I succumbed to an itch last week and went and bought myself a 24" iMac. With Apple desktops still significantly more expensive than a similarly specced PC, I justified this to myself on the following grounds:

• With a new iMac I can run both Leopard (MacOS 10.5.x) and Windows on the same machine. This new machine also has a nice HD screen (1920 x 1200) and pretty decent stereo sound built-in, so I can also use it as a replacement for my crappy TV and stereo.
• PCs are ugly and noisy and I HATE THEM I HATE THEM!

I’ve been using PCs for eighteen years now and they never gave me the pride of ownership, nay, the smug self-satisfaction of the well balanced all-in-one iMac. A PC is always an ugly box, either boring and beige or black and silver and embarrassingly blinged out with superbright blue LEDs. And they’re noisy. And by the time you have them set up there are cables everywhere. And the keyboards are enormous and clacky with 50 extra knobs and multi-media buttons jammed into them.

The iMac is the quietest computer I have ever owned, in fact even quieter than my MacBook, which emits a faint high-pitched whine from its fans. The iMac does have a small amount of fan noise but it is more a low thrumming sound and you will only notice it if you eliminate all other noise sources in your immediate environment. So this thing is the ideal media center for my reasonably small living room. All I need now is the bluetooth keyboard and it will be perfect (with a bluetooth keyboard and wireless network the only cable required is the single power cord).

I have had a few issues which I should just point out to balance my enthusiasm:

• Leopard (OS 10.5) is more tacky looking than Tiger (10.4). Also I’ve had a few crashes and even managed to somehow lose my Dock bitmap for a session too, so I suspect it’s not yet as stable as Tiger.
• Inserting DVDs in the vertical slot drive is rather dodgy, because unless you lean around the side of the screen you are basically doing it blind. Also when the discs are ejected they don’t protrude far enough, so I find myself touching the disc surface in order to grasp them properly.
• When I first powered it up I noticed that about a third of the screen was actually foggy/blurry. At first I thought this was residue from the plastic wrapping on the screen, but after a bit of rubbing I realized that it was actually on the inside of the glass – Yikes! A quick google for iMac + condensation quickly revealed that many others were encountering similar problems (and in varying states of distress about it). Fortunately I am way intelligent and understand that condensation evaporates in warm air, so I pointed a fan heater in the general direction of the machine for a few hours and the fog went away (has not returned since). In looking it up I learned that the glass screen of the iMac is in fact held on by magnets, and easily removed with the aid of suction cups (or even a plunger!), but I didn’t actually need to go so far. The fact that it’s not actually sealed explains how moisture can get in there in the first place.