Apple iMac (24-inch, 3.06GHz)
Manufacturer: Apple Part number: Z0FH
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CNET Editor rating:
Not yet rated
- Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 6 reviews
- More product information:
- Editors' review
- User reviews
- Specifications
- Product series
- Manufacturer info
- Bottom Line:
- The aluminum-and-glass look remains the same, but underneath Apple makes some small but meaningful updates to its all-in-one iMac.
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CNET editors' review
Apple iMac (24-inch, 3.06GHz)
price range: $2,199.00
- Reviewed by: Matthew Elliott
- Reviewed on: 05/05/2008
The bottom line: The aluminum-and-glass look remains the same, but underneath Apple makes some small but meaningful updates to its all-in-one iMac.
Apple recently updated its iMac line, updating the components without touching the brushed-aluminum-and-glass design that it introduced last August. As in the past, Apple sells four iMac models--two 20-inch models and two 24-inch models--each of which allows for some degree of customization. The four default models keep their previous price points while moving to Intel Penryn processors, which offer higher clockspeeds and more L2 cache and operate on a faster 1066MHz frontside bus. Please see our full review of the 2.8GHz, 24-inch iMac for more information, including performance analysis.
Of the two 20-inch models, the biggest change with this update comes with the higher-end $1,499 model, which now offers 2GB of memory--double the amount offered by the previous model at that price point. All iMac models now use 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM--faster than the 667MHz memory from previous-generation iMacs. Aside from the new Penryn processors and memory differences noted here, the rest of the components remain unchanged from the previous generation 20-inch iMacs.
| Model | 20-inch 2.4GHz iMac | 20-inch 2.66GHz iMac |
| Price | $1,199 | $1,499 |
| Processor | 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo | 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo |
| Memory | 1GB 800MHz DDR2 | 2GB 800MHz DDR2 |
| Hard drive | 250GB, 7,200rpm | 320GB, 7,200rpm |
| Graphics | 128MB ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT | 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro |
| Screen size | 20 inches | 20 inches |
| Native resolution | 1,680x1,050 | 1,680x1,050 |
| Optical drive | SuperDrive | SuperDrive |
| Operating system | Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.2) | Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.2) |
The highest-end 24-inch iMac model received the largest update this round, receiving both a processor and graphics bump. The $2,199 model features a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo chip and a 512MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GS graphics card. One of the few complaints we had with last year's 24-inch iMac was the fact that the otherwise high-end configuration saddled you with a midrange graphics card. Now, you get a 512MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GS, a more powerful graphics card than the 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro it replaces. The GeForce card is a $150 upgrade option on the $1,799 model, while moving from the 2.8GHz CPU to the 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo is a $200 upgrade. You can also choose to double the RAM to 4GB for $200. Hard drive capacities go up to 1TB; it's a reasonable $300 upgrade from the 320GB drive and $250 from the 500GB drive.
| Model | 24-inch 2.8GHz | 24-inch 3.06GHz |
| Price | $1,799 | $2,199 |
| Processor | 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo | 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo |
| Memory | 2GB 800MHz DDR2 | 2GB 800MHz DDR2 |
| Hard drive | 320GB, 7,200rpm | 500GB, 7,200rpm |
| Graphics | 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro | 512MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GS |
| Screen size | 24 inches | 24 inches |
| Native resolution | 1,920x1,200 | 1,920x1,200 |
| Optical drive | SuperDrive | SuperDrive |
| Operating system | Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.2) | Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.2) |
Apple iMac currently ship with integrated draft 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 EDR, Mac OS X Leopard (version 10.5.2), and iLife '08.
User reviews
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The Best iMac EVER!
by deviartextreme on May 26, 2008
Pros: Super Fast, Huge Display (Chic, Not Geek!)
Cons: Nothing So Far! Or Probably ever!
Summary: I Bought the G3 233mhz Bondi in 1998 the day it came out, in 1998, then in 2005 a G4 1.25ghz eMac. Finally after waiting for a Graphics update ...
Summary: I Bought the G3 233mhz Bondi in 1998 the day it came out, in 1998, then in 2005 a G4 1.25ghz eMac. Finally after waiting for a Graphics update I bought the 3.06ghz imac intel It is awesome out of the box, I can open every application on the darn thing at once and shut them sown with no spinning rainbow. The display is overwhelming and awesome! EVERYTHINg IS REALLY WELL INTEGRATED! And although costly its WORTH IT! A+++
2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Great machine, quality build, gorgeous design.
by jrotholz on October 2, 2008
Pros: Big clear screen, excellent color saturation, no evidence of color gradient problem some have reported, nice quality sound from internal speakers, great keyboard and mouse (standard), and at 3.06GHz it's really fast
Cons: Only 1 USB port available after plugging in the mouse and keyboard, so an external USB hub is required,; mouse cable is too short
Summary: This is a great machine. No complaints from this customer.
Summary: This is a great machine. No complaints from this customer.
1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Fully loaded, Works Great!
by thedunamis on September 16, 2008
Pros: I purchased it mainly for use in creating professional looking photography and videos. I am very pleased with my All-In-One. Never the blue screen of death (very nice & convenient). And the Mac works great with external hard drives, which I have 2.
Cons: It only comes with 3 USB connections. Ok, but their taken up fast with all of our peripherals. Also, the Time Machine program that comes on Leopard takes up more space on my external hard drive after a weeks use than what Apple states.
Summary: If you have the money and are needing to replace a desktop computer I would highly reccommend the iMac. The user interface is really simple. It does take some time ...
Summary: If you have the money and are needing to replace a desktop computer I would highly reccommend the iMac. The user interface is really simple. It does take some time learning how the OS exactly works, but if you are like most people, just use it an hour every or so and you will have it down in a week or so. I garuntee you that you will love it.
1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
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The New iMacs narrow the gap between consumer and professional Macs!
by Iceblades on August 19, 2008
Pros: 24" Screen, FW-800 Port, Bundled Software, Refurbished is like New
Cons: No Blueray disc., 4GB Ram Limit
Summary: I purchased this machine as a refurbished Computer from Apple. When it arrived (5 days from California to Maryland) the only difference between new and refurbished is the cardboard box ...
Summary: I purchased this machine as a refurbished Computer from Apple. When it arrived (5 days from California to Maryland) the only difference between new and refurbished is the cardboard box it was shipped in. All plastic coverings, appearance and performance were as if it was brand new.
This iMac is replacing my home desktop, an Apple G4 (sawtooth) upgraded to 1GHZ and was starting to show it's age (8-1/2 years). I didn't want to risk losing important family photos and itunes music so I decided a replacement was in order. I debated over and over about getting another notebook, but really believe that a decent desktop is critical component as part of home network, but if I had to choose between a macbook or an iMac?.I would go with the macbook because of convenient mobility.
A 100.00 rebate also allowed me to purchase a replacement printer (Canon i4500), which I've been happy with.
Because you can't customize refurbished products when you order, this computer has the standard 500GB hard drive (I would've preferred a 1TB internal). I looked past this limitation because of the included FireWire-800 port on the back. This allowed me to connect (daisy-chain) two FireWire-800 hard drives (G-Force 1TB, and a 750GB FW-800 iomega drive that was on clearance at BestBuy (159.00)). The iMac immediately recognized both drives. This effectively raised my total hard drive space to 2.25 TB with minimal performance impact, thanks to the FW-800 ports.
The iomega drive serves as my itunes repository and the G-Force 1TB is my Time Machine backup for the iMac and the Iomega drive.
The screen looks incredible, although not technically a High Definition screen the specs of this screen are impressive and DVD movies look fabulous. 1920 x 1200 resolution compared with Dell's XPS High Def 20" resolution of 1680x1050.
Ram upgrades are made easy by access to the bottom of the iMac. The iMac limited to a max upgrade of 4GB (as stated in product literature), but considering that RAM chips higher than 2GB (notebook RAM) are prohibitively expensive, 4BG is the max I'd upgrade to anyway. Also I've read in various forums that this may be an artificial limitation and the real limit should be higher because Apple boosted the system bus speed from 800MHz in the previous iMac to 1,066MHz in the new versions. The system bus plays a major role in communications between the processor and system memory...
Graphics Card - The included graphics card in the iMac 3.06 (and upgradeable in other iMacs) is a NVIDIA's 8800, which is part of the GeForce 8 series of graphics cards. These cards are ideal for playing the most demanding 3D games; plus working with high-end imaging applications such as Aperture 2.0 and 3D apps.
The card itself comes in several different flavors: GS (used in the iMac); GT (used in the Mac Pro) and there are also GTX, GTS and Ultra cards available for PC users.
Both of the cards used by Apple possess 512MB of RAM, which raised is interesting because NVIDIA's 8800 GS card is only supposed to have 384MB of RAM
It actually transpires that the 8800 GS in the iMac isn't actually an 8800 GS at all, but the same 8800 GT card from the Mac Pro that has been clocked down to match the 8800 GS speed.
The machine looks like a piece of art sitting on my desk, not just another tech gadget. The stand has a hole in the back for wire management and really creates a clean look.
The bundled software is outstanding, iTunes is the premier music database management software, and iPhoto has been improved immensely from previous releases.
The seamless integration of this computer with all various types of peripherals and the ease of creating a wireless network using Apple's airport extreme, make this computer one of my best purchases.1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
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An All-in-One Desktop replacement
by amagine on July 9, 2008
Pros: All-in-One, Powerful, Gorgeous screen, Whisper Quiet, Run Any Operating System, great support
Cons: All-in-One, Vista 64bit NVidia driver support a bit hard to figure out
Summary: I've been using my 24" 3ghz 4Gb Ram iMac for one month now. She is very very quick. I run dual head with a 23" cinema display. Screens are ...
Summary: I've been using my 24" 3ghz 4Gb Ram iMac for one month now. She is very very quick. I run dual head with a 23" cinema display. Screens are both great. My use is for photo/print(13x22"), Geomatics(GIS-ArcInfo), Terragen 3D landscape re-creation and Movies.
ArcInfo processes heavy analysis in as much time or less than any desktop I have seen or used with 4 cores. (have not tried ArcGIS on an 8 core unit although ArcGIS is not multi-core aware and more dependant on the processing speed)
3D rendering is subjectively nice and fast. No hard numbers, but I can say my productivity has increased at least 2.5 fold over the 3ghz P4 Dell box I had.
note:
My refurb 23" cinema display had a faulty powersupply and within 10 days I had a completely new unit sent to me. Apple support has been good to me.1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Return policy is terrible; poor technical support; and poor customer service; cheaply built
by JagRagtop on June 27, 2008
Pros: Large monitor
Cons: Mouse won't work with Boot Camp; Apple won't allow return
Summary: I purchased this iMac with some upgrades (memory, hard disk, wireless mouse, graphics card). The mouse was broken on arrival - the entire bottom was off. The mouse would not ...
Summary: I purchased this iMac with some upgrades (memory, hard disk, wireless mouse, graphics card). The mouse was broken on arrival - the entire bottom was off. The mouse would not work with Boot Camp. After two calls, they advised me to call Microsoft. It seemed to be a run-around to me. I asked to return the computer (still within the 2 weeks allowed), but Apple would not approve the return because of the customization. The agent initially said that she would send me a new mouse, but then she too insisted that I call Microsoft without sending a new mouse.
Using this product is not at all intuitive, but I'll accept blame for that.
I am trying to sell it on CraigsList. If it doesn't sell within one week, I shall destroy it and throw it in the trash so I don't have to see it staring at me from the desk across the room. I don't want to bother with removing personal data and giving it away.
To me, Apple has the worst customer service in all of my years of purchasing computers!
I am going back to Windows, and I shall buy a new PC machine as soon as possible.0 out of 4 users found this user opinion helpful.
Specifications
- Manufacturer: Apple
- Part number: Z0FH
- Description: The all-new, all-in-one iMac packs a complete, high-performance computer into a beautifully thin design. It includes built-in wireless, Mac OS X, and the iLife '08. So within minutes of opening the box, you'll be doing everything from sharing photos to creating movies and building websites.
General
- Type Personal computer
- Product Form Factor All-in-one
- Built-in Devices Stereo speakers, Antenna, Infrared receiver, Camera
- Width 22.4 in
- Depth 8.1 in
- Height 20.5 in
- Weight 25.4 lbs
- Desktop type Monitor included, All-in-one desktop system
Processor
- Type Intel Core 2 Duo 3.06 GHz
- Multi-Core processor technology Dual-Core
- 64-bit processor Yes
- Installed Qty 1
- Max processors supported 1
Cache Memory
- Type L2 cache
- Installed Size 6 MB
- Cache Per Processor 6 MB
Mainboard
- Data bus speed 1066 MHz
RAM
- Installed Size 2 GB / 4 GB (max)
- Technology DDR2 SDRAM
- Memory speed 800 MHz
- Memory specification compliance PC2-6400
- RAM form factor SO DIMM 200-pin
- RAM configuration features 2 x 1 GB
Environmental Parameters
- Environmental & energy standards compliance EPA Energy Star
- Min operating temperature 50 ?F
- Max operating temperature 95 ?F
- Operating humidity range 5 - 95%
Storage Controller
- Type 1 x Serial ATA - Integrated
- Controller interface type Serial ATA-300
Storage
- Floppy drive type None
- Hard Drive 1 x 500 GB - Standard - Serial ATA-300 - 7200 rpm
- Hard Drive (2nd) None
- Hard Drive (3rd) None
Optical Storage
- Type DVD?RW (?R DL)
- CD / DVD read speed 24x (CD) / 8x (DVD)
- CD / DVD write speed 24x (CD) / 8x (DVD?R) / 4x (DVD?R DL)
- CD / DVD rewrite speed 16x (CD) / 6x (DVD-RW) / 8x (DVD+RW)
Optical Storage (2nd)
- Type None
Storage Removable
- Type None
Monitor
- Monitor Type Flat panel display - TFT active matrix
- Display (projector) diagonal size 24 in
- Viewable screen size 24 in
- Max Resolution 1920 x 1200
- Image brightness 385 cd/m2
- Display (projector) image contrast ratio 750:1
Graphics Controller
- Type PCI Express x16
- Graphics Processor / Vendor NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS
- Video Memory GDDR3 SDRAM
- Installed Size 512 MB
- Digital Video Standard Digital Visual Interface (DVI)
- Max Monitors Supported 2
Audio Output
- Type Sound card - Integrated
- Sound output mode Stereo
- Speaker(s) 2 x Right / left channel
Input Device
- Type Mouse, Keyboard
Keyboard
- Keyboard interface USB
- Keyboard localization and layout English
- Keyboard features Built-in two USB 2.0 ports
Mouse
- Mouse technology Optical
- Mouse interface USB
Audio Input
- Type Microphone
Telecom
- Modem None
Networking
- Networking Network adapter - Integrated
- Wireless LAN Supported Yes
- Data Link Protocol Gigabit Ethernet, IEEE 802.11a, Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b, Bluetooth 2.1 EDR, IEEE 802.11g, IEEE 802.11n (draft)
- Features AirPort Extreme ready
- Compliant Standards IEEE 802.11a, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, Bluetooth 2.1, IEEE 802.11n (draft)
Printer
- Type None
Expansion / Connectivity
- Expansion Slots Total (Free) 2 ( 0 ) x Memory - SO DIMM 200-pin
- Interfaces 1 x Audio - SPDIF output/headphones - Mini-phone 3.5 mm / TOSLINK, 3 x Hi-Speed USB - 4 pin USB Type A, 1 x Display / video - Apple mini-DVI, 1 x Audio - SPDIF input/line-in - Mini-phone 3.5 mm / TOSLINK, 1 x Network - Ethernet 10Base-T/100Base-TX/1000Base-T - RJ-45, 1 x IEEE 1394b (FireWire 800) - 9 pin FireWire 800, 1 x IEEE 1394 (FireWire) - 6 pin FireWire, 1 x Remote control - Infrared
Miscellaneous
- Included Accessories Cleaning cloth, Remote control
- Cables Included Power cable ( 1 pcs.)
- Features Built-in iSight camera, Built-in Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, 802.11n Wireless LAN, Remote control, Built-in IR receiver
Power
- Power device type Power supply
- Voltage Required AC 120/230 V
- Power provided 280 Watt
Operating System / Software
- OS Provided Apple MacOS X 10.5
- Software Apple iChat, Apple Spotlight, Apple DVD Player, Apple Mac OS X Mail, Apple iLife?08, Apple Address Book, Apple iCal, Apple Spaces, Apple QuickTime, Apple Safari, Apple Dashboard, Apple XCode Developer Tools, Front Row, Apple Quick Look, Drivers & Utilities, Photo Booth, Apple Time Machine
Environmental Standards
- EPA Energy Star Compliant Yes
Manufacturer Warranty
- Service & Support 1 year warranty
- Service & Support Details Technical support - Phone consulting - 90 days, Limited warranty - 1 year
Greenpeace 'Guide to Greener Electronics'
- Greenpeace 'Guide to Greener Electronics' manufacturer rating (June 2008) 4.1
- Greenpeace 'Guide to Greener Electronics' manufacturer rating (Mar 2008) 6.7
Product series
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Manufacturer: Apple
Specs: Intel Core 2 Duo (2.4 GHz), 2.4 GHz, EPA Energy Star, 1 GB DDR2 SDRAM, 250 GB Standard, Apple MacOS X 10.5, Personal computer
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Manufacturer: Apple
Specs: Intel Core 2 Duo (2.66 GHz), 2.66 GHz, EPA Energy Star, 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM, 320 GB Standard, Apple MacOS X 10.5, Personal computer
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Manufacturer: Apple
Specs: Intel Core 2 Duo (2.8 GHz), 2.8 GHz, EPA Energy Star, 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM, 320 GB Standard, Apple MacOS X 10.5, Personal computer
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Manufacturer: Apple
Specs: Intel Core 2 Duo (3.06 GHz), 3.06 GHz, EPA Energy Star, 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM, 500 GB Standard, Apple MacOS X 10.5, Personal computer
Manufacturer info
- Apple
- Manufacturer profile
- Browse Apple products on Shopper.com
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- Website: http://www.apple.com
- Address:
One Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014 - Phone: 1-408-996-1010
