The all-in-one space pioneered by Apple has been dominated by the iMac. While there were single form factor PCs long before the iMac (the Commodore PET, Osborne 1, and TRS-80, to name a few), none survived as long. Looking at the latest Apple iMac (Nvidia GeForce 8400M) ($1,499 list), that history of dominance is not likely to be surpassed any time soon. Last year, the same $1,499 price tag could buy you a 20-inch iMac, which was nice, but now that same amount of money gets you the 24-inch model that you were really lusting for all along.

On the outside, the new iMac looks much like the older iMac 24-inch. There's the brilliant 1,920 by 1,200 widescreen LCD that can display true HD video. The case is still made of aluminum, glass, and plastic, though now the keyboard is a little smaller (more on that later). If you've seen any iMac over the last five years, the newest iteration will look familiar to you. The current iMac design is iconic, like the Porsche 911 (or Luxo lamp, or Kohler bathroom fixtures). The exterior changes a little from model to model, but the overall shape and proportions have stayed the same since the introduction of the iMac G5 in 2004. Why change what works year after year?

Inside the case, there's a lot that's the same as last year's 20- and 24-inch models, but there are also some notable improvements. The 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E8135 is similar to the 2.8GHz E8235 I saw in last year's iMac (24-inch Penryn) in terms of architecture. The new iMac retains its predecessors' 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi capability and the DVD-burning SuperDrive. Sadly, there's no still Blu-ray option, but you can buy HD movies and TV shows from the iTunes Store.

The new model centers on the Nvidia 9400M chipset with built-in graphics (last year's model had an Intel based chipset). The 9400M is fully DX10-compatible, so it can run the latest 3D games and applications, and it supports DDR3 memory, which is faster than the DDR2 memory in the iMac's predecessor. The 9400M isn't a gaming part, but it will let you do light to moderate 3D tasks. The changes also extend to the amount of memory and storage. The system's 4GB of system memory is now standard, up from 1GB, which helps a lot for the kinds of multimedia tasks the iMac is good at. The hard drive is up from 320GB to 640GB at this price point. The latter is enough to keep several hundred HD TV shows (at about 1.7GB per hour), or hundreds of thousands of photos and music tracks. If the Mac mini is a great "home base" for an iPod or iPhone, then the new iMacs are the ultimate home base for all your media players from iPods and iPhones to the Apple TV.

There are three free USB 2.0 ports (if you don't connect the wired keyboard, there are four USB ports total). There's also a FireWire 800 port (the old FireWire 400 port was dropped in favor of that fourth USB port). The mini DVI port was replaced by the mini DisplayPort, so you can hook up a 24-inch LED Cinema Display to double your screen real estate. Dual monitor capabilities are supported in both Mac OS X and in Windows Vista running under Boot Camp. The keyboard I mentioned earlier is similar in size to the Apple Wireless Keyboard, it also lacks the "full size" keyboard's numeric keypad and cursor controls. My hands kept wanting to "center" to the left side of the keyboard, which threw me off a little while I was testing the iMac. If you like the older keyboard, it is a no cost option, but make sure to pick the "Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad" when ordering your iMac online. If I'm still nit-picking, the Mighty Mouse included with the iMacs is slippery and annoying to use if you right-click a lot: I think the touch sensor on the right "button" is too sensitive to hand position and you have to hold your hand in a rigid manner to avoid accidentally hitting right-click. Also, there are still no multimedia card slots available, so you'll still need to get a third-party reader if you want to plug in your SD or CF cards from your camera.

Last but not least, the iMac (and all Macs) come with a one-year parts and service warranty, but only 90-days of phone tech support. You can bring the iMac to any Apple Store for walk-up service during the one-year warranty (they're pretty good, depending of course on the individual Apple Genius you get), but for three years of phone and warranty service, an AppleCare protection plan is $169 extra.

Like the new mini, the new iMacs run Mac OS X 10.5, now updated to 10.5.6. iLife '09 is new, and it recently got an Editors' Choice as one of the best home Photo/Video/Music packages. The iMac is almost entirely devoid of crapware, as per usual. About the only thing that could be construed as crapware is an offer for a MobileMe 60-day trial subscription. It asks you to sign up during the initial setup process, but you can skip it and never see MobileMe again if you wish.

I had a few issues setting the iMac up with Vista Ultimate 64-bit: the Boot Camp assistant is designed for 32-bit Windows XP and Vista, but I was able to locate the 64-bit driver files manually on the iMac's installer DVD. So, no Boot Camp utility on the 64-bit side, but the iMac was still fully functional (hold down the Option key during startup to switch back and forth from Windows to Mac OS). Boot Camp with 32-bit Vista and XP is easier to setup and use, but of course if you upgrade to more than 4GB of memory, you won't be able to use all of it in Boot Camp. Mac OS X itself, as usual, is 64-bit native.—Next: Benchmarking the New iMac

Benchmarking the New iMac

The iMac performs pretty well on our benchmark tests. It finished the PhotoShop CS4 test in 2:23 under Mac OS X and a spritely 1:46 in Vista 64-bit. I surmise that's because the Windows version of Photoshop is a smidge more optimized for Vista 64-bit, since tests on other Macs with 32-bit Vista tend to go to the Mac OS' advantage. The rest of the tests were run in Vista 64-bit for comparison with other Windows PCs. The iMac got a 4,246 point score on PCMark Vantage, which measures the systems' ability to perform day-to-day tasks including multimedia, Web browsing, office tasks, and startup and shutdown. This score is notable because that is significantly higher than the score achieve by the the quad-core powered Cybernet iOne-GX31 (3,919). The iMac was also faster on PhotoShop (1:57 for the Cybernet). The iMac was slower on Windows Media Encoder (1:00 vs. 44 seconds), which shows the quad core helps (a little) there.

The Cybernet has Intel GMA 3100 integrated graphics, which couldn't run any of our 3D tests, but the iMac was at least able to run them. The iMac's scores weren't anything to crow about: 3,506 on 3DMark Vantage, 10 fps on both Crysis and World in Conflict at 1,280 by 1,024 resolution, and single digit scores at 1,920 by 1,200 resolution. These tell me that the iMac is a very good multimedia/content creation PC, but not a great choice for 3D gaming. You can play 3D games if you tone the settings down to low/very low, but then you're viewing blocky graphics on a huge 1,920 by 1,200 screen. Consider a dedicated gaming PC or gaming console if 3D games are important to you.

Moving on to green computing, the Apple iMac (like all Macs now) has EPEAT Gold certification. (EPEAT is a consortium-based certification program that tracks products' environmental impact, Gold is the best score.) It meets the pre-criteria for Energy Star 5.0 (it's not ratified yet), and has a lot of recyclable components, including the majority of the aluminum and glass chassis. It is sufficiently miserly with its energy usage as well. The iMac only uses 95W (measured) while idling, and a decent 118W while running the CineBench benchmark test. Remember that that figure includes the bright 24-inch widescreen. This is great, compared with the Sony VAIO VGC-LV190Y, which also has a 24-inch widescreen, since the Sony uses 132W idling and 160W under load. The new iMac is even more frugal than the last iMac, if just, since the last iMac I tested uses 108W idling and 130W under load. The previous iMac was "only" EPEAT Sliver as well. Therefore the new iMac also earns our PCMag.com GreenTech Approved award.

So how does the iMac compare with the competition? Well, unless I absolutely need the touchscreen, I'd pick the iMac over the $2,358 Cybernet iOne-GX31 in a heartbeat. The iMac has a much larger screen, is faster on day-to-day tasks, and is a lot cheaper to boot (even if you purchase a copy of Vista separately). The last mainstream AIO desktop Editors' Choice is the Sony VAIO VGC-JS130J/P. The new iMac trounces the VAIO in 3D performance, multimedia performance, screen size (20-inch), hard drive size, crapware, and day-to-day performance. True, the Sony is about $399 cheaper, but the other features are the deal breaker in this case. The $1,500 VAIO JS190J/B is closer in price, and has a Blu-ray player included, but shares the same small screen size as the JS130J/P, crapware, weak integrated graphics, and a smaller 500GB hard drive.

The Apple iMac wrests back its Editors' Choice for mid-priced all-in-one desktop from the Sony VAIO VGC-JS130J/P as our mainstream AIO desktop by giving its users a beautiful 24-inch screen and upgraded hardware for the same price as the previous 20-inch iMac. It is the premier homeport for your iPhone or iPods, and will look beautiful in just about any décor. All that and it's a great multimedia PC as well: both on Windows in Boot Camp and with the included Mac OS X.

Check out the Apple iMac's (Nvidia GeForce 9400M) performance test results.