New Setup Ideas & Suggestions - £2400 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 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

Any other ideas lets hear them

 

[tommy060289]

What will you use the laptop for? If it's just general web browsing why not get an iPad as I find it to be the ultimate portable web browser where as if you need productivity a laptop makes more sense, as for the iMac....

If you have the money, get the SSD, seriously it makes the thing unreal, I'd say it's the new ultimate upgrade, I've got a maxed out iMac running SSD + HDD and it seriously just laughs off anything you throw it. The performance makes me hate using my MBP as I have to wait a couple of bounces for things like safari to open lol, the SSD really is that good!

 

[andothfc]

My advice is, where possible, get an SSD. So maybe look at getting the £975 13" Air and putting the money into getting the SSD option in the iMac. That would be ideal.

 

[daneoni]

Get a cheaper Air and max out the iMac as much as possible. Unless you're really into portable computing.

 

[SaturnStrobe]

What will you use the laptop for? If it's just general web browsing why not get an iPad as I find it to be the ultimate portable web browser where as if you need productivity a laptop makes more sense, as for the iMac....

If you have the money, get the SSD, seriously it makes the thing unreal, I'd say it's the new ultimate upgrade, I've got a maxed out iMac running SSD + HDD and it seriously just laughs off anything you throw it. The performance makes me hate using my MBP as I have to wait a couple of bounces for things like safari to open lol, the SSD really is that good!

I thought about getting an iPad as one of the options but I want to be able to take my ~100GB music collection with me wherever I go. Thats why I will need the 256GB Air and dont really want to go for the 128GB. Also the iPad is not really what im after because I would like to download torrents, use lightroom and traktor whilst im away from home so the iPad is not really what im after.

The only problem with adding the SSD onto say the iMac I mentioned above (not even the ultimate) it adds another £422 which is a hell of a lot extra. That would take the iMac up to £1653 and in that case even if I took off the processer upgrade off the Air that only reduces it by £80 odd quid and still costs around £1200. Total cost now at £2800 which is getting a bit too high, dont want to go OTT.

Thanks for the input, any other suggestions?

 

[solowmodel]

I'd also suggest putting a SSD in the iMac. My i3 iMac feels slower (even though it's faster) than a 2010 base 11" MBA or a late-2008 MBP with Momentus XT, purely due to the HDD.