Should I switch?

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Terry
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I've been a Windows user and IT engineer since the IBM XT days but have been offered the following for a good price (I believe) from a colleague at work.

iMac 21.5" (late 2012) so it's the slim version with a fusion drive, 8GB RAM and 2.7Ghz Processor.


I have a home built I5 windows pc at home but it's running really slowly nowadays.
So to avoid all the sodding about of reloading OS and all my apps I thought it might be good to try Apple, especially as the screen better quality and larger than what I have at home (19" widescreen)

Any thoughts?

I have the Adobe Photographer's CC monthly package so my photo apps will download seamlessly.

Terry.
 
What do you call a good price?

The 2012 iMac is also an i5 probably 2.7/2.9, I'm not sure what spec your i5 is or how much you are overclocking it, or what your GPU is so hard to say how much improvement you will see.

I switched from PC or Mac for my photography/video needs and really like the system (I use an iMac 5K and Macbook Pro), always loved the screen on the Macs and that was one of the things that attracted me to it originally.

I guess if it is a 'good' price there will be no harm in trying it and if you don't get on with it sell it on as you won't loose much if anything...
 
Aside from the screen what else tempts you? £315 could get you a 24" screen, RAM + SSD which "could" be a better value.

Having said that, if you are tempted to try Apple you are unlikely to lose any money as stated above
 
Are all the parts still available for 5+ year old Apple computers in the UK ? I was shocked to learn that a 2008 Canon I had was no longer supported and they no longer repaired them. Nice
 
The grass is always greener..... Could be your system would benefit from a rebuild if you're running W7, and as said, £315 would get you a good screen & SSD (you'd see a big increase in apparent performance with SSD over HDD). I understand the apple bug, and was happy to extricate myself later back to windows.
 
Yes bits are still available. Different things entirely

Oops, just something I read that said consumer computers are rarely supported for more than 3 years and typically business ones 5+ years.
 
I switched over in 2015 from a very high spec pc that I built myself to a 27" I5 4k iMac and a 13" I5 MacBook pro, it's been been an uphill climb to get used to a slightly different filing system and a few other quirks but now I hardly use my PC.

Last weekend I decided to reload my mac from scratch to fully get rid of all the rubbish, and I did the same with my PC.

iMac less than an hour to install OSX and ALL ! my apps minus the rubbish, to do my PC nearly 2 days including all the updates. My PC has 32gb of RAM and all SSD drives ( 3 ) but is an older AMD processor. The iMac has 24gb of RAM and a 1tb Hybrid drive. Theres absolutely no comparison between the 2, the iMac wins speed wise every time ( I don't play any games )

I'm probably going to set up Bootcamp on my mac to dual boot OSX or Windows.
 
At the price they are asking give it a go, if you don't like it you'll get your money back easily enough. You'll have to be patient when you first start because the windows filing system is a little different but not too different to cope.
 
That sort of cash could get you a second hand 4th gen i7, motherboard and 16gb. Chuck in an SSD and you'd have a belter of a system.

Otherwise it's only the OS, that'll gain you nothing other than a personal preference on layout.

Personally I despise the gloss on the mac panels gives me a headache, also needs specific lighting to avoid reflection. Read into how gloss introduces false sense of contrast too.
 
At the end of the day, Mac or PC will both do essentially the same job. Same as Canon vs Nikon or DSLR vs Mirrorless there are subtle differences about how you go about things, but never is in itself better than the other.

If you have iPhone or iPad you get the advantage of better integration with macOS, you can do the same with Windows but (in my experience) it’s more work.

Buy the Mac if you want to try it, but it won’t fundermentally improve anything. A new screen and SSD (as mentioned) would benefit your PC.
 
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At the end of the day, Mac or PC will both do essentially the same job. Same as Canon vs Nikon or DSLR vs Mirrorless there are subtle differences about how you go about things, but never is in itself better than the other.

If you have iPhone or iPad you get the advantage of better integration with macOS, you can do the same with Windows but (in my experience) it’s more work.

Buy the Mac if you want to try it, but it won’t fundermentally improve anything.
Better integration, but not without its faults, the iMessage situation in the news under a week ago was a top example of lazy quality checking of software. "It just works" is no longer a valid statement

Windows has its own issues of course...
 
I was a 30 year windows person. 2010 I I did my research and took a leap of faith and went to a iMac. O have never looked back. I will never go back either. I am still on my 2010 iMac it is still going strong and quick. Just upgraded to high sierra so all is good.
 
Used to build my gaming pc’s but switched to mac 2011,the few times when ive had to go on my daughters pc to fix something reminds me how glad
i switched.
 
I had a Macbook Pro 13 (Retina) issued to me a work, it looked nice, but I just didn't get on with MacOS, for every nice feature there was a tradeoff. It wasn't long before I re-issued it to a colleague and purchased a Dell Precision M4800, never looked back.

The days where a Mac was a better device for media editing are gone, and they are no more reliable than any other laptop of the same caliber. But the most important thing to bear in mind (and a lot of users don't), is that you cannot compare a Macbook Pro to a £300-400 laptop from Curry's. If you want a £1300 Macbook, be prepared to spend £1300 on a Windows-based laptop for the same build-quality.

To be fair though, the iMac is fairly unique. I'm not aware of anyone else who builds an All-In-One as good as the iMac (except for maybe the Surface Studio).
 
Personally, I'd probably stick with the PC.
If it's not got an SSD, get one stat.
If it has, download and fireup sysinternals autoruns to see what's been fired up at boot time. There will be a reason why it's running slowly - an i5 of any description with an SSD should still be fairly slick.
 
If it were me I'd not bother paying a few hundred quid for something you basically already have and just jumping to another system doesn't mean it isn't going to slow down like your current PC. Spend the money on an SSD and a 2nd hand monitor that's better than what you have and most likely will be better than the Mac - I don't think they had retina in those days. Or you could use that money to save up for something better. I was always Windows and went to a MacBook Pro for about 5 years and really liked it but found that there's basically no programs that I wanted to use on it from Windows so I went dual-boot too. It's a hassle jumping in between OS's, well at least it was for me and eventually I went back to Windows and got myself an 17-inch Alienware i7 laptop which is ace! I haven't looked back. Also if you're onto the debate of Abobe is much better on a Mac then it's no longer true. Initially it was because they were developing more for Mac but they've closed the gap and there's no difference between Adobe products running on Mac or Windows anymore.

Hope you come to a decision soon :)
 
Hi GreenNinja, you may want to try running windows in a VW. This will allow 100% of drive to go to OSX partition and the VM can then be of a variable size within that partition. As a trial you can download Vmware and point it to the bootcamp partition to see if the performance is adequate.
Link: - https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1014618
 
Use iMac for my photography and love the screen... main initial issue was display versus prints and had to invest in a spyder 5 to calibrate...some early issues reading raw files but sorted with software... more recently needed more ram as adobe bridge seemed to have cache / speed issues especially with large file sizes from 5 DS stuff....[emoji106]
 
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