iMac 21.5 - Entry Level - Slow?

[JasonR]

So I just bought an entry level iMac 21.5...and I'm getting the beach ball a lot. my 13" Macbook Air entry level will run circles around it. Just bought both of these in the last week.

What's the deal? Is the SSD that much faster? I'm a pretty intensive power user, and I'm wondering if I made a mistake buying the iMac, and if I'll need to return it.

If it matters, I'm running an external 24" Display, Photoshop, Web Browser, Skype, and that's about it right now.

What gives!?

 

[pcfarrar]

What's the deal? Is the SSD that much faster? I'm a pretty intensive power user, and I'm wondering if I made a mistake buying the iMac, and if I'll need to return it.

Yes you should have got a BTO with Fusion or SSD. If you can afford to pay the extra for fusion/ssd then return it.

 

[JustMartin]

Worth looking at your system monitor to see what's hogging the processor or whether you're doing a lot of swapping. From your description it doesn't sound like you should be getting beach balls.

 

[pcfarrar]

The problem is if he is used to using a Macbook Air, the iMac with standard HDD will seem like a real dog in comparison.

 

[JasonR]

The problem is if he is used to using a Macbook Air, the iMac with standard HDD will seem like a real dog in comparison.

You might be right. I wonder if its the 5200 RPM drive that's causing the beach balling / slowness.

For the record I was working with a 110mb file in Photoshop - and it ran fine on the entry level 13" Macbook Air.

 

[AaronM5670]

For the record I was working with a 110mb file in Photoshop - and it ran fine on the entry level 13" Macbook Air.

That's because all MacBook Airs have SSDs.

 

[JasonR]

Shouldn't Photoshop be using the iMac's 8 GB of ram?