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27 inch iMac niggles....

martinchivers

martinchivers

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 19, 2011
289
10
Bath, Somerset, UK
I have now had the mac for 9 months or so. Generally, very happy, but there are a few niggly problems. I will list them & see if anybody can answer some or all.

Firstly, it’s a 2.8GHz intel core i5. 4 gig ram. Operating MAC os 10-6-8.

As a photographer I am running all the usual suspects......bridge/photoshop/canon DPP/toast, plus safari & Microsoft outlook continuously. Also invariably, word & excel.

The computer seams slower, than before. If upgrading, anybody any recombination’s for ram, requirements? I looked at crucial & prices are not horrendous, but business is slow, so I have so far resisted to just chucking extra ram (& money) at it.

When I open word or excel, they do not open at the full width of the monitor, is there any way that that can be set to do it by default?

My keyboard is fairly problematical, in that it keeps disconnecting. I get a dialogue box “keyboard disconnected”, but normally it virtually instantly reconnects. Batteries are good quality rechargeable.

When opening & closing word docs, if 2 docs are open at the same time, & one is closed, the complete program minimizes into the trough. I would like the program to stay put and show the second doc, that was underneath.

When printing from photoshop using my Epson 4880, the printer software insists on reverting to “auto expand” I NEVER use auto expand & never will! I have to reset that (to borderless, retain size) every time I run a print.

Hopefully somebody, can add something helpful! Thanks in advance. Martin
 
martinchivers said:
I have now had the mac for 9 months or so. Generally, very happy, but there are a few niggly problems. I will list them & see if anybody can answer some or all.

Firstly, it’s a 2.8GHz intel core i5. 4 gig ram. Operating MAC os 10-6-8.

As a photographer I am running all the usual suspects......bridge/photoshop/canon DPP/toast, plus safari & Microsoft outlook continuously. Also invariably, word & excel.

The computer seams slower, than before. If upgrading, anybody any recombination’s for ram, requirements?
Click to expand...
16 GB are a good start & cheap. Your model supports probably 32 GB RAM. Requirements are in your manual. If you use a lot of internet pages, make sure you DO NOT use WebKit-based browsers (Chrome, Safari), and that you disable all browser-plugins (enable them only if necessary). WebKit-based browsers use all available RAM "if necessary", which means other applications do not get the RAM they need.
 
We have a 2011 27" iMac and recently did some, what I call real world testing.

Keep in mind it has the 3.4 Ghz i7 Quad Core CPU

We ran the heck out of it, opening many apps. Opening up in Photoshop Elements 9 several RAW image files from a 5D2 along with browsing, email, document works and the like. We actually did much more than a normal workload and observed Page Out and Swap Usage ......

4 GB - :( Man you can forget this ... system slowed ... Page Outs and Swapping too much

8 GB - :) Things got snappier, as for Page Outs and/or Swapping well they occurred but not until a lot of 5D2 RAW Image files were being opened. They we started transferring several gigs of data from one USB HDD to another and things began to go downhill

16 GB - :D :D :D ( Best Bang For Buck well ok $100 or less ) This was the sweet spot. I have to say we tossed everything in it we had. Page Outs / Swapping??? The only way we could get anything there was by being really stupid. OK you might see Page Outs/Swapping if you have 4 USB HDD's and you begin transferring several gigs between all of them at the same time.


32 GB - Improvement over 16GB, yeah ..... but in my opinion not worth the extra money. Buy hey, if ya got money to burn and want bragging rights this is the way to go.
 
Mr. Retrofire said:
16 GB are a good start & cheap. Your model supports probably 32 GB RAM. Requirements are in your manual. If you use a lot of internet pages, make sure you DO NOT use WebKit-based browsers (Chrome, Safari), and that you disable all browser-plugins (enable them only if necessary). WebKit-based browsers use all available RAM "if necessary", which means other applications do not get the RAM they need.
Click to expand...

Thanks very much. How do I do that in safari?

------------------------------------------------------------

Harcosparky.....again, thanks. That is precisely the type of concise answer that I was looking for.....extremely helpful. Thank you very much (will price up the ram tomorrow). Incidentally, what is the best configuration to arrive at 16 gig, from the 4 that I have now? Junk it and get 2 8 gig or 4 4 gig??? Or add additional, not sure what is there, I know three are 4 slots. Martin
 
Id suggest you get 2x4GB first. You can add these to you current and have 12GB. See how you get along with that. If you need more, get it but try 12GB first, its a waste of money if you buy 16 and only end up using max 11 or so
 
morning Guys.

Just ordered the RAM, from crucial. an extra 8 gig. (2x 4gig) I am pretty confidant, I can fit it. Its underneath. It has 4 gig, but I do not know what configuration thats in.

So to double check........close/disconnect mac, fit the ram (is there any specific position etc?)

Once done reboot. Is there anything else that I need do?
 
martinchivers said:
morning Guys.

Just ordered the RAM, from crucial. an extra 8 gig. (2x 4gig) I am pretty confidant, I can fit it. Its underneath. It has 4 gig, but I do not know what configuration thats in.

So to double check........close/disconnect mac, fit the ram (is there any specific position etc?)

Once done reboot. Is there anything else that I need do?
Click to expand...

About this mac/System config will show you what's in it. 2x2gb from the factory.

Ram has a slot keyed in it, will only go in one way.

I've found on an iMac best way to get to the ram is put a soft towel on the table and put it face down on the towel. Panel on the bottom with three phillips screws.
 
I've done the extra 8GB RAM upgrade, but when I first had the machine, so couldn't really compare what it was like prior, but I use far more software at the same time than you have listed and it doesn't skip a beat.

Easiest RAM upgrade I've ever done. You're left thinking "is that it?" and keep thinking that there should be some extra step to it.

You'll probably find the Mac has a new lease of life :D
 
I have added the new ram this morning.

On the face of it, the computer is exactly the same. It doesn't seam to open images any quicker or do anything better at all.

The RAM is recognised!!! I have not run a photoshop batch, of DPP conversion, as yet.

I dont understand any of the stuff about safari! The bit about "third party plugings" Could anybody explain, in words of one syllable?

Any other thoughts anybody?
 
It wont open images faster, but it the computer will not 'clog up' in the same way. With less ram the computer will have to save operations to the hard drive more frequent. The ram is way faster than the hard drive, so when you have more ram, operations will be stored in the ram making them faster to access.

But I'm guessing that if you have Photoshop with several images open, a mail client, some iTunes and a browser - the general snappiness of the computer will be improved.
 
PaulKemp said:
It wont open images faster, but it the computer will not 'clog up' in the same way. With less ram the computer will have to save operations to the hard drive more frequent. The ram is way faster than the hard drive, so when you have more ram, operations will be stored in the ram making them faster to access.

But I'm guessing that if you have Photoshop with several images open, a mail client, some iTunes and a browser - the general snappiness of the computer will be improved.
Click to expand...

^^ Good, simple explanation Paul ^^
 
PaulKemp said:
But I'm guessing that if you have Photoshop with several images open, a mail client, some iTunes and a browser - the general snappiness of the computer will be improved.
Click to expand...

That was more or less my experience.

Add a little copying of folders of image/documents between drives in the background and the difference really shows up.

Prior to the RAM upgrade, if I did any disk to disk copying in the background things slowed up noticeably.

After the RAM upgrade I can once again work while the background file transfers are running.
 
Does iOS get bloated like Windows OS after it runs for a year or two?

As some of you may know, after a year or two, WinOS PCs will usually start bogging down from various things like updates, misc program installs, registry stuffed with old junk, etc.

I usually format the HDD and reinstall my WinOS every other year, run the Windows updates and only install necessary programs specific for specific tasks for the PC.
Once this is done, my PC runs almost twice as fast.

Also, if your program doesn't require an iOS update, I would not install them as those can also slow down the computer.

Having the latest OS sometimes is not the best thing if it's too demanding on your computer resources.
 
I used to regularly run defrag and software to clean up all the crap on my Pc. I don't think the mac is so prone to those type of problems, I have "clean my mac" but haven't paid for it, so it doesn't really do anything. Other than that, I do not know.

I am so far extremely dissopioned with the new ram. I haven't done any hatching (in photoshop) or canon dpp conversions. But using it all day, could see no desernable difference in performance whatsoever.
 
Wonder if anybody had anything else to add re the initial post?

Also, would it be plausible that the mac would run better, with the latest operating system? (cant remember the name!) It there a tool on the mac, to analyse its performance? and repair problems.

(below, just copied in from first post)

When I open word or excel, they do not open at the full width of the monitor, is there any way that that can be set to do it by default?

My keyboard is fairly problematical, in that it keeps disconnecting. I get a dialogue box “keyboard disconnected”, but normally it virtually instantly reconnects. Batteries are good quality rechargeable.

When opening & closing word docs, if 2 docs are open at the same time, & one is closed, the complete program minimizes into the trough. I would like the program to stay put and show the second doc, that was underneath.

When printing from photoshop using my Epson 4880, the printer software insists on reverting to “auto expand” I NEVER use auto expand & never will! I have to reset that (to borderless, retain size) every time I run a print.
 
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