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xkmxkmxlmx

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 28, 2011
885
113
With everyone obsessing over the 27 here, I was just wondering what opinions were on the base model 21.

Are you happy with it? What are you coming from? Do you plan on upgrading anything in the future? How well does it perform?
 

Chuckstones

macrumors regular
Oct 28, 2012
152
22
I have the base 2012 21.5". And find it lightning fast compared to my 9yr old windows pc!
Does everything I wanted it to. Surf net, watch video, play music and edit photos etc.
I will never be doing any video editing or playing games on it so ideal for my needs.
Gone are the terrible boot up times I had with my old pc. I just put the mac to sleep. And no virus scanning etc which bog the machine down for hours on end!

Oh. And I find the screen size just fine. The 27" in my opinion is just way too big!
 

tom vilsack

macrumors 68000
Nov 20, 2010
1,880
63
ladner cdn
Chuckstones:

-what is the 5400rpm drive like? startup time? shutdown?,how long does it take apps to start (safari,itunes ect)? Is the drive noisy at all (can you hear it?)...if you ran geekbench,what score did it get...
 

The Robot Cow

macrumors 6502
Sep 12, 2012
300
69
Central California
Mine is suppose to arrive tomorrow. I'm coming from a toshiba laptop(which had a dual core and 4gb ram, windows vista but upgraded to 7, and 250gb hdd) and an older Hp desktop with a single core and a measly 1gb ram.

Needless to say I'm getting a huge upgrade. Quad core i5, fusion drive and 8gb of ram. I'm suppose to get it tomorrow, I'm pretty sure it's gonna be awesome!!
 

WilliamG

macrumors G3
Mar 29, 2008
9,919
3,800
Seattle
Mine is suppose to arrive tomorrow. I'm coming from a toshiba laptop(which had a dual core and 4gb ram, windows vista but upgraded to 7, and 250gb hdd) and an older Hp desktop with a single core and a measly 1gb ram.

Needless to say I'm getting a huge upgrade. Quad core i5, fusion drive and 8gb of ram. I'm suppose to get it tomorrow, I'm pretty sure it's gonna be awesome!!

Dear goodness! You're in for a real treat. :)
 

The Robot Cow

macrumors 6502
Sep 12, 2012
300
69
Central California
Dear goodness! You're in for a real treat. :)
I'm very excited! It's also my first Mac. It's a relief that I finally get a good solid computer. It's always sucked having a mediocre computer. Even my gf has a better computer and she's not even tech savvy -_-
All I can say is that I am very glad to not having to use the laptop. It ran fine until the last 12 months. Nothing but problems. It really turned to crap 4 months ago. The only real devices that I had since my laptop gave up on life was my galaxy nexus. iPhone 5 and iPad.
 

macnerd93

macrumors 6502a
Nov 28, 2009
712
189
United Kingdom
The day after the 2012 iMac announcement, I rushed out to Stormfront and managed to find several of the previous gens still new in stock and bought one as soon as I could.

I'm so disappointed with what Apple has done to the iMac line, specifically the 21.5'' model. For me its been made substantially worse. It has a much slower 5400RPM hard drive, no easy access user upgradable ram, but the biggest nail in the coffin for me was the lack of an optical drive/

I shoot wedding photography often and am currently in the process of archiving old VHS tapes onto DVD so an optical drive is a must, the lack of FireWire on the new ones is also a bit annoying. I know you can buy an external optical disk drive and thunderbolt firewire adaptor, but why should I even need to? Especially for a desktop machine, making it thin is as pointless as a chocolate fireguard, its no space gained or saved really. Apple also had the cheek to charge £99 more for the new one over the previous model.

The iMac I went for was the 21.5'' 2.5Ghz Quad i5 and its a million times faster than the old 2.53Ghz C2D in my MBP. The £99 I saved went straight towards 32GB RAM for it which was only £109 and of course easy upgradable in my machine. I will eventually put in an SSD and this should last me quite a while yet.

I honestly do think the current gen iMacs are most definitely a step down over the previous ones, unless you are willing to spend a lot more money. For me 27'' is just too big I have a 27'' LG 3D monitor that I used with my MBP on my desk and it just took up a tad too much space and was a bit too large.
 

WilliamG

macrumors G3
Mar 29, 2008
9,919
3,800
Seattle
The drive is incredibly quiet. I've got a base model 21.5" with 16GB of RAM in it. Behind my iMac sits a WD MyBook and all I can hear now is that clicking and whirring. Previously I had a 2009 iMac and never noticed the noise from the WD MyBook before.

I'm not sure what voodoo magic Apple is using to keep these drives so quiet, but it's remarkable. I can honestly say I don't hear a peep out of the 3.5" 7200rpm Seagate drive in my 27". It's absolutely silent. If I listen REALLY carefully, I can hear it spin up, but that's the end of any noise. I don't hear a thing after, not even doing huge file transfers!
 

Chuckstones

macrumors regular
Oct 28, 2012
152
22
Chuckstones:

-what is the 5400rpm drive like? startup time? shutdown?,how long does it take apps to start (safari,itunes ect)? Is the drive noisy at all (can you hear it?)...if you ran geekbench,what score did it get...

Hi Tom.;)

The only things I have to compare to are my old pc and my ipad 3rd gen.
Not done the geek bench thingy yet!

The 5400 drive seems plenty fast enough. Start up time is approx 35 seconds but I rarely shut it down completely just put it to sleep, and it wakes up instantaneously!!
Apps such as safari and mail are pretty instant. Itunes and iPhoto a little slower. But once they are already open they are instant!
I'm on the fence about the drive being noisy. I'm on my 2nd replacement and my 1st unit was very quiet. But it was situated downstairs with some background noise. My current one is in a very small room which I plan on turning into an office/spare bedroom. So at present no furnishings. But with the central heating on. Can't hear a thing!
Late at night though when everything is silent I can hear the fan. And of course the odd clicking whiring of my WD external drive. The mac is right up against a wall though as I only have a narrow desk. So maybe that is a contributing factor as well of nothing to absorb sound.
But it is a keeper as it has a pretty uniform screen, minor bleed at bottom and no dead/stuck pixels!!
 

benjanos

macrumors newbie
Jul 26, 2011
8
0
Switzerland
Got a new 21" on the weekend to replace my older (late 2009) 21" model. I got the 3.1GHz i7 processor, 16GB of Ram, 1T Fusion Drive, so yes I know it's not a base model.

Anyway, I like the new one for a number of reasons;
- It is LIGHTNING quick at everything compared to the old one. No surprise, but I am happy since that was my #1 wish
- Boots in about 15-20 seconds :)
- Runs very slient, previous one was OK, but new one is dead silent
- Runs very cool compared to the old one. The old one seemed to pour heat out the top. This one barely get warm even when worked hard. Maybe I'll save a few £ on electricity

I agree with other comments, the 27" is too big for my needs + it opens up a bunch of overly expensive options that are too temping (like 768GB Flash).
 
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