iMac i5 or i7 - some questions

[Naxul]

Well, I recently bought a MacBook Pro after the last refresh and I love it for it mobility. But if at home I really like to work behind a desktop. Im thinking of buying an iMac but I do now know if I should buy the i5 or i7. When I ordered my MBP I choose the i7. Is the i5 in the iMac twice as fast as the MBP i7?

Will i5 do fine or is it smart to order a i7 for these tasks:

MSN (Almost every day)
Itunes (Every day)
Firefox and/or Chrome (Every day)
Photoshop CS5 and/or Illustrator CS5 (Almost everyday)
Textmate (Almost everyday)
FTP program (Almost everyday)

Im not planning to do some serious gaming but maby Ill try it for fun :P
Well im almost sure the answer will be i5 but isn't smart to order the i7 because it "only" 170€ more? or will it be better in my case to double the RAM and not update the chip?

Thanks for the information.

[TheBritishBloke]

I5 will be fine. But if you can spend the extra $200 for the i7 I say do it just to future proof yourself.

[ucsb2002]

I had the same dilema and decided to go with the i7 since we plan on keeping this iMac for about 5 years. i7 has hyper threading so when more applications in the future take advantage of the multi-core processors it will be good to have. Plus, the extra cost for the i7 is minimal compared to what the i5 cost already.

[Naxul]

4gb of RAM will be enough anyway for these jobs?

Thanks for answering guys.

[TheBritishBloke]

4gb of RAM will be enough anyway for these jobs?

Thanks for answering guys.

Should be fine. You could buy a 2x2GB kit and stick it in there along with the 4GB that's already in there. Cheap to do and gives a nice performance boost.

[ucsb2002]

Should be enough. However you can always pick up 4 GB of Crucial RAM pretty cheap if you find that you need more. That's what I plan on doing when the iMac arrives.

[dwd3885]

get the refurb i7.

[Hellhammer]

You could just get an external monitor, keyboard and mouse to make your MBP a desktop. Will cost a lot less plus all your files are in one computer (makes it a lot easier). If you really want an iMac, I give my vote for refurb i7, it's amazing value and the upgraded GPU won't make difference for you

[freiheit]

I'm running on a 2006 Mac Pro (4x2.66GHz) with 5GB of RAM and it's still running like a champ under MacOS X 10.6.4. I do much the same as the apps you listed (minus PhotoShop but plus video encoding and occasional editing in Final Cut Express). An i5 with 4GB of RAM is 2 or 3 revisions more refined than the processors in my Mac Pro so yeah, that should do nicely for the apps you mentioned.

Well, I recently bought a MacBook Pro after the last refresh and I love it for it mobility. But if at home I really like to work behind a desktop. Im thinking of buying an iMac but I do now know if I should buy the i5 or i7. When I ordered my MBP I choose the i7. Is the i5 in the iMac twice as fast as the MBP i7?

Will i5 do fine or is it smart to order a i7 for these tasks:

MSN (Almost every day)
Itunes (Every day)
Firefox and/or Chrome (Every day)
Photoshop CS5 and/or Illustrator CS5 (Almost everyday)
Textmate (Almost everyday)
FTP program (Almost everyday)

Im not planning to do some serious gaming but maby Ill try it for fun :P
Well im almost sure the answer will be i5 but isn't smart to order the i7 because it "only" 170€ more? or will it be better in my case to double the RAM and not update the chip?

Thanks for the information.