After months of consideration, I'm getting an iMac 27"

I

Ionium

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 7, 2006
Messages
351
The fully loaded one too, core i7 with ATI 5750 and 1TB HDD... gonna head to the apple store to get it tomorrow, merry xmas to me :D
 
Ionium said:
Uh no I am not spending $600 on an SSD, not worth it
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If you feel comfortable with lifting the pain of glass out, you could upgrade it yourself. The SSD will be a major upgrade to the performance of the system. For $500 you could buy a nice 256GB SSD and have the beauty of super fast boots, near instantaneous app load times, and lower internal temperatures (they do shoe-horn a lot of stuff into those small iMac enclosures...)

Congrats on your decision. I had a maxed out 27" iMac but I had to sell it. I say this with a straight face: it was probably the best machine I've ever owned. It really was the full package. Small footprint, plenty of power, beautiful display, elegant workhorse. Paired with a 20" monitor in portrait for web-browsing it was a pleasure to do content creation and other productivity based things on.

The only thing better would be a pretty loaded up Mac Pro and multiple 27" monitors...
 
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Why is it worth the money anyways? So I can save 30 seconds on boot up times? So I can load apps 10 seconds faster? Sorry, but please give me REAL statistics, not just opinions and overhype
 
UnknownSouljer said:
If you feel comfortable with lifting the pain of glass out, you could upgrade it yourself. The SSD will be a major upgrade to the performance of the system. For $500 you could buy a nice 256GB SSD and have the beauty of super fast boots, near instantaneous app load times, and lower internal temperatures (they do shoe-horn a lot of stuff into those small iMac enclosures...)

Congrats on your decision. I had a maxed out 27" iMac but I had to sell it. I say this with a straight face: it was probably the best machine I've ever owned. It really was the full package. Small footprint, plenty of power, beautiful display, elegant workhorse. Paired with a 20" monitor in portrait for web-browsing it was a pleasure to do content creation and other productivity based things on.

The only thing better would be a pretty loaded up Mac Pro and multiple 27" monitors...
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Why did you have to sell it?
 
Ionium said:
Why is it worth the money anyways? So I can save 30 seconds on boot up times? So I can load apps 10 seconds faster? Sorry, but please give me REAL statistics, not just opinions and overhype
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Mechanical hard-drives are the slowest part of the system, they have been for some time. It doesn't matter how fast your Ram is, or how fast your CPU is if the data from the HD is bottle-necking everything. If you want to see benchmarks I invite you to use Google. There are tons of articles and benchmarks on this subject.

Also I would highly recommend you try using one. Much like the reviews in Hard|OCP where they don't just look at FPS they also look at experience, SSD's give an experience to normal operations that mechanical HD's cannot do. The smoothness of the performance covers many flaws. This is why a Macbook Air with an SSD performs virtually equally with a 13" Macbook Pro despite having a slower processor.

Ionium said:
Why did you have to sell it?
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I'm currently in a drastic life change. I sold it simply because I couldn't take it with me. I'm in Vietnam this year doing charity work and it was pointless to keep a machine that would be out of use for a year.

I ended up buying a Canon 5D Mark ii with the proceeds which I don't regret at all.
 
Understandable...

and like my friend said about SSD's which I agree:

Beyond startup times and initial application launch times there isn't that much difference in performance. And even those differences are marginally at best. There comes a point where I just stop caring about those 1-2 seconds considering the extra price I have to pay. By the time this iMac needs replacing yours will as well with or without SSD simply because the processor and graphics are behind the times.

I have had the pleasure to use both iMacs side-by-side and even my friend was disappointed in the speed difference considering the premium he paid for the SSD. Next to that he has to worry about fragmentation now to keep his edge over my machine. In my opinion SSDs have to potential to become great, but we're not quite there yet.
 
Ionium said:
Understandable...

and like my friend said about SSD's which I agree:

Beyond startup times and initial application launch times there isn't that much difference in performance. And even those differences are marginally at best. There comes a point where I just stop caring about those 1-2 seconds considering the extra price I have to pay. By the time this iMac needs replacing yours will as well with or without SSD simply because the processor and graphics are behind the times.

I have had the pleasure to use both iMacs side-by-side and even my friend was disappointed in the speed difference considering the premium he paid for the SSD. Next to that he has to worry about fragmentation now to keep his edge over my machine. In my opinion SSDs have to potential to become great, but we're not quite there yet.
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Benchmarks have shown that (for whatever reason) Trim isn't necessary on OSX. There isn't any significant or noticeable loss in performance over time. As for replacement of machines... I often tend to "take my harddrives with me" when I sell machines. This is especially true if I am the one who installs additional memory or a new HD to save money. I simply put in the original stuff during resale.

I suppose it all comes down to whether or not it's worth it to you or not. But if you're into content creation, I will maintain that SSD's still carry advantages inherent to that.
 
on OSX, a SSD allows you to open 30 windows, spread them across 4-8 spaces, and then use expose and spaces with no delay. it makes the whole system butter. My C2D 2.26, 2GB RAM, 9400m, SSD feels at least twice as fast at every day tasks compared to my Phenom 2 810 quad, 4GB RAM, 5850, HDD desktop.
 
Ionium said:
Why the hell would I wanna have 30 windows open at once?
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why the hell would you want an iMac?

but I can see what kind of person you are with your posts, so not much I can say to 'sway' your opinion.
 
Why does there seem to be a renewed wave of anti-Mac trolls in this forum? And why don't the mods do anything about them?
 
Ionium said:
Why the hell would I wanna have 30 windows open at once?
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well now I'm confused. I'm assuming you aren't buying it for gaming, as you could get a much better gaming rig for the money. So I assumed you were buying a loaded one for productivity work, which would mean many windows open at a time, and a SSD would be very beneficial. What exactly are you using it for?
 
I have a 21.5" iMac with the 2.93 C2D. Even with a "plain Jane" hard drive, it still manages to be more responsive than my i7-powered Windows 7 PC. To that end, I don't think there's anything foolish about not putting an SSD in an iMac (especially one a good bit more powerful than mine).

My recommendation though? RAM. Put 8GB in that fucker and you won't ever have to think about closing applications...ever.
 
8Gb of RAM + 160Gb Intel X25-M SSD makes all the world of difference. I could never go back now that my primary desktop and laptop both have good SSDs.
 
phide said:
I have a 21.5" iMac with the 2.93 C2D. Even with a "plain Jane" hard drive, it still manages to be more responsive than my i7-powered Windows 7 PC. To that end, I don't think there's anything foolish about not putting an SSD in an iMac (especially one a good bit more powerful than mine).

My recommendation though? RAM. Put 8GB in that fucker and you won't ever have to think about closing applications...ever.
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I've experienced the opposite. The SSD made my macbook pro fly, but I get by just fine on 2GB of ram. I'm just doing internet, word processing, and a ton of pdfs though.
 
Centauri said:
Why does there seem to be a renewed wave of anti-Mac trolls in this forum? And why don't the mods do anything about them?
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No, I never said anything about Macs, I actually like Macs and wouldn't mind owning them, don't put words in my mouth.
 
Centauri said:
Why does there seem to be a renewed wave of anti-Mac trolls in this forum? And why don't the mods do anything about them?
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I haven't seen any anti-mac trolls. Consider that correcting some one or saying something about a PC may not be trolling and may be good advice. I havent really seen any trolls lately and not sure what the poster in this thread was saying.
 
Grab the RAM from newegg.ca or somewhere else as its less than half what Apple charges for the 8Gb upgrades and just swap it in.

ryken said:
I've experienced the opposite. The SSD made my macbook pro fly, but I get by just fine on 2GB of ram. I'm just doing internet, word processing, and a ton of pdfs though.
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I'm not a fan of hitting swap with a SSD as the read and writes contribute to shortening the lifespan and MLC flash isn't all that great in the lifespan department compared to SLC.
 
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I just slaped in 8 gigs of ram and now have 12 gigs, loads really fast, no need for an SSD :)
 
Ionium said:
I just slaped in 8 gigs of ram and now have 12 gigs, loads really fast, no need for an SSD :)
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Uh what? Loading speed and ram have barely anything in common. Most likely the effect of justifying a purchase.

SSD though, entire other story. But keep the blindfolds up I guess? I'll bet everyone who has a SSD and is talking outta their arses when they say it makes the system that much more reponsive. A 120GB X25M G2 was like what, $150 or $160 last week?
 
Haiku214 said:
Then find me an equivalent but cheaper pc than the 27" iMac. I've been looking as well but couldn't find any.
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Specifically one with a display using the same or similar panel. The iMac line, particularly the 27" base model, is hard to beat for value.
 
Ionium said:
Uh no I am not spending $600 on an SSD, not worth it
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So, you're already overpaying for an Apple product. Build a comparative PC (or possibly even better one) for cheaper and use the extra money to get a SSD.


All Apple seems to do is take parts from a PC, add a few hundred $$$ to it, put in their OS and set back and chuckle as people pay out the a$$ for it


The monitor/screen aside (in some cases) the above holds true
 
lowteckh said:
Uh what? Loading speed and ram have barely anything in common. Most likely the effect of justifying a purchase.

SSD though, entire other story. But keep the blindfolds up I guess? I'll bet everyone who has a SSD and is talking outta their arses when they say it makes the system that much more reponsive. A 120GB X25M G2 was like what, $150 or $160 last week?
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I grabbed my 160GB G2 for $200 CAD several months ago and felt like it was a great deal considering it was still over $400 on newegg.ca and ++++. Best upgrade of my life since moving from stereo to 5.1 for gaming back in 2001.
 
Yeah, the SSD in my system was the single largest performance boost... ever.

Nothing has sped up my system by that amount, not since 3D acceleration was new or even dual/quad core procs.

The HDD is by far and away the slowest component in the system, I can't wait to ditch the one in my MBP.
 
0ptional said:
Yeah, the SSD in my system was the single largest performance boost... ever.
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I couldn't agree more. Never, in the 10 years I have been seriously using computers, has one component been such an upgrade. All the people who have said an SSD is not worth it have either never used one or have never used a decent one.

With that said, the SSD that comes with the iMac is both extremely overpriced and quite slow. I just installed a 120GB Corsair Force in my girlfriend's new 27" iMac, and it just flies. I installed the OS onto the SSD and keep most of her data (mainly media) on the HDD. I highly recommend an SSD for any computer.
 
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