Just bought new 24 inch iMac, what a monster!

Question

Just got back from Apple retail store in Brent Cross near London in the UK with my new 24 inch iMac.
All I can say is BRILLIANT!!. What a stunning machine. I had a 20 inch that I bought just 3 weeks back, but I managed to get rid of it to buy this new one.
Now that I have it on my desk at home I can really appreciate the extra 4 inches, it seems like a lot more than that.
As the Apple retail store is a 1-hour drive for me I insisted on taking it out of the box and booting it up in the store to check it out before the drive home. It was just as well that I did as there was a single stuck (black) pixel in bottom right hand corner. This would not bother most people, but I do a lot of Photoshop work and I can only imagine that I would be constantly trying to airbrush a speck out of a picture, only to discover that it was a stuck/dead pixel.
Anyway, the salesman said no problem and got me another one, which I also checked there and then, second one was perfect.
Anyone who has a 20 inch, get rid of it and buy a 24 inch straight away. They are just awesome.
Even the staff at the Apple retail store were standing around me in absolute awe as I was checking mine out and filling in my personal details, as they did not have a demo unit on display at this time.
Other people were standing around too, a little crowd gathered; I felt like an Apple God for a moment there
The edges are not dark like somebody else mentioned, mine is nice and bright edge-to-edge. In fact is is brighter than my old (3 week old) iMac 20 inch as I have to reduce the brightness on this new 24 inch monster a little bit more to get a nice brightness that I'm used too.
I put in an extra 2 Gig of ram (2 x 1 GB sticks from my old 3-week old iMac 20 inch model), but bought the standard 24 inch model with standard graphics card. Didn't see the point in better graphics card as I don't do gaming, just inDesign and Photoshop on this machine.
This screen is also 1920x1200 so it is TRUE HD for playback of future 1920x1080i or 1920x1080p Bluray or HD DVDs, nice. If you think about it, if you popped to a local store and bought a HD-Ready TV with this resolution it would cost you a lot more than the price of the 24 inch iMac so it's like getting a HD TV with a computer thrown in for free, only cheaper
Had it turned on now for about 3 hours and have been spinning the hard drive a lot as I transfer a lot of old files from external Firewire HD and it is warm near the vents on back/top, nothing excessive though.
The fan is ever so slightly louder than old 20 inch, but again, negligible.
Well I'm off to play some more and test some DVDs etc.
In the meantime they are fantastic machines and I highly recommend them to everyone.
Buy one today, I don't care how, just get one!!!

Answer 1

Hey guys, didn't mean to scare anyone with that dead-pixel thing. I've had about 7 Macs over the past 5 years (since moving over from the muddy waters of Windows) and I've NEVER had a single problem. To be honest I was amazed the first 24 inch iMac I pulled out of the box actually had a stuck pixel and so were the staff. One of them tried to 'massage' it away, to no avail. It was hardly noticeable; I'm just a fussy git.
I doubt any of you guys will take delivery of one with a dead/stuck pixel, this is very rare as Apple only use grade-A LCD panels that have a high quality-control-production-line.
Anyway, howwow, you really must get a 24 inch; here's why.
I had 20 inch and spend a lot of time laying out an A4 magazine in Adobe InDesign. I thought my 20 inch Intel Imac was great until I got the 24. Now I can have a full two-page spread across the screen zoomed in 25% bigger than actual size and still have room for my pallets down the left and right hand side. With my old 20 inch iMac I had to collapse or hide certain pallets away or they were over the top of my page on the top/right hand side, which was a pain.
Another advantage of 24 over 20 is that it is much easier copying files from external to internal hard drives and vice-versa, especially when in Column view as you can have 5 columns on each window; plenty. On my 20 inch I could not get anywhere near this and had to move windows around the desktop to get them into the best space; not anymore.
Two of my friends came (almost literally) to see me last night and when they stepped into my study room and clocked the massive 24 inch iMac they both almost creamed their jeans right then and there. They were speechless; they are both windows PC users, or should I say were. The 24 inches was more than enough to convince them; well, they were both ladies They are heading for Apple retail store as I type this to buy one each. Now we all know how bloody hard it is trying to convert Windows users to Mac, the 24 inch iMac has no problem doing that.
I had a large high-def Quicktime movie playing, 6 smaller Quicktime movies playing, a DVD playing with Photobooth open and a bunch of other things, when I hit the exposé button to reveal them all at once it is just amazing on this large screen.
I've also noticed that running Adobe Photoshop and InDesign on this latest 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Due with 2 GB of RAM is a lot faster than my older (3 week old) iMac 20 inch Intel Core Due machine, that extra '2' really pushes Rosetta programmes along the rails a lot faster; it's sort of turbo charged now. This is great for me as I view InDesign stuff in OverView mode (higher res, but slower).
This new machine takes just 31 seconds to boot from a cold start by pressing the power button on the back. Fast or what. Ever watch a Windows user switch on their machine and go have a cuppa coffee whilst they wait
The graphics (and I only have bog-standard card it came with) are brilliant. Pin sharp and I've set up a custom colour calibration for the screen because of Photoshop and InDesign and it is stunning.
Only slight drawback is if you sit too close and are a fast typer, it's like watching tennis as your head looks from right to left as you type across the screen