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New iMac disassembled
wild_berry writes "Found, via Ars Technica's Apple journal, Infinite Loop, a Japanese site disassembling Intel Core Duo iMac. Clint, from the Ars blog, points out that the Core Duo processor is socket-mounted, allowing for possible upgrades, unlike the IBM chips which were soldered to the PCB's. Please use the - cached pages."
In a way, the new iMac is like a laptop - you can pull it apart and replace components, but it isn't as if it was designed for home user disassembly (like an ATX beige box.)
On the flip side, there are Mac designs like the eMac, which require significant disassembly to upgrade the drives. And to upgrade the CPU, your only real choice is to overclock with your soldering iron. And you have to deal with the high voltage CRT.
I always liked internal Mac design, but older Macs, although somewhat elegant on the inside, were very difficult to upgrade. Sometimes you open up an old Mac and you go "woah, it is shocking that they made it so fancy on the inside of this computer". No wonder they sold the translucent iMacs. But that pretty inside was designed for ease of factory assembly, not for ease of upgrades.
To the original point of the article: You're staring down the barrel of a revolver half loaded, half not when it comes to upgrading CPUs these days. Sockets are flying by so quickly that you might only see two different cores and only 3-6 speed grades for each core (Banias->Dothon->new socket).
To me, computers are so damned fast now if you actually *need* to upgrade, you probably need to just get a new computer. Everything about these new Macs breathes cutting edge, from the new PC slot on the MacBook to both being entirely SATA (the only thing that ISN'T cutting edge is Firewire, and there's probably a very sound reasoning behind that such as chip availability (any current Intel ICHs with FW800?)), and so a lot of shifting and settling still has to occur. In that time, some of the standards today might meet the axe, and you're going to be SOL when trying to upgrade anyways. Just buy a quality computer and replace it every 3-5 years as nessicary (yes, if you're nerdy, go with every 18 months).
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
I dunno whether more fans translate to more noise, it might be in fact the opposite.
I'd rather have several strategically placed fans, running at low RPM and generating very little turbulence, than having single fan sized to move enough air that everything that needs it gets enough airflow, even it a tangle of ribbon cables stand in the way.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yes...I'm glad I'm not alone. I searched all over the new MacBook site too. The fact I couldn't find anything was also scaring me. If your first responder was correct, 3 hours isn't too bad, but it does make you wonder about the performance per watt business. I've also been curious about the clockspeed. Intel performance at 1.83 ghz is like 3 years old. Have the improvements in memory and bus speed as well as this new architecture really made 1.83 ghz 'fast' again? Makes me think they are just providing lots of legroom for short step ghz improvements over the next few years to help make up for the wall they are hitting with Moore's law...hehe