Buy iMac now, or wait for update?

As the update is rumored to come today, and as it will certainly come very soon given that Intel is pushing Apple to drop the Merom, what's the rush on your end? Of course you should wait.

The best advice I've heard on this board is, "If you need it, buy it."
That said, I voted for waiting. At least through today, as the Penryn chip is rumored to be available for the iMac for the first time.
Will you see a performance difference? Probably not. But it is nice to have the newest, isn't it? If there are no iMac upgrades today, the next isn't supposed to happen until summer. Why deprive yourself of this wonderful machine for months, while hoping for an upgrade? I got my iMac about 6 weeks ago, and couldn't care less if they had upgraded the next day. This is a fine machine that I will be using and enjoying for years to come. Hope this helps.
Morod

lisamel said:

I understand.. This will be my first Mac and im really eager on getting it asap!
I suppose I can manage to wait a bit longer lol
Does anyone know if it the update will be released in Norway at the same time as US/UK?

Thanks

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Usually when a new Apple computer is released it is immediately available for ordering from the Apple Online store in the countries where Apple operate their Online stores.
I remember when the new Al iMac came out in August last year, it took a few days before retailers in Oslo had them in their stores.

Seriously though Apple should be releasing an upgraded version of the iMac very soon, and as someone who has sent three 24" models back due to problems and who now owns a Mac Pro, I would wait.

If not today, then it should be in the next couple of weeks. You can never predict Apple updates to 100% accuracy, but all evidence points to sometime in the next couple of weeks, including some anecdotal evidence I've received, which I won't dignify by passing on... I'm looking to buy myself, and I'm waiting. Even if you did order now, you might find your order "delayed" then replaced with the newer version.

LIES! ! ! ! ... I was really anticipating the release of a upgraded IMac ...

Do I sound bitter?

lisamel said:

Hi guys!
The title says it all really..
What do you think I should do?
Wait for it, or just buy now?
I will only be using it for watching movies, listen to itunes, load pictures and surf the web, pages, mail etc..Just basic stuff

Hope you can help

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For what you intend to do the current line of iMacs (and iMacs that have been available for several years) are more than sufficient. We can't accurately predict the future but it is unlikely that any iMac update will be significant - the last one was the first major revision for years and saw the case changing along with new GPUs etc.

I'd expect that the updates to the iMac will be like the ones that came last week with the MacBook (Pro)s. The processor will change to a new architecture although the actual performance boost will be negligible.

There really is no reason not to buy now in my opinion. You'll maybe miss out on a few hundred megahertz in power, but that won't make a single bit of difference to the tasks which you want to use the computer for.

I say wait. The last refresh was a while ago (which happened to be the full redesign). I say that they will probably be upgrading it soon.

I always try to think thats its worth the wait.

I'd wait. Not only will you see new iMacs, but the old models are likely to be discounted like the old MB and MBPs were.

I wouldn't expect much more than 2gb of ram and the new Penryn cpus though.

Maybe a hd size increase or faster vid card and/or more video memory?

It seems like it's around the corner as supposedly iNtel is asking customers to switch to the new 45nm cpus.

lisamel said:

When I checked apple.com Norway it says 3-4 weeks delivery time for the iMac I want.. Only takes 24 hours to ship out if I get the ones featured, but as I wanted larger HD and english OS X, it took longer.. Maybe that is a sign they are running low in stock and expecting new ones? hehe
Fingers crossed

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Or maybe it's a sign that they're selling well and don't have enough people to custom build all the machines which are being ordered?

trip1ex said:

I'd wait. Not only will you see new iMacs, but the old models are likely to be discounted like the old MB and MBPs were.

I wouldn't expect much more than 2gb of ram and the new Penryn cpus though.

Maybe a hd size increase or faster vid card and/or more video memory?

It seems like it's around the corner as supposedly iNtel is asking customers to switch to the new 45nm cpus.

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Agreed, any update will probably be just minor improvements to the components.

I think the iMac updates can be predicted by the update to the MBP's. Essentially the iMac is a desktop version of the MBP so witht he recent update tot he MBP there was relatively 0 performance gains and mostly all savings in power utilization - which is not needed in an iMac since it is a desktop. IN some of the tests the new MBP's were actually slower than the old ones so you may want to takethat into consideration as well.

Wait for today as people suggested, if it doesn't get an upgrade today or say the next couple of days I say just go and buy it. I was in the exact same situation as you and was being told an update is imminent, that was in January! I waited for the Macworld keynote and when it was not announced I just went ahead and bought one. The best investment I made in my life.

Honestly, a small bump in speed is not noticable, there will always be another update round the corner.

Waiting a few days seems like something reasonable. I did that in January with MacWorld but ordered my iMac the Friday after the show. I would never have made it to March! I love my iMac and as many have said, there will always be something new coming along to make the latest and greatest just a little bit past the spotlight. For me, if I was still waiting for a new iMac, I'd be still waiting to play WoW as well. My old Dell is well beyond those spotlight years--not that there ever was much cutting edge about it to begin with.

lisamel said:

When I checked apple.com Norway it says 3-4 weeks delivery time for the iMac I want.. Only takes 24 hours to ship out if I get the ones featured, but as I wanted larger HD and english OS X, it took longer.. Maybe that is a sign they are running low in stock and expecting new ones? hehe
Fingers crossed

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Actually you would probably receive your BTO iMac within 2 weeks if you ordered online. When I ordered my Mac Pro they said 3 weeks and it took nine days. As for the English OSX, this is Apple Software we're talking about, not Microsoft, just order the international version and once you have it you can change it into any major language you like .

Sounds like you won't require the extra horsepower etc, that would come with the next iMac upgrade (since it wil not be a major one) so I would just buy now and start enjoying your machine. If you play the waiting game, that's all you'll end up doing - waiting. Buy what you need when you need it and you will never be disappointed.

The new Imacs can't be far off-I'd bet there out within the next 2-4 weeks.

Then you can buy a current model for a few hundred less or a new
faster one with new "stuff."

get one

I bought a 24" referb yesterday. The referbs are 18% off right now, the upgrade will hardly be worth it. When the new ones come out the discount may go as low at 28% so I could have saved a few hundred dollars by waiting, but this way I get it on Friday. A Refurbished iMac 24-inch 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 1mb, 320 hard Drive is selling for $1499. Go to critical.com and pick up 4GB of extra RAM for about $100 and you are good to go.

The way I look at is, if you want a really powerful computer you have to buy a Mac Pro anyway. The Penryn new chip set won’t make a huge difference to the performance (1-8%) The new Penryn chip will give you a 16% increase in battery life compared to the Merom, but on a iMac this is not feature. Its not a laptop.

The only realistic way to make a computer faster is to get a lot of RAM or a major architecture system change like a quad processor or a much faster Front side bus (with faster RAM), perhaps a faster hard drive 7200rpm. None of this stuff will be in the new IMac.

Performance for most people is limited to getting data off the harddrive into memory (RAM). You want to spend money on anything that speeds up this operation. More RAM = less trips to the harddrive to get stuff. Faster harddrive = faster loading and writing of temp data. I have always used a PC so I might be missing something as I have no real expierence with a Mac but the principles are the same. (big endian, little endain its just the way you look at it).

I will use it for me and my family. My wife and daughter will probally never see the CPU usage go higher then 10%, reading email and surfing wont tax the computer. I will use it for photoshop, 3d studio max, ripping DVD's, duel booting windows xp and running my windows apps over there, playing warcraft every now and then, streaming music to my logitech squeezebox, blogging, e-mail, watching dvd's, messing around with iLife. I ended up buying a 2.8Ghz, 2GB Ram (which I will upgrade to 4 from critical.com) , 24", 500GB harddrive, wireless keyboard and mouse (just because they look so cool with out wires and my wife will like it more). I am thinking of it as a primary family computer, we still each have our own laptops (I have a IBM x61 tablet). But this is a computer we can leave on in a living area and use whenever we need to google something, or just mess around on. I also want a computer that has nothing to do with work this way this computer is just for my own research and play, leave windows for work (i might not duel boot after all). If it was my primary computer I might want a mac pro with a 30" screen and a quad processor.

I hope you are right

c:\windows said:

I bought a 24" referb yesterday. The referbs are 18% off right now, the upgrade will hardly be worth it. When the new ones come out the discount may go as low at 28% so I could have saved a few hundred dollars by waiting, but this way I get it on Friday. A Refurbished iMac 24-inch 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 1mb, 320 hard Drive is selling for $1499. Go to critical.com and pick up 4GB of extra RAM for about $100 and you are good to go.

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I am planning on buying a refurb ASAP, but I am waiting on my tax refund which should come in next week. I DO hope the prices continue to go down, and the "limited time" does not end when the new ones come out. Does Apple generally have the prices lower on the refurbs when the new products come out?

I have been eyeing that one with 320GB hard drive--I just hope that is enough hard drive for editing movies, keeping my pix, etc. I do have an external drive, but I don't want to have to keep everything on it!

newmacmom said:

I am planning on buying a refurb ASAP, but I am waiting on my tax refund which should come in next week. I DO hope the prices continue to go down, and the "limited time" does not end when the new ones come out. Does Apple generally have the prices lower on the refurbs when the new products come out?

I have been eyeing that one with 320GB hard drive--I just hope that is enough hard drive for editing movies, keeping my pix, etc. I do have an external drive, but I don't want to have to keep everything on it!

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The referb prices did go down when last week on the MacBook Pros when they released a new model, so I would expect the iMacs to do the same, but they will sell out pretty fast I expect because the upgrades are not that significant. The 320Gb's of space is lots of space so I wouldn't worry about running out of space. My plan is to pick up a time capsule for the extra wireless disk storage, it comes with 1000GB of disk space, a wireless router for about $500, the nice thing about it is you can use it with the PC's in the house as well.