As a comparison, here's results from my SM0512F in a late-2013 13" rMBP (note - FileVault is enabled).
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New base 21.5" iMac good for wife?
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And that is awesome. If best buy had stocked a SSD model, and was discounting it as heavily, I might well have gone for it. But a pure hard drive-- no way.
Adding an SSD to my four year old iMac has changed it from a donkey to a thoroughbred racehorse.
Well, what OS are you running? Maybe I have been spoiled, but pre-Yosemite (even better pre Mavericks), a mechanical was alright, but after that... No way. I had no complaints with the boot up or anything else when I had my old 7200RPM MBP on older OS's, but after updating it, I would literally open a finder window, and wait for the drive to load the folders, so I could see what was there. After getting an rMBP+riMac, everything is brilliant with read/write, and swapping to disk no longer feels like the apocalypse is coming.
This offers nothing to what I posted. I am aware that they are faster drives. What I am saying is that a mechanical drive doesn't offer a "slow" experience, just a slower experience than a SSD would. Therefore, if a mechanical drive is quick enough for daily tasks, maybe someone would rather save their money on this front.
I'm running 10.10.3 Yosemite. Computer starts up and applications open quickly. I doubt I'm a rare case. I'm not discrediting your experience, just stating that I believe mechanical drives being labeled as "slow" is misinformation. I realize they can start to crawl over time and SSDs are much faster.
Here is a MacWorld UK review that says "upgrade a 1.4 Ghz iMac to a fusion drive"
http://www.macworld.co.uk/review/ma...ch-mid-2014-with-fusion-drive-review-3534626/
http://www.macworld.co.uk/review/ma...ch-mid-2014-with-fusion-drive-review-3534626/
To reach the lower price, economies are made primarily in the processor and storage configurations. And while the drop in processor speed will be of little impact in many daily computing tasks, the loss of the flash drive found in the comparable MacBook Air translates into a computer that feels much more sluggish to use. Since the storage drive is not an officially upgradable component after purchase, we would recommend specifying at least the Fusion Drive model from the outset. And if you have the £1099 budget for this model, do not be tempted to plump instead for the cheaper 21.5in iMac with faster 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5 quad-core processor – that system will be similarly hamstrung by the slow hard disk that comes as standard with its £1049 price. But configure the new budget iMac with the speed-restoring Fusion Drive and you’ll experience the snappiness that’s now effectively standard across nearly all modern Apple Macs.
Other than that, they do recommend it. Nearly silent, great display, and same build quality as higher priced macs.
I don't know about the entry Mac mini, but I have a graphic design friend who bought the mid their model with the 1TB HDD. She has had it for over 6 months now, and uses it every day for web design, photo editing, and video editing as well as animation and her exact words were 'it's amazing, and still as fast as the day I bought it'.
I've even had a shot of it myself, and it was snappy as the 15 inch retina MacBook Pro (2014) that we had sitting next to it, with only a second here and there in terms of s time difference in opening apps. FCPX (after already being opened once) opened a hair slower on the HDD Mac mini than it did in the SSD MacBook. OS X's intense caching helps so much with HDD speeds and the responsiveness of the OS, that as long as you have enough RAM (so that there is no paging), the only major times you see any difference is when restarting (which I do once in a blue moon for a software update, I just sleep it) and when copying large files (where I am almost always doing something while I wait anyway such as video editing or just getting on with work).
SSDs are not a requirement to having a good experience with a Mac. I would say they are necessary in any laptop due to their durability, but in a desktop it's really not a requirement for a good experience. Yes, it's certainly a justifiable upgrade but I can tell you for certain that it's not a necessity. I am a Graphic Designer turn Web Developer who bought an iMac 2 years ago with a HDD and not only does it run just as fast as the day I bought it, it also doesn't feel like all of my friends who have MacBook Pros with SSDs are in a different league as I in terms of speed. Restart times are unbelievably faster, but that in my mind is definitely not worth the 160 poiunds for a Fusion Drive (which will only speed up app launch times and times, I've seen them using the HDD portion when loading large files which would give me the same, results anyway). If I were to get the same storage as an SSD upgrade, it would have cost 800 pounds. Time is money, but money is also time and for the half second her and there, I never see myself ever making that money back and therefor feel it is not worth it in a value of money standpoint. It may have been different if I found my iMac slow because of it, but I am able to do all of my graphic design work with ease, and in the same manor I do when using my friends MacBooks. FCP X for example, takes around 3-4 seconds to load on my HDD iMac after already opening it once before and closing it (first time after a reboot takes 6-7 seconds), and on a friends new MacBook Air taken the same time (3-4 seconds).
Just my 2 cents anyway
I've even had a shot of it myself, and it was snappy as the 15 inch retina MacBook Pro (2014) that we had sitting next to it, with only a second here and there in terms of s time difference in opening apps. FCPX (after already being opened once) opened a hair slower on the HDD Mac mini than it did in the SSD MacBook. OS X's intense caching helps so much with HDD speeds and the responsiveness of the OS, that as long as you have enough RAM (so that there is no paging), the only major times you see any difference is when restarting (which I do once in a blue moon for a software update, I just sleep it) and when copying large files (where I am almost always doing something while I wait anyway such as video editing or just getting on with work).
SSDs are not a requirement to having a good experience with a Mac. I would say they are necessary in any laptop due to their durability, but in a desktop it's really not a requirement for a good experience. Yes, it's certainly a justifiable upgrade but I can tell you for certain that it's not a necessity. I am a Graphic Designer turn Web Developer who bought an iMac 2 years ago with a HDD and not only does it run just as fast as the day I bought it, it also doesn't feel like all of my friends who have MacBook Pros with SSDs are in a different league as I in terms of speed. Restart times are unbelievably faster, but that in my mind is definitely not worth the 160 poiunds for a Fusion Drive (which will only speed up app launch times and times, I've seen them using the HDD portion when loading large files which would give me the same, results anyway). If I were to get the same storage as an SSD upgrade, it would have cost 800 pounds. Time is money, but money is also time and for the half second her and there, I never see myself ever making that money back and therefor feel it is not worth it in a value of money standpoint. It may have been different if I found my iMac slow because of it, but I am able to do all of my graphic design work with ease, and in the same manor I do when using my friends MacBooks. FCP X for example, takes around 3-4 seconds to load on my HDD iMac after already opening it once before and closing it (first time after a reboot takes 6-7 seconds), and on a friends new MacBook Air taken the same time (3-4 seconds).
Just my 2 cents anyway
I believe you, but I'm more than surprised, since my old Mac was otherwise really quick, but the 7200RPM drive made it terrible, even with a fresh Yosemite install. 20 seconds would seem fast compared to it's, probably 45 seconds start up, with no apps launching with the OS. Granted, I was running the fresh Yosemite install, as a secondary partition, which would naturally increase boot up time, but not by that much as all, so I'm wondering what else could be wrong, if I wasn't just experiencing the slowness of mechanical drives as I thought. Oh well, sold it for a nice price, and haven't heard complaints from the buyer, who went from a ****** netbook, so win-win
Fair enough man, like I said not discrediting your experiences but rather stating my own as well. I'm glad that you have got your situation sorted however.
Went ahead and ordered the 21.5" iMac - 2.7GHz (quad-core, Iris Pro graphics) CPU, 1TB Fusion Drive, 8GB RAM and the trackpad. I think the wife will be quite happy with this coming from an aging and very slow Win XP machine.
It won't have XP? My Mom's like that. Comfortable with Windows. Comfortable with SAS and Fortran, and old supercomputers. But would prefer not to use a Mac.How would she miss a 'very slow' XP machine
Regardless, it's a fine computer.
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I think the wife will be good then! 
One of the best things that I have told family members who have made the switch is that much of the things you do on a Mac uses the KISS method, Keep It Simple Stupid.
The only problems I have seen of people switching from windows to Mac, is generally themselves making it harder to use the OS than it needs to be.
The only problems I have seen of people switching from windows to Mac, is generally themselves making it harder to use the OS than it needs to be.
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Now I'm just hoping she'll love OS X as much as I do now with my rMB!
I hope your wife's adjustment from Windows to OS X is easy. I made that jump seven years ago and found it wasn't all that hard to do. I'd hate to go back to Windows machines for my personal computing.
I was thinking about that transition when I first read this topic and I'm editing this post to be more relevant than it originally was (that one was off on a tangent, sorry). When I got my Mac in May 2008 I registered here, and read a lot to get my questions answered. I also got that year's edition of this book (Switching to the Mac) which I probably could have lived without, but don't regret buying, and eventually passed along to a relative.
Anyway, in seven years of membership here, I've posted less than 25 times, which is an indicator that I just didn't have that much trouble getting used to OS X after all those years of Windows.
I bought the iMac, it just worked. I think I posted a few times about a change in monitor sleeping after an OS upgrade, or something. But overall my Mac experience has been great, and since I'm not an expert with info to share? I just don't post very much here at Macrumors.
Recently, after seven years, I decided to replace the iMac, so I've been hanging around here reading and sharing a little of my experience. But now, assuming my new Mac mini will be as dependable as my old iMac, I'll probably wander off again.
If a non-geek computer user can make the OS switch as smoothly as I did, I bet your wife will be fine. I love the KISS comment - that's so true. Good luck to her and her new iMac!
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Got a question - does the wireless keyboard and trackpad automatically power off, or do you need to manually turn off those to save battery? And what's the approximate battery life on those?
Thanks - any ideas about manually powering down the keyboard and trackpad, or do they automatically go into sleep mode?
The Apple wireless mouse, keyboard, and trackpad all go into sleep mode automatically. They wake up and reconnect when you attempt to next use them. I use Eneloop rechargeable batteries (low self discharge) in mine and they last weeks to months between charges depending on usage. The mouse probably has the shortest battery life, but you can get a clever wireless charging battery system for it from Mobee Technology.
http://www.mobeetechnology.com/the-magic-charger.html
http://www.mobeetechnology.com/the-magic-charger.html
The TrackPad will go into some sort of sleep mode after not being used for awhile, and this will reduce the battery usage. However, the power draw in this mode is not zero. My rule of thumb is to turn the TrackPad OFF if I will be away for more than a day or two, such as on vacation. Otherwise, I leave it ON, and get several weeks of usage on a set of alkaline batteries - no complaints.