Which iMac?

[tom soper]

Hi

I am about to upgrade from a Macbook Pro to an iMac.

I am a photographer and spend several hours eavery day running Aperture 3 and Lion. It's become too slow on my MBP.

I also run Firefox which seems to slow things up. As well as the usual aps - mail, ical etc,

And I burn a lot of discs for clients.

Ok, so my query is: which of the current bacth of 27-inch iMacs should I go for?

- 3.1GHz or 3.4GHz?
- i5 or 17 processor
- 4GB or 8GB or 16GB memory
- 1TB Serial ATA Drive or something that's 2TB or Solid State?

My understanding is that I don't need the upgraded graphics card as I only occasionally dabble in video.

I would really appreciate some input, BUT please help me by responding in layman's terms! I do not even understand what the difference is between memory, RAM, GHz, storage and I certainly have no idea what processors and hard drives really do!

Sorry, but if you respond with an answer like this which I have seen somewhere else on this site, I will not understand what on earth you are talking about!

difference between the i5 (2.53GHz model) and i7. With the i7 model, you get

1.) Faster Clock Speed

2.) An extra MB of L3 Cache

3.) 2X the GDDR3 Graphics Memory (15 inch Models)

I'm sure it's a really valid answer, but I have no idea what any of the above means!

Thanks a lot for your help and patience with my utter lack of knowledge.

Tom

 

[alust2013]

For that, the 3.1 i5 would be plenty, or even the 2.7 if you wanted to save some money. If you burn a lot of discs, consider an external burner, many are faster than the internal superdrive.

As for memory, don't buy from apple, it's way too expensive, just buy an additional 8GB and add it for a total of 12GB. That's only about a $50 upgrade. Even if you're not particularly computer savvy, it's honestly an easy upgrade. You just pull off a panel and put it in. However, if you're not comfortable with that, I'd suggest 8GB. That lets you do more at once.

As far as hard drive goes, you know better how much space you need. SSD is faster for loading things, but a lot more expensive. If your MacBook has enough space for you, the 1TB will be plenty.

 

[benjikan]

I am a pro photographer and have the new Mid 2011 iMac i5 2.5 Ghz model with 16 Gb or Ram and this iMac is incredible.

 

[tom soper]

Thanks

Thanks Benjikan and alust2013 - very helpful responses.

Great photos Benjikan - awesome stuff!

Cheers

Tom