Mac Purchase Advice ~£2500 spend

[SaturnStrobe]

I currently own the unibody white macbook and I'm going to treat myself to some new gear. I have about £2000 to spend and I figured I can get around £400 odd if I sell my current macbook.

Im going to try and use a friends Uni discount as I have graduated now so that will save me 14%. My thoughts at the moment are to get:

27 inch iMac 2.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 (£1231 Discounted)
&
13 inch Macbook Air Ultimate 1.8GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7 256GB (£1246 Discounted) Figured I might as well upgrade the Air for an extra £86

Want the 256GB as my music collection is ~100GB and I want to be able to use torrents, lightroom and Traktor when away from home so iPad is pretty much out of the question.

Any advice or other ideas for set-ups let me know

 

[KylePowers]

You just doing the standard 1TB hard drive in the iMac? You plan on getting the mouse or the trackpad?

 

[SaturnStrobe]

You just doing the standard 1TB hard drive in the iMac? You plan on getting the mouse or the trackpad?

Yeh the SSD is an extra £422 which is pretty steep, still contemplating it because everyone bigs it up so much but its a good bit more money.

I would probably get the mouse, why do you ask?

 

[bencnorden]

I would really recommend a trackpad over a mouse. Especially with Lion's gestures being mainly designed with trackpads in mind...

 

[Onimusha370]

the setup you're looking at sounds very nice. if you're wanting the best graphics performance on the iMac, i'd recommend getting the 6970M, (and 3.1Ghz i5), and getting a 128gb air to compensate. unless you feel you need your whole iTunes library on the macbook, in which case the two macs you listed sound perfect for you.
i often find i can pick out my favourite tv shows/films/artists and save a load of space on the SSD, but its completely up to you of course.

good luck with the decision!

 

[Onimusha370]

I would really recommend a trackpad over a mouse. Especially with Lion's gestures being mainly designed with trackpads in mind...

same here, the trackpad is much better to work on than the mouse, especially with lion.

 

[SaturnStrobe]

I would really recommend a trackpad over a mouse. Especially with Lion's gestures being mainly designed with trackpads in mind...

Does the trackpad have a clickable surface like the macbook does?

 

[Shaun.P]

Does the trackpad have a clickable surface like the macbook does?

The bottom left and right are clickable.

 

[cambookpro]

The bottom left and right are clickable.

I find the whole thing is clickable as long as it's on a flat surface.

 

[luke.mac1]

I've paid the extra for the iMac SSD and I've got to say...it's the best decision I've ever made (in terms of computer parts). It's just soooo fast. Best thing ever!
Then again...if you're prepared to wait 2secs extra for stuff to open then it's a massive saving. I'm just impatient I guess!