Good point. However, I think the automatic management on 128Gb vs manual (and far lest space-efficient) management on 256Gb is key here, as I claim the former is better than the latter and you vice versa. It's much harder to compare than, say, temperature of an i5 or power usage or speed.
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Do you regret any upgrades you got for the iMac?
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Good point. However, I think the automatic management on 128Gb vs manual (and far lest space-efficient) management on 256Gb is key here, as I claim the former is better than the latter and you vice versa. It's much harder to compare than, say, temperature of an i5 or power usage or speed.
I don't know why you see manual data management as such a tedious process. I use my external HDD to store large files like media, TM backups, and disk images. Everything else goes on the SSD.
I'm not saying I haven't had problems with manual data management in the past, but I feel much better keeping my boot partition with system files, apps, and user files away from a slow HDD and using the HDD for TM backups to decrease my chance of losing data instead of increasing it with the two drives fused.
As I said before, a 256 GB SSD can be fused with an external HDD to act like a Fusion drive if that's what you really want it to do.
I'm trying to avoid discussion as I don't want to hijack the thread - and besides, we've discussed it in lenght. But, to answer - I don't consider manual data management tedious, that's not the point. My argument is that automatic managment will do the job BETTER. No one in their right mind would constantly move apps, movies and documents from one disk to another every week just to have them working at peak speeds. With a larger SSD, that's not an issue as most of your stuff is always on SSD. But with a 256Gb I'm betting the user is using the external HDD more often than OS X is using the HDD portion of a FD, yes even with the 256Gb drive having more SSD space.
This statement proves you're missing my point. Most people's photos, apps, and documents (even VMs!) will fit on a 256 GB just fine, it's only the large files like movies that will always be saved on the HDD. Such files don't require fast transfer speeds and would only waste space on an SSD. Meanwhile the other files are guaranteed to stay off a slow HDD.
I think I should have paid for the i7 on my iMac 5k... I was sure I had ordered it but looks like I took the i5...
I'm not sure if I will really ever need the i7 (I mostly use code editors that don't use a lot of resources).
When my iMac will arrive at home I'll know if I did the right choice!
I'm not sure if I will really ever need the i7 (I mostly use code editors that don't use a lot of resources).
When my iMac will arrive at home I'll know if I did the right choice!
You'll be ok with the i5 for code editing. Enjoy your new iMac
I hope so! I wanted to buy something future-proof (being paid by my company), so I've added some extra dollar from my wallet, exceeding the budget and bought everything I thought could be useful to keep it fresh for the next years.
The main thing I would recommend for future proofing specifically on the Retina is the M295X GPU, otherwise you'll be fine. My 27" 2010 iMac i5 still beats the entry-level Mac mini & iMac today, the thing most holding it back is the slow HDD which can be upgraded.