For instance, is the video card upgradeable? How about the hard drive (how accessible is it)?

RAM and HD only.

Easily, only the RAM.

To replace the HD, you need to remove the screen. It's not THAT tough, but it's pretty intimidating to anyone who has never done it before.

That would wrong on the hard drive....there is a heat sensor that is drive specific and so far for whatever reason the upgrades don't work - fan runs.

Previous gen Aluminum yes the drive is upgradeable.

There are ways to get around the heat sensor issue on the iMac's. Most people just unplug it and short the sensor which seems to work just fine.

I wonder why Apple insists on making it so difficult for people to upgrade their machines...

Oh well, thanks for the replies.

The shorting method is not recommended.

For better solutions see
Proprietary Cable can put the brakes on upgrading Late '09 iMacs. | Other World Computing Blog (http://blog.macsales.com/2751-proprietary-cable-can-put-the-brakes-on-upgrading-late-09-iMacs)

Shorting a cable also voids any applicable warranty.

The shorting method is not recommended.

For better solutions see
Proprietary Cable can put the brakes on upgrading Late '09 iMacs. | Other World Computing Blog (http://blog.macsales.com/2751-proprietary-cable-can-put-the-brakes-on-upgrading-late-09-iMacs)

Well that's good info - so if you have a WD drive in there, you can upgrade to certain WD drives, and same with Seagate. So it's not a *complete* dead end... more like a cul-de-sac. ;)

Actually in the real world swapping like drive for like drive does NOT work. Trust me been down that road.

It seems that you're not alone according to some of the posts at the URL I provided. :-(

Well off the record a little birdie said that even without the cable in place there hasn't been any noticeable change in heat or fan noise. It may technically void the warranty but replacing the hard drive alone does that so if you need to upgrade the drive it is possible.

thats not really true...you can have an AASP replace the drive with whatever you want, and the warranty on the rest of the machine will still be valid

Was considernig a new iMac... Now definately not.

Why does Apple have to be difficult like that.

They made the G5 iMac's easily upgradable.


-TPCM

Yeah it sucks..truthfully this is what is holding me back from an imac...they become old real fast...and i don't have 3G's to spend every couple of years. Im seriously considering a Tower Mac (Macpro?) At least this way, I can upgrade parts as needed.

in all fairness the imacs are about as futureproof as they have ever been right now...the i7 is only 3 or 4% slower than the base pro in the benchmarks i have seen, and the video is wicked fast compared to older models. the fact that you can go up to 16GB of RAM goes a long way towards making the computer futureproof, and if you want a bigger drive, just BTO it

at the end of the day the imac is a consumer machine, not really designed with upgrades in mind. apple has always been very upfront about this. no surprises here