The 27" iMac experience: Elegant, Wall Mounted, and Glare

I owned the 27 iMac for about a year. There's many reviews out there, so I think I'll talk about my experience with it. I'll talk more specifically about Elegance, wall mounting, and glare.

This is quite possible the most elegant computer I've ever owned. More so than the MacBook Pro and Air because we all expect laptops to be elegant and simple. The desktop on the other hand, is not elegant nor simple. The iMac totally changes that. You only need one cord for power. Everything else is wireless. I am, however, the type of guy that wants things wired specially if the device doesn't even more around much. This is true for keyboards and mouse. Why not just use a wire. It's not like you'll take the mouse with you to the kitchen or something. In any case, the computer is a work of art sitting on your table. Eye candy.

What if like me, you don't want your iMac to sit on the table. Why not wall mount it? Well, that's what I did. I bought a vesa adaptor (made by Apple) and a wall mount made by some other company I don't remember. Here's a few lessons I learned. First, read all instruction. All of them. Second, don't go cheap on the wall mount. I bought the cheapest thing I could find that can hold the iMac's weight. It was just a basic mount that swivels up and down. Why not just get the static kind? Well I had to make sure there's enough room in the back to plug in the cables.  After about a month, the swivel mechanism just gave up. The iMac was just looking down all the time, so I placed a cork on the back between the wall and mount to raise it back up. I wished I bought a stronger mount that swivels left and right. Even though the screen is rated for 178º of viewing angle, it would have been nice to tilt it to minimize glare.

Glare from my window was a bit of a problem. I looked at some anti-glare films to put on the screen, but it seemed like a crime to grimy that beautiful monitor. The biggest crime of all though is taking the monitor off altogether. No, I'm not talking about taking it off to replace the hard drive which in itself is a scary task. I'm talking about getting rid of the glass to get rid of the glare. Yes, this can be done, but I advise against it. You would get rid of glare, but the pixels, like little kittens in the cold, are now vulnerable. Touching them could kill them. It would also be tough to clean the dust off the raw monitor. Again, I don't advocate doing this, but there are those that do.