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My new G5

When I placed the order for my G5, Eric at Apple Sales assured me that it would be here by Friday, and he was correct. So I took half the day off from work so I could be here when the FedEx man arrived, and would have more time to play with the new machine and wouldn’t have to wait until 6:00pm to see it!

It was here when I got home, so after running around in circles and giggling like a little school girl for a few minutes, I opened the box and got everything setup. Here are a few pictures of my setup as it is now:

In the top picture you can see my eMac which I’m still selling, my 19” Mitsubishi Monitor, Klipsch speakers, etc.

The second pic obviously shows the pretty little G5.

And in the last one you can see the G5, my external LaCie 160gb Hard Drive, the Subwoofer for the speakers, my battery backup, the EyeTV, etc.

Setup

Setup was of course a breeze… I just unboxed it and plugged in my MX700 wireless mouse, the USB hub, power cord, keyboard, etc. It came with a DVI -> VGA adapter so that I could use my CRT out of the box. One thing that was kind of limiting was having only 2 USB ports on the back. That pretty much only leaves room for the keyboard and mouse, though usually you’d plug the mouse into the keyboard I suppose. But luckily I had a USB hub already, so it wasn’t a problem. Before I hooked it up I just had to pull the latch on the back and pull down the side door to see the insides of the machine, and man, it is the most beautiful computer innards I’ve ever seen. There are no cords hanging all over the place, everything is just where it’s supposed to be. Everything is easy to access and can be inter-changed by only pulling a lever. Truly amazing.

Speed

In comparison to my eMac and Powerbook, well, there is no comparison. This is one speedy computer. All programs respond instantly, even Garageband, iPhoto, etc. I haven’t spent much time in Photoshop or Dreamweaver yet, but the time I have spent with them, they seem very responsive and fast.

I ripped a DVD, and when compressing the video to fit on a CD, it was going at around 1.8x, almost twice as fast as real-time. On the eMac it usually compresses the video at around .7x or .8x. So instead of taking all night to compress, it only takes a couple of hours. Compressing the audio for a feature-length movie took about 9 minutes, whereas on the eMac it usually takes 25 minutes.

The “xBench”http://xbench.com/ scores for the G5 were around 201, whereas on my powerbook they were under 100. And during the G5 testing I had Safari, Mail, iChat, iTunes, and Quicksilver open.

Needless to say, this machine is really fast and is worth every penny.

Halo is quick and good looking. I can run it at 1280 x 1024 with no skipping frames at all. It’s very smooth and fluid. Doom 3 will be a different story of course, but for anything less than that, this machine smokes.

If you’re looking for a Mac and already have a screen or don’t mind purchasing a Cinema Display or a cheap CRT, this is the Mac to get if you can afford it. The G5 is on a totally different level than the G4’s in the other Macs, plus you have the option to upgrade the machine that just isn’t that possible with the eMacs and iMacs.

Those pics are awesome. I am glad you are lovin your new g5. The e-mac looks cool also. Maybe next year getting a g5 will be doable than getting an e-mac.

Been lovin my dual 1.8 since I got it day after Thanksgiving last year. The only thing I do on my PC anymore is play Battlefield 1942 and BF: Vietnam. Everything else is the G5. The G5 is an enabler, and the PC is just a computer.

me likey. i hate you now.