Replacing 2007 iMac

[marylpn]

Hello everyone,
New to the forum but have been reading up on all the great advice that has been offered to others regarding the new iMac
My question is, I have a 2007 iMac that is on its way out and have been waiting for the new iMacs along with everyone else here. Decided on the 21.5" model. I use my Mac basically for general web surfing, photo, and video editing. I am not sure how much difference between the entry level iMac or upgrading to the $1499.00 model with fusion drive would be and if it would be wise to upgrade the memory to 16G. Would appreciate any advice.

Thank you in advance!
Mary

 

[maflynn]

I really see no appreciable difference between the base iMac and the 1499 other then the ability to select a fusion drive. Personally, if you have the money the 27" iMac looks sweet, otherwise I'd go with the base.

The fusion drive will give you much faster drive I/O speed but any computer you pick will be much faster then what you currently have. The 16GB is probably not necessary at this point imo

 

[marylpn]

Thank you

Thanks Maflynn,
I would love to have the 27", however the monitor is just too large for the space I have. I appreciate your input regarding the fusion drive and you are right, anything right now would be quite a bit faster than my dying Mac. I will stick with the 8 Gig memory. So I guess it comes down to fusion or not....
Thanks again!

 

[mjvlego]

I ordered a 21.5" 3.1GHz with 16GB ram and the fusion drive yesterday. I do some light gaming (diablo, SC2) but mostly I do 3D modeling. I am replacing a 2007 iMac that is also slowly dying. It should be about 4 times faster than my current iMac and when Macpros come out in 2013 (if they do) I'll buy one and my wife will inherit this new iMac.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

As far as I know, the RAM is not easily upgradeable on a 21.5" iMac (see recent teardowns of the iMac), thus getting the 16 GB RAM might be the better choice.

 

[marylpn]

Thank you

Thanks to all of you!
I took the advice and purchased the iMac 21.5" with:

2.9GHz Quad-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x8GB
1TB Fusion Drive
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512MB GDDR5
Magic Trackpad
Apple Wireless Keyboard (English) & User's Guide
Pages
Accessory Kit

This forum is the greatest! I appreciate the responses I've received. Helped a lot in deciding which way to go. Delivery time isn't until 12-19 through 12-24 though. Oh well, that will give me time to clean up the old to get ready for the new!
Thanks again, Mary