Mac Daniel's Advice

Time to Buy an iMac?

Dan Knight - 1999.11.15

I don't normally write the Mac Daniel column these days, but when I wrote my response to this user, I realized it would make an excellent Mac Daniel article.

Q. I just read your advice about upgrading or replacing an older Mac, and my 636CD works pretty well for my purposes (except no RealAudio). I had a logic board swap done about 1-1/2 years ago so I could add a 486 card for Windows 95 (it's easier for me to adapt to Windows 95 than for my minister to adapt to the Mac OS).

I'm curious as to how the 636CD stacks up, speedwise, against the new 400 MHz iMacs. In general, I'd prefer to wait until whatever Mac I choose as a replacement will provide a CPU benchmark of two orders of magnitude (i.e., will be 100 times faster than my current system . . . gee, don't want much, do I?) But then I tired of the "upgrade shuffle" 5 or 6 years ago. Thanks for any advice you can provide!

A. Two orders of magnitude? That's a lot!

Let's see, I went from a Mac Plus to an accelerator (doubled speed), then a Centris 610 (about 10x original Plus, 5x accelerated Plus), then a SuperMac J700/180 (about 10x that!), then added a G3/250 card (only a 75% boost in performance). That was during my first eight years as a Mac user.

I can't imagine having stuck it out with my 16 MHz Plus until I could afford an iMac - the approximately 100:1 performance difference is too much to hold out for.

I rarely recommend upgrading for anything less than 2x the performance, but once you go past 5x, it's usually a significant enough benefit to justify the expense.

I'm guessing the iMac/400 would be "only" 20-30x faster than your 636CD. Easily enough to justify the $1,299 price tag, especially in light of what you probably paid for the 636CD. LEM

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