On Monday, Apple finally announced the powering up of its iMac line with new Intel Core 2 Duo processors. This new iMac comes in three versions. The first, a 20-inch 2.4-GHz, featuring an ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT (with 128-MB memory), will be made available for the price of $1,199. The second ($1,499), a 20-inch 2.66-GHz, will feature an ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO (with 256-MB memory), as will the 24-inch 2.8- GHz model ($1,799). All three models are to be shipped with Mac's OS X Leopard operating system.

Furthermore, the iMac will include the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GS card with 512MB memory. According to Apple, Boot Camp drivers for the Nvidia card were included in the update that was released last week for the program that allows Intel-based Macs to run Windows Vista or Windows XP.

The wait for this update has been quite long, as this generation of iMacs was launched last August and since then, no other improvements have been made to the product.

However, things seem to be going well; from January to March 2008, Apple had 856,000 desktop machines sold, mostly Macs, which shows a 37% increase when compared to the same period of last year. On Monday, Philip Schiller, Apple's senior VP of worldwide product marketing, said that Mac sales have been growing 3-1/2 times faster than those of PCs.