iMac 27" RAM upgrade may have done the trick

[Thebutchersboy]

I bought a 27" mac two weeks ago. A leap of faith after many loyal years to MS. I utterly disappointed to not that my HP lap top with only 1.5gb of RAM was much quicker and efficient than the £1500 iMac I just purchased.
Apple have been great, it has to be said. Their customer service is astonishing, and if this doesn't resolve, it's being changed.
On their advice, because my use is a bit specific, in that I need some heavy editing software up and running, they said that maybe I should up grade the RAM. I did this begrudgingly, one would expect that what it says on the box, is what it's going to do. I am happy to say, at this stage, it seem to be running faster.
I have two questions.
1 - is the iMac habitually a slow unit, and freezes often? Also I get the spinning beach ball all to often as well, I noticed on other forums that people have said this is common.

2 - when I took the bottom plate off the mac to reveal the RAM slots, it was very dusty. I have only had the computer for two weeks, it's fairly dust free in my office. I suspect that this computer is not brand new, would anyone else concur?

Thanks

 

[macdudesir]

I bought a 27" mac two weeks ago. A leap of faith after many loyal years to MS. I utterly disappointed to not that my HP lap top with only 1.5gb of RAM was much quicker and efficient than the £1500 iMac I just purchased.
Apple have been great, it has to be said. Their customer service is astonishing, and if this doesn't resolve, it's being changed.
On their advice, because my use is a bit specific, in that I need some heavy editing software up and running, they said that maybe I should up grade the RAM. I did this begrudgingly, one would expect that what it says on the box, is what it's going to do. I am happy to say, at this stage, it seem to be running faster.
I have two questions.
1 - is the iMac habitually a slow unit, and freezes often? Also I get the spinning beach ball all to often as well, I noticed on other forums that people have said this is common.

2 - when I took the bottom plate off the mac to reveal the RAM slots, it was very dusty. I have only had the computer for two weeks, it's fairly dust free in my office. I suspect that this computer is not brand new, would anyone else concur?

Thanks

I can't answer the dust question, but i can tell you that my 27 inch iMac rarely gets the beach ball until i fill up the RAM, then any mac will get the beach ball. Probably why the RAM upgrade did the trick. But no, i wouldn't say the iMac is habitually slow, its just that you are loading more software than the RAM can handle. I switched to Mac because my PC seemed to be habitually slow even with 4 GB and it would freeze all the time...my iMac only gives me the beach ball once in a blue moon, and freezes even less.

 

[Texran]

Where did you purchase it.
If I had noticed a lot of dust after only 2 weeks I'd be raising hell. Just checked mine, had almost a year and dust was very, very minimal.

 

[Thebutchersboy]

Thanks for that, I shall create hell in the morning.

 

[Mike in Kansas]

On their advice, because my use is a bit specific, in that I need some heavy editing software up and running, they said that maybe I should up grade the RAM.

What are you running? Aperture and Final Cut take up RAM pretty quickly. Even iPhoto can be slow if you are using Faces and loaded a lot of images into your library.