[Closed] Sigh. iMac then...

Amazing picture though

No peripherals required. Whatever you have now will work. Printers, WiFi, external HDD etc.

Apple are dropping Airport routers, just get a decent external HDD, a 4-6Tb won't break the bank, and set it up with Timemachine to do regular backups.
I would suggest the Magic Trackpad alongside the regular keyboard, there are a lot of gestures that work in OSX like those in iOS, although it doesn't hurt to have the mouse alongside.
Other than those two things, AFAIAA, all the main ports are USB, so it's all golden.

Black polo neck jumper and designer glasses?

Good news then, as she's doing enough damage to the new car budget as it is. 😀

[url= http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/FK462B/A/refurbished-27-inch-imac-32ghz-quad-core-intel-core-i5-with-retina-5k-display ]Refurbished?[/url]

Good choice, welcome.

Really lovely machines, stunning screen. The basic 27" model has plenty of horsepower and unless you are doing lots of say video editing / decoding 8gb is ample. You can still add you own ram to these imacs cheaply later (MBP's etc are soldered now)

As above only extra needed is perhaps a trackpad for all the gestures. I have a magic mouse (standard with iMac) which has a few gestures and is enough for me. My view would be to buy the fusion drive model as it will boot up much faster (although I usually sleep my Mini so wake up is pretty much instant)

I would say just get a £50 1tb external drive for Time Machine Backups, I can't imagine you'll use up 1tb (unless say you have lots of RAW camera images or a big movie library in say Blue Ray definition).

I would skip Apple Care, I have never had an issue with variois Macs I have owned

I would seriously consider ditching the standard drive and having a hybrid or SSD. If nothing else it improves application loading times a lot, it's not an upgrade you would want to do afterwards and you mention already having an external drive.

You can specify at time of purchase if you want the smaller wireless keyboard or bigger wired keyboard, I opted for the wired one as it has an alpha numeric pad and I hate changing the batteries in the keyboard all the time.

It will come with an apple mouse which makes it much simple to navigate around with the gestures.

You might want to consider changing your external drive to a thunderbolt one at some point to take advantage of the quicker speeds. You might also want to consider a backup medium to use with time machine.

Other than that you should be good to go. I love mine, work on it every single day for hours and hours on end with no problems at all.

I'd second the Trackpad option over a mouse. macOS is very, very quick to navigate when you get tuned into the trackpad. Swipes with one, two, three or four fingers; taps with one, two or three. No physical click required, just a gentle tap - like a phone screen. Gestures are all clearly demonstrated and some are customisable in system preferences.

Owned our 27" iMac for 4 years. We opted for fusion drive (1TB). Was 8Gb RAM though I've added a bit more now (we're at 24Gb now). We also bought a Time Capsule and use that for backups (using Time Machine). I also back up the a USB drive and store offsite.

We bought a SuperDrive, mainly so I could rip all our CDs to iTunes. It's still used (I still buy CDs).

We're using El Capitan OS, mainly because upgrading is a faff due to useless broadband speeds (we take it to my BIL's to update).

It's used for lots of stuff (incl work by Dr North) though nothing too heavy going. It's been excellent, integrates seamlessly with our iPads and iPhones and streaming music/films via airplay to Apple TV and Airport Express is easy and reliable.

Beware - once you're into the ecosystem it's hard getting out!

You can't add RAM to the new ones so get more than 8gb.

You can - it even says as much on Apples spec list. Good shout on the keyboard, thanks.

Oh. Sorry, I was under the impression the RAM is soldered in so you can't easily add more.

We are on our third over 15 years used by all the family regardless of what other machines people have individually the macs always there for everyone. Whenever we talk about stuff we've bought that's been worthwhile they come pretty near if not top of the list.

There also easier to work on than you may expect, I just changed the HD drive on the latest one, took about 20 minutes to fit including cleaning and a couple of hours to re load from a time machine back up which is incidentally on a WD external HD we have used to back up these machines for 10 years plus.

Your wife's right get one.

The keyboard and mouse that will ship with your new iMac are rechargeable and are much nicer than the old ones.

Go for the 2TB fusion drive if you want a bigger ssd as part of the fusion drive. I wouldn't bother with the non fusion.

As long as you go 27" you can upgrade mem so that's definitely the model to get.

I bought mine earlier this year (refurb - search for my thread)..it's lovely (and I still haven't upgraded the mem)

[b]eddiebaby[/b],
You're right in respect of the smaller, 21.5" version.

My iMac is over seven years old and still going fine. The only mod I've done is to double the memory from 8Gb to 16Gb. The only "problem" I've had turned out to be due to the WD external drive I was using as Time Machine was preventing the iMac from waking from sleep mode.

Moved from the mouse to trackpad, makes handling multiple virtual screens (among other things) with gestures easier to do.

[b]eddiebaby[/b]

OP won't be buying poverty spec kit! 😀 😀

[b]northwind[/b]

Contact by email and arrange to send a 8/16GB USB stick and I'll mail you out an installer stick on it.

All my iStuff is bought refurbished from Apple. Decent saving with the same level of cover.

another person on a 7 year old iMac, and I'd echo having the larger wired keyboard as a good thing. increasing the memory from 4 to 12 is th only change I have ever had to make. I will miss the CD drive, and having the SD card slot on the side, if and when I upgrade...

If it were me I'd go with the 2TB hybrid drive. It's got a bigger SSD capacity than the basic 1TB hybrid.

I've just upgraded my 5 year old iMac with a 1TB SSD and it's like a new machine. It was previously struggling with Spotlight on the latest macOS but is now instant with loading (all apps(.

Thats a £270 upgrade though talking the machine to £2k - do I really need it for home use?

Kryton57 - Member
£2k - do I really need it for home use?

A 2k machine? No, you don't! 😆 So you may aswell go full Bhoona! You're already past the usefulness of any cost benefit analysis!

do I really need it for home use?

No.

I use an iMac at work (in print industry) with 1TB fusion drive and its fine. All apps open very quickly and start-up is very fast.

@eddie the 27 iMac is about the only Mac you still can add RAM too. IMO 8GB will be fine for the OP.

@fanatic its an interesting choice, if it where me I might look at base 27 and put a 500gb ssd in it "after market". There are warranty issues (voids it) but after 3.5yr years with 750 I have still only used 500 and could easily delete 200gb of movies (I ripped and compressed my dvd library) or move them to an external. 2tb I will never need and with usb3 external disks are as fast.

Thats a £270 upgrade though talking the machine to £2k - do I really need it for home use?

We already answered that, you don't need a £1500 machine for home use. Need is the wrong word. As I posted the £270 would imho be far better spent on an aftermarket ssd (void warranty) and you can put the original in a caddy and use it as an external drive.

Get the base or fusion one. The base model if you "sleep" it it wakes almost immediately so negates some of the ssd benefits. I have a 7200rom drive in my Mini and it's fine. No not as fast as wife's ssd running at 500mps (mine is 100mps) but hey ho.

Startup from cold (approx) hard drive 2-3 minutes, ssd/hybrid 30-40 seconds. From sleep both about 5 seconds

Ok so in summary I can live with the standard 1TB and continue to save the family photo album on an external HDD, resorting to base price for the machine (currently £1759) but changing to a full length keyboard.

Not worth buying one with an HDD rather than Fusion/SDD IMO. Such a massive performance boost for so little cost.

Have you checked the refurb store? I got the base-spec iMac with fusion drive for £1359 this time last month, plus 4.4% cashback from Quidco (which works out at almost £60 back)

I replaced my 21.5 with a 27 last month. Bought refurbished as I really wanted a full fat SSD (1 TB) and 16 gig of memory. The standard drives aren't great and if you get any paging (I use mine with a Windows boot as well and it's a bit of a monster memory wise), that's where you'll get some longer load times, etc. My old one was the 5400 drive tho so the 7200 ^^ up there might be may better.

I really like the big display, it's so crisp and clear and allows me to get stuff side by side in a good font size which is pretty helpful for a lot of what I do.

It's very fast, quiet, lovely to look at and just works. And I can play city skylines with everything turned to the max.

So if you're going to upgrade, go for at least some SSD. We have an oldish Airport Express we use as a wifi hotspot and backup for time machine (a few macs in the house). It's seamless and transferring data from old mac to new mac was totally painless, but I'm sure there's something else that'd work.

Oh yeah keyboard thing... I bought the Mac one with the USBs (tethered not bluetooth) as I can't get on with the little ones... Amazon had them for about half price..

Keyboards - I like my wireless one new batteries every 3 months (2 AA's) now as I have a Mini which moves around with me and spends some time under the tv a wired keyboard is not an option. Mouse/trackpad have a play in an Apple Store.

OP how big is the family photo album ? It will go on the 1tb internal surely ?

Hmm

So it struck me to buy the next model up for £200 more. But that seems to add only the 1TB fusion drive rather than HDD, only a £90 option on the base machine and a AMD Radeon R9 [b]M390 [/b]with 2GB video memory instead of a M380.

So whats the difference in this chip set that would have £110 of value to me? Or is there something else I've missed?

OP how big is the family photo album ? It will go on the 1tb internal surely ?

Yes, but its already on a 1tb external HDD, no point moving it.

The fusion is a combination of a small ssd and a hdd, the ssd is big enough to take the OS and apps so makes startup fast.

Photos, depending on size I would move that to the iMac too so you have multiple copies and easier access.

So whats the difference in this chip set that would have £110 of value to me? Or is there something else I've missed?

Nothing!

To put it in perspective, this is like debating if you want the AMG Merc or the M5 for the school run.

To put it in perspective, this is like debating if you want the AMG Merc or the M5 for the school run.

Lol!

So rather than pay the £200 extra its the £1759 + £90 for the fusion drive. With my corporate discount that lands at £1729.40, so lets see what black friday brings!

The way computers go (particularly Macs possibly), is that as the years go by the operating systems become more process hungry, as do the apps. My 2011 iMac struggled with macOS Sierra and MS Office 2011, but that's after 5 years of happy use. It was only slightly above base model when I bought it I think (1TB vs 500 GB hard drive if I recall correctly).

So your options are:

1) Get a base model now, which will perform just fine for the next ~5 years, then crack it open and do some DIY upgrades when/if it slows down. Based on the extra performance I'm seeing from boosting mine to 12GB RAM and a 1TB SSD, I can imagine I'll get another 3 years out of it. The major downside with mine is that it has only USB 2.0 and a poor graphics processor. Both of which I can't change myself. The graphics is the biggest concern because according to Zwift it's not up to it (but then it still seems ok to me).

2) Or get a £2k machine now and live with it happily for ~8 years or whatever.

so lets see what black friday brings!

Probably nothing on the Apple store! Look at these Apple sellers instead (both are very good)...

https://www.krcs.co.uk/
http://www.jigsaw24.com/

To put it in perspective, this is like debating if you want the AMG Merc or the M5 for the school run.

or the RS4 to get to Gorrick races 8)

OP yup agreed. Get the 1tb fusion you can decide on a trackpad later, ditto keyboard (slightly more to buy seperately). Then you can see how you are using the machine and whether for example you want to add media streaming to tv.

Lastly hopefully you are not dissapointed by lack of a Black Friday deal

The SSD makes it a fantastically fast machine for the everyday stuff you will use it for.

Sorry for the mild derailment - i'm looking at one of the 21.5" models for the house, would only be used for email / web / photo type shenanigans, although the missus is a graphic designer so it might be called on for some photoshop / design type stuff (nothing too heavy) - at that screen size is it worth deviating much from the base spec? If we went up to the 4k one it's only another couple of hundred clams again for the 27" which has a better spec in addition to the screen... although of course it's still a £600 jump from the base spec...

Cheers
J

You realise that would actually be a serious question for the OP?

I stand corrected 🙂

The way computers go (particularly Macs possibly), is that as the years go by the operating systems become more process hungry, as do the apps.

That used to be the case, but in Windows land after Vista the trend reversed. 7 was lighter than Vista, and now 10 is very light indeed. That's why those cheap little 'social' PCs are out now that only come with 32Gb of storage and cost £150. Unthinkable 10 years ago.

Sorry for the mild derailment - i'm looking at one of the 21.5" models for the house, would only be used for email / web / photo type shenanigans, although the missus is a graphic designer so it might be called on for some photoshop / design type stuff (nothing too heavy) - at that screen size is it worth deviating much from the base spec? If we went up to the 4k one it's only another couple of hundred clams again for the 27" which has a better spec in addition to the screen... although of course it's still a £600 jump from the base spec...

I found it hard to convince myself that the 21.5" was worth it. I have the 21.5" from 2011, and have no issues with the physical screen size, so that's not the issue. But when looking at the 2016 models, by the time I configured it with a hybrid drive (and I wanted the 2TB fusion) it was in the 27" territory price-wise. And like I've mentioned a couple of times, you really do want some element of SSD in it, whether that be a straight SSD drive or a fusion/hybrid drive.

Having just put a boggo 1tb drive in mine I do with people would stop extolling the virtues of SSHD. There bike parts to buy as well you know!!

The SSD makes it a fantastically fast machine for the everyday stuff you will use it for.

As I said startup from cold (shutdown) is 30-40 seconds vs 2-3 minutes and if you sleep the machine there is no difference. App startup is 5 seconds vs maybe 20 or so, no difference if you leave common apps running in the background, eg mail, safari, photo. When I put an HDD into my machine in 2012 it was because 750 hdd was £60 and 500 ssd was £200+, hdd runs fine. Now today a 500 ssd is onky £110 so I would forgoe the internal storage and put films on an external.

@mjc I would stretch to the base 27, really is worth it vs base 21.5 and you can add ram cheaply in the future vs being locked in with soldered ram on cheaper smaller machine. Extra screen size is great and quality is fabulous.

Fusion Drive makes a big difference. Well worth the upcharge (question - does it also effectively improve the memory as your swap is into SSD?)

I disagree with the keyboard advice above - I've had both full size, trackpads and mice.

My favoured option is the wireless keyboard and trackpad - far more ergonomic if you don't have to reach so far to the right. I found my mouse a couple of weeks back and it's been sitting on the desk but it never gets used.

They're a horridly uncomfortable to use anyway - if you do need a mouse et a Logitech or Microsoft.

Having had 5400 rpm drive and SSD drive, I beg to differ in terms of performance. The SSD definitely makes a difference in app performance especially if you're paging to disk.

You're paying nearly £2k for a machine and

It'll be used for typical family stuff, homework, googling and photo storage

That could buy a lot of sunglasses to match whatever latest expensive consumer purchase you need to tell us about 🙂

You're definitely searching for something to fill a void.

I suppose I knew what was coming, "the base model will be perfectly fine" said no person ever in the history of stw 😆

Slightly off topic, but it's funny what justifications I give to myself for spending money on stuff I don't truly need. I can see it in my own posts above. I'm happy to spend £2k on a computer that spends most of its time looking at Facebook, but when it comes to spending money on a car it required a crowbar to prise £20k out of my hands for the wife's new Galaxy. Prior to that I was firmly in the <£6k category for cars. And the car gets a lot more use than the computer.

Go figure...

it's funny what justifications I give to myself for spending money on stuff I don't truly need. I can see it in my own posts above

I used to be like that, life is so much better when you buy stuff you want rather than buying stuff to impress friends when they come round for fna-fna cheese & fennel tart served on a bed of baby couscous and a side of Aegean sun ripened qua, drizzled with hoola berry juice. Oh look at that computer, oh look at the qua, it's all so yum. I guess the older you get the less impressed you are by peoples clutter

(I'd still get the 2TB fusion drive though 🙂 )

I googled fna-fna cheese.

Man, that`s like buying a Ferrari to do the school run.

Buy a windows laptop, and stick £1500 in the bank towards your next bike.

molgrips
I googled fna-fna cheese.

Post the first image that popped up 😉

Buy a windows laptop, and stick £1500 in the bank towards your next bike.

Read the OP you are dealing with Woman Logic. I'm just shopper in this process, the buyer's sitting at home struggling to fill an Ocado basket using a 2011 Macbook.

I struggle with long waffle but:

if you can expand the RAM - do it yourself.

Buying RAM from apple is like paying for a nuclear reactor to be decommissioned - very very very expensive.

Read the OP you are dealing with Woman Logic. I'm just shopper in this process, the buyer's sitting at home struggling to fill an Ocado basket using a 2011 Macbook.

Ok so buy it, then next time you want N+1 or just a really expensive N and she starts with "its just a bike" you have your argument right there.

the buyer's sitting at home struggling to fill an Ocado basket using a 2011 Macbook.

Oh god no, t'll be the fna-fna cheese.

And to be fair you seem to share a similar logic regarding possessions.

Post the first image that popped up

😯

[img] [/img]

can't you just put an SSD in the 2011 macbook? $100... job done!

Yeah - what he^ said. Just put an SSD in your Macbook!

I hadn't realised you already had a Mac. That changes everything!

I've got an SSD in an "early 2011". MacBook that runs Sierra really well. Do that even if you do npbuy the iMac.

It doesnt have a big screen, its full to capacity, the battery doesn't hold charge and is damaged. It might be even older than 2011 TBH. Its the silver one that came out after the original white ones.

Fair enough.

To be fair our main machine will do more than I suggested, arty stuff, kids homework, I'll work on MS docs on it when WFH that kind of thing.

On that note, is it possible to stick a work based OneDrive on it? That'd be ideal to keep stuff in sync with my work Windows LT...

Sell the MBP to a hobbyist .... it must be older than 2011 as wife has 2012 MBP and they had been around a while in silver before then -> Apple Logo/About this Mac

Mac is generally good at reading windows format drives but it's not faultless, easier to use Google Drive / Dropbox if you can access that from work

@mjc the base / original model Apple TV was fine, sadly they discontinued it 😐

Apple Logo/About this Mac

Oh, 13 inch Macbook 2008 running El Capitan

FWIW, anyone who wants a particular refurb. spec. might find either of these two sites useful:
http://www.refurb-tracker.com
http://www.refurb.me
Will send an alert when matching stock is listed.

Oh, 13 inch Macbook 2008 running El Capitan

Still worth £100+ I bet

@drkex thanks for those links, am loosing the will to live waiting for a decent Mac Mini upgrade so may buy a 2012

We are keeping the Macbbook, its good as a downstairs lap top surfing / occasional machine. I might even replace the battery.

About the 2tb fusion drive - its a £150 increase option for me, why so expensive for +1tb and why is it a good option OEM over a 1tb fusion on board and anybodys external for everything else?

Fusion (we have tried to answer this before 😉 ) the ssd element will boot and start programmes faster. Why is it so expensive - "Apple Tax" ie charging much more for options than fhe extra component cost. Note I just read up onnthe 1tb vs 2tb and the reason the price difference is so large as the ssd portion innthe 1tb is tiny at 24gb vs 128gb on the 2tb. If you don't want to spend the money / unsure by the base 27 and after warranty runs out put an ssd in it, either yourself or pay someone (job £100? + £100 component cost)

For the MB I assume it has 4gb ram, you could try and buy a 4gb chip (need to check memory speed) and replace one of the 2's giving 2+4=6 and it will run better if you clear the disk out by 30-50%. If you want a project spend £60 on a 250gb ssd and put that in. All that will be educational to do.

I got the hdd versus ssd bit for fusion. It was just the price hike from 1tb - 2tb i didnt get. Now i do, thanks.

Hence why I was aiming for the 2TB fusion drive. 24GB of SSD seems hardly worth having. If you google it you'll find plenty agree with me. So you'll see how you can quickly convince yourself that a £2k computer is the way to go.

Well i think for future proofing - this is after all a long term purchase - ill pay the extra for the 2TB. As mentioned above the bike credits are amassing.

£2k for a computer? That does pretty much the same as my £200 laptop? Just for "general family stuff and homework"?

crazy fool
.
potty
.
absolutely nuts
.
total barmpot
.
moremoneythansense
.
that'd buy a new bike...

You've not read many kryton57 threads then. Aspiring middle class angst personified.

In fact I'm starting to think it's a parody.