hi,
looking for a home computer (email/photo/home video/games for kids/internet etc.), and looking at a used mid-2011 model (specs are below).
I would most likely upgrade the 2011 HD to 1TB. Cost of used machine is around $1,200 after upgrade (see below for costs).
So i'm weighing up this vs a new 2014 model for $1,600. Am in decision making conundrum!
I'm new to iMacs, so would love some advice here. Would the 2011 give me a good 4-5 years of reliable service, or should i pay extra $400 and get a newbie?
2011
iMac Intel 21.5” 2.5GHz i5 QC 4Gb RAM, 500Gb Hard Disk, Superdrive (Mid 2011 MC309X/A)
$895 plus $230 for upgarde and $45 for One year Warranty
VS
2014
2.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i5
8GB (two 4GB) memory
1TB hard drive1
Intel Iris Pro graphics
$1600
Thanks,
H.
First off as a former owner of a 2011 iMac which Apple replaced due a known issue with many of these tending to run too hot (mine was literally melting itself) I would immediately tell you do not buy a 2011 iMac. However, mine was a 27" model so I am not certain that the same heat issue was any problem with the one you are considering.
That said, I agree with other advice that 2011 is now old for a Mac and would still advise against it because of that. If you want 5 years out of an all-in-one computer your best bet is a brand new iMac and get AppleCare while you are at it to guarantee you the first 3 years trouble free or they take care of it. I can tell you I sure was glad I did. I never thought my $2000 Apple iMac would be a lemon but it was. I would have been out of luck without AppleCare. Currently I note this is selling for $125. on Amazon.com for the most recent version of it. I very highly recommend spending for this just for the peace of mind and protection. Plus, where you are new this offers you telephone support not only about your hardware but also OS X the operating system and any Apple apps you or the kids may use such as the included Pages word processor or Numbers spreadsheet and a lot more.
Next, you mentioned using Photos on the iMac. Given how precious digital family photos are you will need a backup drive for these not to mention the rest of the system. A 1 TB USB 3.0 drive should only run you around a hundred bucks on Amazon.com. I recommend something from Western Digital. I had problems with Seagate and Apple's included Time Machine backup program but it worked perfectly out of the box when I replaced it with a Western Digital. Don't skip out on this expense. Sooner or later you will be very sorry if you do. Of all system components you can pretty much depend on the hard drive dying some day, particularly the longer you own a system but it is possible to be unfortunate and lose one earlier. Here again is another good case for having AppleCare not to mention a backup drive.
You can store a lot in iCloud if you want including all your photos but with only 5 gigabytes free you will probably soon use this space up and have to pay for more although it is relatively cheap. My feeling is even with iCloud, I still need to use Time Machine because iCloud does not backup anywhere near everything on my system and it would be painful having to reacquire and setup everything in the case of a total loss even if my most precious data was in the cloud. The other issue is how much does one want to depend on the cloud for something as valuable as family photos. Redundant backups are the best way to go to greatly reduce the chance of pain. Trust me here and you won't be sorry. My kids have found ways to lose stuff but old dad could save them because he was prepared and now that they are grown I've taught them to be prepared themselves. Time Machine is great. I backs up unobtrusively in the background every hour getting just newly changed items. As time goes by, you can open up Time Machine and easily retrieve documents or whatever from previous days, weeks even months. You will absolutely love this the day one of your kids is all upset because they accidentally deleted a paper that is due in the morning and similar such disasters. That paper will almost certainly be either mostly or completely in the most recent Time Machine backup. Somebody accidentally trashes permanently some photos? No problem. Just retrieve them from Time Machine. The first time this saves yours or somebody else in the family's bacon you will be quite glad that wise old dad invested in backups. This dad speaks from experience here, a lot of it. Mine are both out of college now and both of them use Macs because dear old dad enlightened them of course.
So, there's another hundred bucks you need to figure on plus about 125 for AppleCare and I suppose some might tell you they never needed it, etc. but I know I did. So the question becomes do you like to play roulette where the odds are actually random and unknown? I don't.
I saw some advice about Fusion drives and SSD drives. You need to be aware that no matter what anybody might tell you however passionately, these drives are luxury items, not necessity items particularly for a family home computer. Yes, the computer will boot up more quickly. Is that really worth spending for? Yes, apps will initially pop right up too but you know what? The kinds of apps you'll be using on that home system are going to pop up quickly anyway. Not only that but the operating system does something called caching in memory. This means once you've fired up an app like say, Mail, the next time you open it chances are it is still in memory and loads instantly as such. The operating system will use all the memory available to it to enhance performance this way. You will get snappier performance with an SSD or Fusion drive but frankly for a home system where you are on a budget buying this the money would be far better spent on the above mentioned AppleCare and backup drive. You will find the computer is still nice and responsive anyway. Don't get me wrong, sure faster is nice. Who doesn't like faster when it comes to computers. Again though, this option is costly and I believe you are trying to hold down the costs here while getting the best system you can with hopefully a 5 year lifetime. As such, I would not recommend spending on an SSD certainly. If you wind up spending enough for a newer iMac that includes a Fusion drive standard, great. It's a plus but don't be afraid to get what you can best afford. It isn't going to suck not having this is what I am trying to say but I expect there are people who would differ with me. The thing is, those folks are speaking out of their own desire for maximal speed more than your stated needs here. There's a big difference between needs and wants and I think you need to focus first on needs. If there's enough in the budget to move on to wants, wonderful. If not, you'll still have a very, very nice computer following the advice I am giving you here.
Beyond that the newer machine seems fine with one possible exception. The Iris graphics on it. This is a laptop graphics option basically and while it does support some gaming pretty well it is at the lowest end of the spectrum there. It's pretty light duty for this purpose compared to a discrete graphics card by Nvidia in a current iMac. So whether this cuts the mustard for some five years or not depends a lot on your kids and what you think they may want to play. If you have a son who wants to play stuff like Call of Duty games this is not going to do it adequately. On the other hand, if they are little ones playing iOS ports or whatnot from the app store it'll be fine assuming they are little enough that they'll still be fine with it in say 3 to 4 years or so.
Gaming is not really the Mac's forte but many of us do enjoy it on Macs. The way to do so though with modern more demanding games is basically to spend considerably more for systems with the best graphics processor options that can do this.
Maybe your kids like console games and none of this is all that important. In fact, from an economic standpoint you'd probably be better off going the console route with a Playstation 4 or something which offers tons of gaming fun and far less hardware expense over time.
It's impossible to know what to tell you about the gaming aspect here without knowing a lot more about the kids ages and preferences, etc. not to mention possibly your own. There's a lot of fun stuff to enjoy if you've never done much with it before.
So if you want to talk a little more about the gaming aspect let me know by replying to this so I see a message thingy telling me to check this thread for it.
In any event it is almost universally true I would say that at any given point in time it is always best to purchase the best, most capable computer you can reasonably afford for the best user experience and longevity out of the system.
