iMac? Any good?

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Danny133

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Forgive me if this is in the wrong section!

I have been offered a 20'' 5 years old iMac

Its been upgraded to run 10.5.8 Snow Leapard and had another 1gb of ram to take it to 1.5GB RAM and also a 250GB hard drive

Will it be any good or fast at all?

I want it for photo (aperture) and video editing but if its kack i sharnt bother lol
 
1.5gb is probably not enough for Aperture and 250GB is probably not enough space if you are going to do lots of video editing in particular.
 
is it easy to upgrade?

what would you reccomend spec wise?
 
Danny133 said:
Forgive me if this is in the wrong section!

I have been offered a 20'' 5 years old iMac

Its been upgraded to run 10.5.8 Snow Leapard and had another 1gb of ram to take it to 1.5GB RAM and also a 250GB hard drive

Will it be any good or fast at all?

I want it for photo (aperture) and video editing but if its kack i sharnt bother lol
Click to expand...

Well, I'm a Mac girl myself and wouldn't use anything else...

but my brand new iMac (3.06gz i3, 4gb ram, 500gb hdd) struggles sometimes in Aperture, especially when playing around with raw photos. It crashes and goes so slowly at times - however I'm not sure if its a software problem rather than the mac, cause it certainly should be powerful enough to run it.

With that said, 1.5gb of ram still isn't a lot and you'll find you lag a lot, especially for video editing and we don't know what the processor speed is. If you do get it it'll definitely be worth upgrading the ram more to at least 2, or even 4 if you can.

How much would you be paying for it? If its a bargain, I'd be tempted to take it, just because its a mac! But if you could be spending the money elsewhere then don't bother, because for what you want to use it for it likely won't be very speedy.
 
4GB RAM and 1TB hard drive, rendering video needs a powerful video card the iMac will do it but might be a tad slow. I have a G5 dual for sale with a 23" mac cinema screen but it wont run the new version of final cut but would be faster than the iMac IMO and the video card is upgradable. For running photo apps though the iMac will do fine you may want to get an external drive to store your pics on and photoshop will always run faster if the scratch file is on a separate drive.. I have just fitted a 1TB drive into a 20" iMac I have here for music editing (hence selling G5) but I would not want to edit big video stuff with it... it will run but will take tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime to render.
 
i was being offered it for £350 hence me wondering but i think you guys are probably right :)
 
1.5GB is too low. My 4GB is less than I need.

5 year old screen is quite likely to fail, and that will take the whole iMac out.

I would advise to look for a proper Dell IPS monitor, and add a macbook or a mac mini as desired.
 
Danny133 said:
i was being offered it for £350 hence me wondering but i think you guys are probably right :)
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Its no bargain for £350. Definitely look around, if it's a Mac you're definitely after, save up until you can afford a higher spec! :)
 
That machine will run modern software and is upgradeable but the reality is that it is too expensive for a machine that is not already upgraded. If it cost that and had 3Gb of Ram and a 500Gb hard drive then maybe. In order to know the maximum ram etc you need to know the exact model identifier (APPLE>ABOUT THIS MAC>More Info...) now click HARDWARE and the model Identifier is shown there eg iMac4.1
 
how about if i bought a brand new 15'' macbook pro?

surely its better than my crappy 15'' HP 4gb 250gb i have now?
 
and i could run aperture on there?

with i assume just photo editing .. not video but photo would run okay?
 
My friend has one who edits on a time constraint, and he says that his i7 rig (Windows 7) edits in 6 minutes, where as the iMac takes like 3 times as long, and an insane time to burn a CD.
 
absolute said:
My friend has one who edits on a time constraint, and he says that his i7 rig (Windows 7) edits in 6 minutes, where as the iMac takes like 3 times as long, and an insane time to burn a CD.
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You have to look at like for like. Compare his i7 windows job with a 12 processor Mac Pro ! You need to look at what the iMac actually is!

Same with burning speeds, latest Pro runs x18 drives but most media is x16 anyway.
 
I had, until 5 weeks ago, a 5yr old iMac which ran Aperture fine but then screen started to go followed soon after by total failure so I'd be very wary buying one that old at that price.

On the bright side I now have a new iMac (3.6ghz i5 4gb 1TB HD) which is in a different league to my old one obviously and couldn't be happier.

So I suppose what I'm trying to say is things have changed hugely in 5 years so if you can afford it buy new.

Harry
 
neil_g said:
what he said. HOWEVER youre comparing a scooby impreza with a ford fiesta medium range model. if you compared your "crappy" HP to another decent laptop costing the same as the macbook pro youd see a similar leap in quality and performance.
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Absolutely :) but I was just answering his question :lol:

Yes as Neil said spend the same amount of a decent Dell or Sony etc and the answer would have been YES too.
 
JasonRS said:
That's Leopard, not Snow Leopard.
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For some reason I didn't pick up on that error! If it is only leopard is it even an intel processor model? If it is a G4/5 then it will not even run LR3. We would need to see the model identifier code.
 
Just checked my own site :lol: and if it is a 2005 model 20" iMac then it is a G5 model. This will never run anything newer than leopard and will not run LR3 and I think CS5 might be out if it too. Snow leopard's replacement should get it's first public preview on the 20th of this month so you would soon be two major revisions behind.

Forget it! You can pick up an intel processor version, newer with a better spec cheaper
 
how about if i bought a brand new 15'' macbook pro?
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A MBP would be fine. You could use it whilst out and about and then hook it up to an external monitor when in the office/at home if you want.

I personally have a 2009 13 incher:naughty: and a 2008 3.06 Core 2 Duo iMac.

iMac's are great but not really "upgradeable". In mine I have changed the HDD for a 2GB model and fitted 4Gb Ram. Thats about all that is possible with any iMac.

My MBP is much quicker than my iMac - at everything!

Here is the spec of my MBP (£1400) if it helps:

 
My old Powermac G5 was 1.8Ghz single processor with 2.5Gig and 300GB HDD it ran aperture fine (32-bit) and was only replaced with an iMac just over a year ago as I needed to use some intel only mac software.
As long as you give it a few seconds and don't get button happy in aperture and don't mind runing old SW it should be fine.

Also if you've not used a Mac before, its a cheap way of getting your feet wet before making the best decission of your life :P
 
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Danny133 said:
how about if i bought a brand new 15'' macbook pro?

surely its better than my crappy 15'' HP 4gb 250gb i have now?
Click to expand...

I would say so yes, but I'm a bit of an Apple fan so take what I say as you wish. It's all down to preference of OS and software.

I've just bought an i5 15". Got it for £1285 off ebay, brand new, sealed with Applecare. For £500 cheaper than Apple, I can live with the no pound sign and small return key as it's a US model.

I upgraded the RAM to 8Gb and put a faster drive in it, runs Aperture 3 pretty well now. Not 12 core Mac Pro speed but much better than the Mac mini I was using before.

Regarding the iMac, if it's a G5, that's a bit more than I would pay, even though that would be a ~2 grand machine when it was new. I'd say £200-250 for that one now. The biggest problem with those machines is the power supply capacitors. Some were sourced from companies that stole an incomplete formula from Phillips, if they blow the machine is pretty much knackered unless you're really good with a soldering iron. Mine still works fine though, and is great for my Mum to use for iPhoto, Internet and email etc until it eventually packs in. My mates bought at the same time died a few months ago - Apple quoted £600 for repair, so it got sold on ebay for around £50 :(

Bear in mind as others have said that a G5 iMac won't go beyond Leopard 10.5 or beyond Aperture 2.
 
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