Review: Apple iMac desktop computer

Apple's habit of giving its new products the same names as its old ones makes it hard to identify the new ones, but this is the fourth new design the company has come up with for its flagship computer.

This one has a very sleek aluminium body, and it's thinner than the old white plastic version, to boot. Like previous iMacs, this is an all-in-one computer, in that it includes processing unit, DVD writer, webcam, microphone and screen in the main unit.

The keyboard is now also made of aluminium, and is very similar to that on the Macbook notebooks. That makes it ergonomically sound as, being flat, it puts the user's wrists close to the desk. But although it looks excellent, it's not all that pleasant to type on, because it's so physically shallow - the keys don't travel far when pressed, which could cause pain during a long typing session. The mouse is the Mighty Mouse, which has been on sale for a while - it would have been nice to see an updated mouse, particularly one that was more ergonomically designed than this one.

It runs the latest edition of Apple's Mac OS, 10.4.10, which looks fairly similar to previous versions, with the useful Dock showing installed or running applications at the bottom of the screen. The new edition of Apple's excellent iLife software is also bundled - this includes the iPhoto picture software, which automatically catalogues incoming images into bundles of 'events', for ease of access. It also has some effective, simple auto-fix tools.

The iMovie program for editing video offers the same great usability, and makes video editing a doddle, and iWeb does the same for website creation, although it is tailored for Apple's paid-for .mac hosting service.

The 2.4GHz processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo, as is found in many of the Windows PCs we review, and it's a fairly high-end model. The 1GB of memory supplied would be poor on a PC, but the Mac seems to cope reasonably well with it, and the ATI Radeon graphics card, with 256MB of its own memory, is again capable of running all the demanding graphics that modern Macs provide. The iMac we're looking at is in the middle of the range - there are others to suit different tastes and budgets.

The 20in widescreen is excellent, with a pin-sharp display, and the computer's connectivity is likewise impressive, with network, USB2 and Firewire ports available, and wireless networking (to the new 802.11n standard, no less) and Bluetooth built in.

As with all Apples, setup was a doddle, and it connected to our wireless network easily. That ease of use extends to the rest of the operating system, and provides an excellent reason to buy a Mac, quite apart from iLife.

See our video review of the new iMac

Vista compatible: No