iMac 09 Worth Spending on?

Seems like this is kind of up to you fella. If you have the money why not upgrade?

If not and it's doing everything you need it to do, then keep it!

Depending on what you do, it should last at least another few years with a ram upgrade!

 

Hot is right. I have an i7. Recent new drive and LCD compliments of Apple made me rethink. I'm adding an SSD in hopes of pushing the life down the road another year. Don't know if it will help the heat issue, but it's still a good machine with a respectable benchmark compared to the 2012 I installed for a client. I'll admit, I'd love to have USB3. Dressing up a new one gets into a 3000.00 range, so I'm being frugal with a 223.00 upgrade and waiting to see what happens with the next gen.

Good luck with yours

 

I have the same machine and still consider it a screamer. Just got a 16GB (1333Mhz) RAM upgrade for it from Best Buy for $90. I anticipate another 2-3 years out of it, easily.

 

From a practical point of view, yes. The licenses are another issue. If I remember correctly the Parallels license just states it can be installed on a single machine (at one time). The Windows license is a bit hazier -- it would be "yes" for the full version but "no" for the OEM version which isn't supposed to be used in the first place in virtual machines.

 

Is C2D quad?If not,the performance increase will be huge. If it is,then you will still be able to see a difference with your relatively heavy uses. Fusion benefits you if you like space,but need speed for a few files and movies and things that you use a lot. It will benefit you in sleep no more than having 100 GB RAM sleeping-- you need to use it to see the difference.

Also, go base model since the i7 is for really power users--you are not as much. Save some money too. And if you cn afford fusion, definitely go for it since it combines speed with space.

 

Sure it'll be faster but you really want to drop $$$$ on new machine that you use for surfing the web, emails and occasional photo management?

Typical forum advice to replace your perfectly working machine with new one, this amazes me. Each to his own what he/she does with hard earned cash but this behavior is just pure consumerism.

I have 2009 Macbook Pro that I bought second hand, I do live AV sets with it (video mixing in real time) and sometimes even edit HD videos on it for christ sake. I put 8 gigs of RAM in there and it runs Mountain Lion just fine, I have Adobe CS5 on it that works OK.

Your iMac is beautiful, 27 inch machine that will easily run for another few years. Sure, maybe you won't be/shouldn't be upgrading to the latest OS when it comes out but you can still use it as you're using it now (hello 10.6 users).

Your computation needs could be met with a very cheap and old PC for that fact, you don't need core i7 and great graphics card. If you want to make your iMac feel younger and snappier, replace the hard drive with SSD, it will feel like a brand new computer after the upgrade.

Some of the forum members are just ridiculous with their advice.

 

I haven't seen the specs but I would expect that the new iMacs are just as hot as the '09's. Luckily an idling processor isn't bad. However, the display is a major contributor to heat -- make sure yours sleeps when not active.

 

I dont own iMac myself but I know that its normal for iMacs to be pretty hot. Unless the heat from the computer bothers you (not just the fact that its hot) I wouldbt worry about it much, it is normal design.

 

I just looked it up. The new 27" consumes about 80 watts at idle with the display on and 20 watts with it off. It's under 2 watts when sleeping. The 2009 27" was 145 watts at idle with the display on. I couldn't find other values.

 

thats shame. I still think it's not a good reason to replace machine like this, I'd probably just put a fan next to iMac or sth

 

It's normal for pre-2012s. The 2012 idles extremely cool, whereas my 09 27" was a toaster. My 2012 i7 I can't even tell is on when it's idling/screen off when I touch the casing.

 

I'm running my 27" iMac I7 with the LCD and front glass removed and its always cool and quiet. I wonder if just taking the front glass off would help with overheating.