How do the new and old i-macs handle SL anyway, does anyone have one?

Well my PC tower blew up this week. It's dead, RIP, and all that. So I need to get myelf a new 'puter and they have the new i-macs at school, I work on them all the time. The new enviornmentally friendly and black metal cased ones, with the most amazing k-boards I have ever seen. And I did work on the older one last year, the white plastic ones. But how do they perform in Secondlife? I have not a clue about that.

But I am contimplating making the switch to a new Mac, largely because I have to start from the ground up and figure why not. Maybe there is something to using macs over PC. Yeah I am also in my last year of a university level design program, so we get lectured a bit about macs and when I turn around all I see in any class I have are a sea of mac-books. So jealous, well that and it's my last year to have access to the student side of the mac store here. I hear they give great deals to students.

Anyway, how do they run inworld? Anyone...

I have been using a 24 inch, 2.8 ghz iMac with the ATI 2600 card and 2 gigs ram for the last year and have very few problems. I keep the graphics settings on high with a draw distance of 128 and get frame rates of 25-30 on average. I am still using viewer 1.20. I tried 1.21 but did not feel the rendering was as fast. I can TP into a new location and have every texture draw in 30 seconds or less. The 24 inch screen really adds to the enjoyability. I have other macs with smaller screens, but the 24" is the far and away the best for SL visually.

The iMacs with the Nvidia 8800GS graphics are excellent. The ones with the Radeon 2600 are good. Forget about using anti-aliasing with the ATI models. The Nvidia does it easily. Don't waste your time with anything less than those two.

On the other hand, you can rebuild your PC to run SL faster than either one for a fraction of the price.

20" iMac

2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

4 GB RAM

ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro

One iMac for me and one for my wife.

Airport Wireless Network connecting them both.

LOVE IT! LOVE IT! LOVE IT!

actually it is not rebuildable, I have been fighting with it for the better part of a year, I can't even get bios up anymore, let alone an OS. But I am finding some last generation G5 i-macs, way cheaper than the new and I think inferior i-mac. Thanks for the help, at least I have a starting place for some answers.

And wow, the 20 inch works well too, that one is just over a thousand, which is pretty much the same price as a comparable PC. Another huge reason is the new i-macs are pretty much portable and self enclosed, so much smaller than a huge tower, and monitor.

Sure it is. Replace the broken components.

The G5 iMacs are not superior to the Intel iMacs in any way. Even the best of them has a woefully outdated graphics controller that's inadequate for SL.

And remember the price for the iMac's design is, you are stuck with that graphics controller. No upgrades, ever. Don't cheap out.

:0 maybe still not as cheap as pcs, but if'yer set on buying a mac, i'd liketa recommend checking out the 'sale/refurb' page at apple's online store!

What Bubba said. Mine is the 20", purchased last year. ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO. 1 MB RAM. I get around 30 fps on average on high, and prefer the current release client. The draw is snappy.

I'd also recommend Small Dog Electronics: http://www.smalldog.com/
I think they're wonderful, and have excellent customer support!