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Sell one, or both?

M

Manic Nimrod

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 20, 2011
11
0
Hey all. I'd like some advice on what to do next.

I currently own a '09 iMac(21.5") and 2011 Macbook Air(11"). I am a graphic design student so i regularly use the adobe suite.

While the iMac run's fine, I have noticed a slowdown when running a couple of the adobe products. So, I would love to update it.

However, being a student, money becomes a problem.

I was thinking of selling the iMac and purchasing the next Mac Mini or just buying a large monitor and just use the Air as my main device at home and in the classroom.

Or

I could sell both and get a high end Pro and use that.

Any ideas? Thanks.
 
Manic Nimrod said:
Hey all. I'd like some advice on what to do next.

I currently own a '09 iMac(21.5") and 2011 Macbook Air(11"). I am a graphic design student so i regularly use the adobe suite.

While the iMac run's fine, I have noticed a slowdown when running a couple of the adobe products. So, I would love to update it.

However, being a student, money becomes a problem.

I was thinking of selling the iMac and purchasing the next Mac Mini or just buying a large monitor and just use the Air as my main device at home and in the classroom.

Or

I could sell both and get a high end Pro and use that.

Any ideas? Thanks.
Click to expand...

How much RAM does your iMac have? i bet you could get up to 6GB of RAM in it and that would go a long way in making the Adobe programs run better. I'm guessing you only have 2GB in it now, am I right?

If so, I'd recommend maxing out the RAM and see how it runs then. That would be the least expensive way to go altogether.
 
It has 4GB in, according to the box it can handle 16GB. (3.06GHz Intel Core 2 duo processor)

Would it make a large difference boosting it up to 8 or 16? :/
 
I agree with the comment regarding max out your ram... and if you are good with tools and patient another way to breath new life into an old iMac is to install an internal SSD, adobe will love it. I did that recently, it wasn't easy but was doable.


but I have to admit I am scratching my head on the concept of doing much of anything graphical in nature on an 11" macbook air. I love my macbook air, but it definitely gets slow when I run anything demanding on it in 3D. Adobe is not known for writing quick code.

So to go back to your original question, I would consider selling both and buying a new macbook pro.

----------
Manic Nimrod said:
It has 4GB in, according to the box it can handle 16GB. (3.06GHz Intel Core 2 duo processor)

Would it make a large difference boosting it up to 8 or 16? :/
Click to expand...

ram is really really cheap these days, and yes, adobe is a RAM hog.. .it would make a huge difference.
 
The Adobe suite runs very well on the Air, during my final first year project I had Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects running smoothy.

Looking at some setups, I am tempted to sell off the iMac and use that money to purchase a large monitor, a large external HDD and various other bits.
 
Manic Nimrod said:
It has 4GB in, according to the box it can handle 16GB. (3.06GHz Intel Core 2 duo processor)

Would it make a large difference boosting it up to 8 or 16? :/
Click to expand...

If your iMac is a late 2009 model (model 10,1 manufactured between Oct 2009 and July 2010), then yes, it can handle up to 16GB of RAM.

If you're using the Adobe suite a lot, I say the more RAM the merrier. I bet that would tide you over for quite some time and not have to buy an new computer right away.
 
SandboxGeneral said:
If your iMac is a late 2009 model (model 10,1 manufactured between Oct 2009 and July 2010), then yes, it can handle up to 16GB of RAM.

If you're using the Adobe suite a lot, I say the more RAM the merrier. I bet that would tide you over for quite some time and not have to buy an new computer right away.
Click to expand...

I'd also consider an SSD for your iMac, I just scored a Crucial M4 SSD 512Gb for $350 from Amazon.com that's going into my nVidia 9400m Whitebook 5,2 2.0Ghz with 4Gb RAM (replacing the 128Gb M2 SSD that it currently has in it) so that I can run win7 on the machine and not be space limited for the few work related win programs that don't play nice with OSX...

The 128Gb SSD will go into one of my desktops that's still only rocking HDD's:D
 
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