Keys Corner

First impressions of the G5 1.8 GHz Power Mac

I was finally able to collect my Apple G5 last Monday, but haven’t had much time yet to set it up. Yesterday being a public holiday, I was able to start the set up. First impressions:

1. It isn’t quieter than the 2GHz Dell which it replaces (a disappointment, that - it appears from reports in the press that the dual processor G5 is quieter). Particularly, the first 1-2 minutes until the temperature control settles down, it is much noisier than the Dell.
   
   
2. Boot time seems (subjectively) longer than the Dell / Win XP machine, but the Mac shuts down much, much more quickly. And the Mac goes to sleep and wakes up reliably, which the Dell never did (Windows XP didn’t like the MS Natural keyboard driver). A big improvement, that!
   
   
3. My Logitech Cordless Trackman FX mouse works fine with Mac OS X, which I hadn’t expected (install the Logitech Control Center, and everything works as before). You can program all the mouse buttons too.
   
   
4. The USB ports on the rear of the Mac don’t deliver enough current to power my Canon 1220U scanner, which worried me, until I discovered the single USB port on the front of the PC doesn’t complain. I have installed the scanner driver but haven’t tested it yet, as I want to use OmniPage Pro as the scanner software, which according to Gravis in Frankfurt needs to be installed by “Root”, and I haven’t got round to doing that yet. (The need to install under Root isn’t mentioned in the OmniPro handbook, by the way).
   
   
5. Lotus Organizer truncates the entries in the Notes section to about 250 characters, which is a pain, as we used Organizer quite a bit, and the PC emulation (Virtual PC) doesn’t run on the Mac G5, so we have to export the entries and import them into something else on the Mac.

I need next to spend some time finding out how to import True Type fonts into Darwin, so that we can use Open Office - I know thare is a SourceForge program called Fondu, installed with Open Office, I haven’t figured out whether it will work with fonts that I have transferred from Windows on the Dell - they work fine in OS X, but didn’t get converted during the OOo installation - unlike the original OS X fonts. Why? I don’t yet know.

Nonetheless, first impressions are very positive - and even without an iPod, I think iTunes is the best thing since sliced bread :-)

This is the first entry posted from the Mac, of course!