This is going to be interesting
February 21st, 2006Lara and I both got a computer at virtually the same time. She got a Dell with a Pentium D (the badge says that VIIV thing that nobody can figure out what is) and a 20″ widescreen monitor. I got a 20″ iMac with the Intel chip. Our computers are identical in pretty much every way including price. I’m going to be bouncing back and forth between the two for a while I’m sure. What interests me about this is the comparison at the price point. For the money we got the same monitor (effectively) and dual core processors. The only real difference (aside from the obvious operating system) is the the form factor. Her monitor alone takes up more space than the iMac. Mine is ultimately a bit more expensive, but not enough to really skew this in my mind.
The thing that’s stood out the most to me at this point is the display and the way context matters. I originally used Windows 95 on a 15″ monitor set to 640×480, the most real estate I’ve ever had was two 17″ monitors at 1280×1024 each. The point is that I have a lot of context in what real estate means with Windows. Her monitor is a 20″ widescreen set to 1680×1050 and it feels mighty spacious. I can say for certain now that I’d rather have 2/3 the horizontal space if it means I can have it on a continuous screen. With OS X I have no context at all, I’ve used a 15″ iMac for maybe two or three hours tops. 1680×1050 on a 20″ widescreen is my starting point, it’s the basis of my context and it just feels adequate. I can’t really imagine trying to use OS X on a screen that wasn’t that big.
The other thing that stands out right now is aesthetics. Obviously the iMac looks better (or at least it’s obvious to me), but I’m surprised at how satisfying it is to just have a simple slot in the side of the machine that sucks dvds in. Having a tray jut out just seems primitive now. I like that there are no visible buttons on the machine, that all the wires stick into the back of the monitor, and the whole thing is pretty much self contained. I just better hope to hell that I can live with a 250GB hard drive for the life of this machine.
In the end it will obviously come down to the operating system and performance. I’m still in the honeymoon phase with OS X while still being a novice so I can’t make a really fair comparison on OS usefulness yet. Performance may also be an issue of context. The only time I put any strain on a Windows computer is at work and it’s a piece of shit, so when I try to do the same things on Lara’s computer and they fly it really stands out. On the iMac however I’m not really doing much to push the machine so I don’t really know if this is dramatically faster than anything else.
I bought the mac assuming that most everything I would do on it would be normal home user stuff and that any high performance activities would be done on my laptop and I think that’s pretty much how it’s going to work out. I was and am hoping that in the end, OS X will be much more enjoyable to use for those tasks but wasn’t expecting to have the oportunity to do this kind of side by side comparison. I look forward to seeing how my opinion of the two platforms changes over time.
p.s. Considering it’s running at the (to me) insane resolution of 1680×1050 WoW is running surprisingly well. The graphics quality sliders are (in agregate) set to medium-high and it seems to clip along nicely. Also, props to Blizzard for putting both Windows and os-x versions of the game in one box and for getting an intel build out in less than a month.