it did not do what I wanted out of a device, this was until I placed 2.0 Beta and side-loaded some Android application. Ask yourself this question; what else is out there that will cost you £169, £200 or £329 (16GIG, 32GIG, 64GIG) for so much hardware? I looked at the ‘cheap’ android tablets (Arnova 9 G2) and that cannot do half what this can do plus only has 8GIG ram and costs the same price (£200).

The plan is simple, I keep using this device for another week solid and by time Saturday comes around, if I feel this is just a mere toy and a waste of my £200, I shall flash it back to production OS, wipe it clean and take it back. If it lasts the full week then I shall keep it plus buy myself some much needed items such as a case (which doubles as a stand) and a mini HDMI convertor.

The one last thing to mention is this device has no GPS which means it cannot really function as a replacement SatNav in your car which is a shame as it wound have rounded the device off nicely.

****** UPDATE 10 Jan 2012 ******

I grabbed the device last night to sit down and chill out, I had problems, lots of them. The video player just quit half way through a movie, the browser would hang for a long time on flash related sites and the Android Apps would crash out for no reason. I followed the guide to bring the device back to 1.8.0, cleaned it up and re-boxed it “good as new”. I took it back to the store today and got a full refund. If you do buy one due to this review, the device might work out better for you but I cannot wait until RIM get the software working correctly, maybe this is why they are so cheap?

As 2011 draws to a close, thought it fitting to write a short piece recapping on a few major points and of course looking forward to what 2012 may bring. A lot of people I have talked to seem to think that 2011 was a bad year for them, while I cannot offer any thoughts on how they felt for 2011, I look at 2011 as a time for chance. So what happened in 2011 and how do I see the next year progressing?

The dawn of the Mac

It was in 2011 that I put my hand in my pocket and bought a iMac, yet again refurbished and I agree a Lot of money for a machine. If I could go back in time, would I have bought it or would I have chosen something else? Not a clear answer here, I could have bought a top of the range 3,4Ghz Intel i7 but another PC a bit faster than the PC I already have?

The advent of training

It was march this year that I finally stopped trying to train in my garage and joined a proper gym. This was the best step ever made and I saw gains much quicker and trained properly. I was hoping to also do some sort of martial art but nothing major happening in my area it seems.

The end of google adsense

Google adsense started very slowly and only brought in a small amount but at least it was something and in fact it helped pay for half of my iMac. Greed of course got the better of us and we tried to work the system but the system is not stupid and soon it logged the same IP every single day and then it killed the account. I Still say that it is google loosing out (though they are so large, they would not care) as there is now no adverts anywhere on my site with no way ever to get the adsense back.

Google Plus

Who can forget that Google rolled out G+ and soon many people were video chatting to each other. Old Friends, new friends, friends I had forgotten about all come back t the front. It was sort of short lived in a sense though and as quick as it had started, it was over and no longer people had a hangout.

Streaming

At the tail end of the year, I noticed there was less and less Tech Streams, is the ride over and people have grown bored with either making them or watching them? We shall see what 2012 brings.

This Blog

I do try and write as much as I can and of course keep it interesting but with lack of funding from Google, it’s hard along with trying to think of half decent things to write. People clicking the link for siteground and signing up for one years hosting for $10 bags me a free month and keeps the site going well into 2012.

The three main smartphone’s out there at the moment are Android, Apple and Windows Phone 7, of course there is a lot of makers of these phones (apart from the iPhone, only Apple make them). It just so happens that I have to hand three phones to compare, this been the HTC Hero (Running Android 2.1), a slow and small phone by today’s standards but it does give me a chance to compare. The wife has the iPhone 4S and I got a new work phone, the HTC Trophy, A Windows 7.5 phone. Is there a clear winner here? Will the iPhone wipe the floor with the rest? Onward to battle.

HTC Hero

Before we continue, this phone is well below the specs of the other two. The screen size of 320×480 and the fact it is only running from a 528 MHz ARM 11 means it is slow. One of the great beauty in my eyes of the Android OS is the fact you can find pretty much any type of program you need and normally for free. You can side load any program just by putting in a memory card and installing it that way.

While not relevant on this phone, you can get Skype and many streaming type applications to broadcast anywhere. The other fact is you do not need to sync this phone (you can if you want) to a computer, just put what you need on a memory card and you are good to go. It can do all the major function such as Sat Nav, Mapping, act as a camera, a music player and a whole lot more besides. My main gripe though was how fragmented Android got and for this I see this platform as a failure for now.

iPhone 4S

There must be very little I can write that people do not already know but my first and foremost thought on this phone is the fact that while many applications are free, most cost money. You have to Sync the phone initially with a computer running iTunes and if you own a Mac and a Windows Box, you cannot just plug into any, you have to sync with the computer you choose at the start.

While not important to me, the things that mattered on this phone was the ability to be easy to use (it is – it has one main button to press), notifications (just added with ios5) and be easy to type on. Siri to me (and my wife) seems to be a fun gadget to use but once the 5 minute of playing has been done, it is back to the keyboard.

HTC Trophy 

Recently I swapped my Windows Mobile 6.5 phone (HTC mini) for this model and it came running version 7. It seems you need Zune software to do anything with the phone and updating to latest (7.5) took many hours indeed. It reminded me of Windows actually, doing one update, rebooting then finding another update.

The speed of the phone is very fast indeed, the Metro OS is easy to use and has live updating tiles. There is no dedicated phone button so calling someone means you have to press one of the tiles, I made sure this was placed right at the top. I like the fact I can see if I have any emails, messages and upcoming appointments. The App Store (Market place) has quite a lot of programs, I was surprised as to how many there was.

What was missing though was the programs I might need such as Skype, any sort of Streaming type application and others. It has voice input (rather like Siri) and on my testing it worked better than I expected and I guess it has to do with accents. Siri for example got some things wrong as did this phone but at least when I search for Pizza, this phone actually brings the goods (Not working on Apple in the UK as of yet).

Thoughts?

The iPhone and the Windows Phone both have fixed storage which means I have to micro manage what I put on there. They also both need a program to sync things which means I have to use the one fixed computer. I much prefer the flexibility of have a SD Card to shove on what I want, increase the storage and so forth. I actually find the Windows 7.5 phone very functional indeed and much better than I thought it would be, it sort of does multitasking but only in the fact it suspends applications. It has no Front facing Camera on the HTC Trophy and the quality is not as good as the iPhone.

If I had to choose one phone out of them all from this list then? The answer of course would be the Apple iPhone but the windows phone comes a very close runner up for now.

My wife was in need of a new phone, her last phone she put in the washing machine by mistake which killed it dead, the only problem was the contract does not run out till march 2012. She uses the iPad all the time (the one I won from GFI) and she is not really technical minded at all. The phone she was using was my HTC Hero which runs Android 2.1 and she could not for the life of her get used to that, it was in fact too complicated. There was a few options, one of these would have been a blackberry device for example, plenty of them on offer for £10 a month and it has a keyboard. Why did we go with the iPhone 4S over any other phone? Read on to find out.

Blackberry

I had at work a similar phone to the blackberry as it goes (same type keyboard) and let her have a go of this phone to type some messages out and straight away using the middle button to go through the menu’s was too hard to work out and so was trying to type any sort of message.

iPhone 4S

Here was my thoughts, the iPhone is the same way of working as the ipad, just smaller right, so if she already knows how to work that, then jumping to an iPhone should be second nature. I priced up both the iphone 4 and the 4S and the difference in price was not much at all, same monthly contract, cost of phone was either £20 or £50.

Now the 4S has Siri and we tested this out “Send message to Tom” at which point it got the right name from the address book. We spoke the message and then said Send – it did this without touching the keyboard. We tested typing a message and it got the words right every single time – easy right.

As an added bonus, I added all the music she likes, the Next application and many others. Now she could check her facebook any place she likes, play the music and phone people with here 500 minutes a month. I have not bothered myself to get an iPhone – maybe I am more of an Android man, larger screen and so forth.

An update on the broken iMac, I took it to an Authorised Apple repair centre about 30 minutes drive away on Wednesday 14th Sep, dropping it off right after work. I expected them to start working in this on the Thursday and with some luck have it ready for collection by Saturday, I say this given that they had hardly any items out on the shop floor and never looked that busy. They took until Friday in fact to work out what was wrong and they come to the conclusion it was a power supply. I called them right back explaining that if you hold the power button in while plugging in the power cable, all the fans come on – this to me says it is not the power supply.  They assured me thought that this is what Apple said it could be – what was I to know right?

Monday was the day they said the Power supply would arrive from Apple, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and waiting until 3:30pm on a Tuesday to call them asking if they had it fixed yet, I got told they will fit the part and get back to me. Ten minutes later the engineer called who went on to say what he had done so far. He had swapped the power supply, the logic board and various cables and still nothing, it was not until he took out the hard drive that the system came to life. I recall saying it was the hard drive when I took it in due to the fact that it was clicking when trying to power the machine on.

Now that we established it was the hard drive, surely a simple replacement from the shop (who sell PC parts) and job is done right? Well not quite, they need to ‘order’ one from Apple, await delivery, fit and install Lion and then test – all before I can have my machine back. I am going to have a guess that my machine will be working by Saturday and I can then go and pick it up.

If this had been my only machine – the lack of the computer would have been annoying, why does an Apple authorised repair centre not have the parts in stock?

Refresher  – I bought a refurbished iMac 27″ 2010 model from  the apple store on the 3rd June 2011 and apart from one of the USB ports playing up, the machine to my knowledge ran just fine. On Sunday the 11th Sep, I was using the machine and it worked just fine, I powered it down as normal, switching off the Mouse to save on battery. Monday morning I pressed the power button and nothing happened. I started to go through a sequence of tests, I got my meter out to check the fuse, tried a different power cable and checked on-line to see what test I can do. I choose to call Apple Support and at this stage expected for them to sort out this issue by means of a person coming out or whatever, how wrong I was.

What did I expect?

If I buy something and it stops working within a few months, I expect to either take it to a local shop for fix / replacement, get the company to come out and fix it or at worst for them to pick it up. The problem with Apple dealers is they are not common on the high street and only to my knowledge in major towns.

The Support Call

She got me to go through some checking, pressing 4 keys at once while powering on the machine (very hard to do while on the phone) and eventually come to the conclusion that it was in fact dead. She then started to tell me where to take this, I had the option of two shops 30 miles one way, 30 miles the other (plus bridge tolls) and 30 miles in the last direction. The problem with these trips is that I would have to finish work, quickly get changed and then drive to the store and try and get there before it closed. I would then have to repeat this once it was fixed.

AppleCare

They informed me if I had Applecare, I would be allowed to have it picked up, fixed and returned. I was going to buy Applecare at some point anyhow but just not now. When I got into work that day I bought the said product thinking that it would happen in the next 24 hours (as per the support call me told me it would) but no, it has to be delivered by courier and this is not due to hit my house till the 16th Sep – madness.

My next plan

As I cannot seem to get the  iMac fixed quickly, I will drive to the store on Wednesday and see if they can fix it by Friday.  I am annoyed that unlike say Dell who will send a person out regardless, Apple cannot provide the same level of Support unless you buy extra support from them. I still wish I had not bought this machine – long live Apple

The age old argument that has been going around since the dawn of time, which is best – the apple or the PC and in this sense we mean either a computer running Windows or it could be Linux of course. For the Tech savvy end user, building your own machine can be cheaper, much more powerful and more upgradable than the Mac range of computers. On the other hand we have a beautiful all-in-one that is the iMac and nothing can beat the one plug professional looking box which also happens to have the 27″ screen of course. I wanted to use this post not to go through the age old arguments but to ask the question of “why should I spend all that money and buy an iMac”

The iMac is very expensive

If you take a look at the 27″ iMac on the apple store, the price is mind blowing, if you were to take that same money that it costs to buy just the i5 model for example – you could build or buy one hell of a windows box out of that money that would have the Core i7, more storage, much better graphics card and so forth. What most people do not take into account though is the 27″ screen and if we wanted the same screen for the Windows box, we need to spend at least £650 on the Dell Model.

Now that have removed £650 from the £1400 price tag – we only have left £750 to play with, maybe not such a mega amazing machine now right? The whole point of the iMac anyhow is that it is a machine that has everything ‘most’ people need with one plug, boots very fast indeed and very easy to add and remove software and generally does not slow down as fast as say Windows does.

Resell value

Like a good car, you can sell the thing and get a good price back, if you were to take let us say a Acer Desktop, you will be lucky if you get that much at all for 2009 model of the computer. I want to add that you can buy for example Apple Care at any point in your first year, right up to the point of the last day and get the extended cover, normally you only get sold the cover when you are buying something in the store and most of the time the cover they sell if not of any use.

Anything Apple can do, windows can do just as well

I have been through most windows operating systems, from DOS to Windows 3.11 and all the way up to Windows 7. I have used and worked with most Linux installs in my time and I have only ever worked on Mac OS X but not the versions before it. I can tell you that any of the operating systems out today can do whatever it is you ask of it, the only difference is how easy, how much and how much effort you are going to put in to find the required software.

If we were to talk about Video editing (for the normal people that is), iMovie is very easy to produce a good looking video, very easy to get the exact bit you needed on the time line and it seems fast enough to output the end video. Movie Maker on the PC is not as good and missing a lot (in my eyes) and if you step up to Sony Vegas, not only does it cost a lot of money but the interface is not as easy to work with but you can do a lot more than say iMovie – it’s all relative.

Boot times

My job is to do IT Support and I have seen a lot of windows boxes that take so long to boot and be ready that you can go and make a coffee while it starts. Even a Core i7 with 9 GIG ram can still take some time to boot and even though the desktop comes up, it is still not useable at that point in time. Mac OSX (even on a hackintosh) is very fast to boot which means I can power the computer on, check my various things and power down.

Multiple screens and other goodies

In OSX we had spaces which is now called Mission Control and this lets you quickly jump from space to space. Linux has had this for areas also with the cube and such and also why I like using Linux sometimes. I can set my programs to start on whatever screen and when the computer starts up, I have all the programs to hand without my screen been cluttered with programs.

Bottom Line

I am not here to convince you all that you should hit the apple store and get buying a new computer but you do good a decent machine for the price especially as I did and buy a decent refurbished machine. If you are a hardcore gamer then whilst most games run fine, it will never compete with the latest and the greatest of the pc world. Maybe give a virtual mac a try or hackinitosh your current machine to see if OSX offers anything you may like.

Of all the companies that are out there, the one that I thought could get it right with a major operating system rollout would be apple. They stated that if you bought a computer from apple from the 25th June onwards, you are entitled to OSX Lion when it came out free of charge. The problem is, the servers that handle verifying if your are entitled to acode or not is having trouble matching serial numbers against inventory. When I headed to the page I entered my infomation in there only for it to tell me:

Sorry, we can’t find the serial number you provided. Please recheck your serial number and enter it again.

Apple Support – second to none

I Always assumed that apple support were great, I called them up and then went through the issue, tried it and explained to me that in fact the servers were overloaded and I was to try again either later on that day or in fact the next day. As this was the first time I had called and could beileve maybe that was the case, I ended the call but not before the guy was trying to sell me Apple care of course.

I searched around the web and spotted something, every time they have a major upgrade such as Leopard, Snow Leopard and iLife, people struggle to get verified on the apple site.  I left this until the next morning, surely this would be fixed by then right?

The day after the day before

I tried at 8am UK time, still the same, I called Apple support and got the same old story, servers are too busy. I took his name this time, he was called Kiren. He told me to try later, it should work by then – I hung up. I tried many times whilst at work and finally when I got home, I had one last go before calling Apple. No Surprise then that the page did not work and I called once again apple support, this took 10 minutes to get a person so they must be getting a lot of issues same as mine.

We went through the normal blurb and he tried to get his supervisor to maybe get an answer but he failed at that and asked if I wanted to wait for this guy or just leave it until one day it might work? The other suggestion he gave me was why do I not just go out and buy it if I wanted it that badly, after all it was only £22 or something.

I have a better idea on how to get Lion and no need for serial numbers – you failed Apple.

I thought I would write a new post with my thoughts on the new iMac that I bought, this may help some people who are not sure if spending that much money on a computer is worth it or not. I need to add of course that I have owned the 24 inch iMac and know enough about this sort of thing already. Given the time since using Apple computer in a proper sense (I have a Hackintosh running 10.5.8), it would be nice to see what has changed, how much I had forgot and how working on such a large display would either Aid me in my work or hinder me due to the size. Let us begin then on this journey back to the mac.

The Arrival of the Hardware

The box arrived at 7:30am on a Tuesday and if you recall I ordered it on a Sunday – so that’s not bad going at all and it saved waiting in all day for this to arrive. I was expecting after watching various un-boxing video’s for the plain outer box to have another one inside but with refurbished it seems there is not inner box, no marking whatsoever with iMac on the side and so forth. I checked it over, it looked un-marked and got it set up in place. The good thing about the imac is that there is one plug with no other wires at all (apart form the network cable of course). The Mouse and keyboard is now Bluetooth, my old one was the wired version with keypad and the mouse was the one with the little ball.

Boot it for the first time

On the first Boot, the white screen seemed to stay on for ages and then finally the welcome video played, it soon picked up many updates, rebooted and found yet more updates. I have seen people complain about Windows 7 doing this but it seems Apple are the same, maybe not as many reboots of course.

Getting used to the Hardware

The keyboard is really small and most of the functions keys already do something so this never left many for stuff like spaces (which I placed on F6). Typing on the keyboard was not as good as say my Logitech keyboard and for normal day to day stuff this is fine but if I were to write a blog post or a long email I think I shall carry on using the Windows machine. The mouse as I had heard is not the best thing in the world, the shape does not lend itself to be held properly (too thin) and it does not always respond to the clicks and swipes. Quite often I had gone back two pages as I had used two fingers and it took this as a swipe. I have heard the batteries run out quickly so this I shall see. I cannot see myself buying with the Apple charger or the induction charging device from apple – I would rather just change the keyboard and mouse.

The super large display

As everybody has pointed out, the display is big and let us not forget that apple have spaces which means you can have 4 (or more) virtual screens with applications on each, this increases productivity a lot. If you find the text is a bit small to read, remember that OSX allows you to zoom in with the mouse on any part of the screen. There is the option to use the display as an input (not sure how that works) and even get devices to attach your PS3 for example. I need to say though that the screen is very bright and as it is reflective, acts almost like a mirror and can be distracting.

The Speed of the machine

To make sure I had an Core i7 in there, I did about this mac and was happy to see instead of supply 4 GIG ram (2 x 2) they had in fact gave me 2 x 4Gigs to give me a total of 8 GIG ram. I have already price the Ram and I can get a 4GIG stick for £28, for now I am happy to leave it running with 8GIG ram.

One of the things I did was try a virtual machines running Windows 7 and this is while I had all sorts of programs open and it all ran without even stressing the machine. One thing I did notice though was the noise grew a lot louder due to the Fans running on full. To compare, in the Dell Desktop (also Core i7) this is not the case as it has a full case to spread the air around while the iMac is a lot thinner of course.

The Speed of powering up the machine

I alwasy thought my Dell Windows 7 machine was slow at starting up and I do not count the time it takes to get to the desktop but rather the time it is before I can actually use the machine. I knew what was slowing my machine down though and this is the fact I have lot of backdrops on my NAS drive and the desktop switcher it working out what picture to choose next. The iMac stays at the white screen doing nothing (in my eyes) for as long as my windows machine is loading to the desktop, once I get the spinning wheel, it takes mere seconds to get to the desktop and of course is now is ready to work (unlike Windows). The iMac is faster but not by that much which surprised me, maybe if I had SSD it would boot very fast indeed.

Conclusion

Given the speed, the ease of use that comes with OSX and the fact there is no wires trailing all over the place combined with the large display makes this machine more than worth the money. I would suggest that the Core i5 and even last years models (2010 – the one I bought) are more than enough to do day to day stuff as well as play games. I will probably be replacing the mouse and keyboard at some stage but for now I shall try and get along with what was supplied.