Seven 9s and 10s

Neven Mrgan's tumbl: iMac or Mac Pro?

Marco compares his Mac Pro with his wife’s iMac:

…

So having said this morning that I’m an iMac man, let me tell you my story. See, I have a three-year old 24” iMac. And my wife, Christa, has a three-year old Mac Pro….

I’ve owned and used a Dual 2.5Ghz PowerMac G5 tower as my primary machine since January of 2005, well beyond 5 years, until last month when I couldn’t wait any longer and purchased a refurb 27” i7-Quad iMac.  It was an agonizing decision, perpetually waiting for the upgrade that I knew was just around the corner, but I finally reached a point where the G5 tower simply wasn’t performing well enough to justify waiting for what might be coming down the pipe.  Long before I made my purchase, I had made up my mind to switch into an iMac.  The MacWorld review made it clear that the performance of the new iMac was as good as, and in some cases better than, that of the Mac Pro.

So, one month into my first iMac, what do I feel like I’ve lost by switching away from the tower?  So far, nothing.

  • I had installed two PCI-X USB cards into the tower bringing me to a whopping total of eleven USB ports to feed my external storage addiction (both internal drive bays were also filled).  Now I’ve been forced to be conservative with my paltry four built-in USB ports. I’ve added a USB hub and so far, so good.
  • My external Time Machine disk is now plugged into my Airport Extreme.
  • My desk is still a mess, but that’s only because I’m currently running both systems simultaneously while slowly doing the data dance as I shuffle bytes across my armada of disks, trying to compress and downsize into as few drives as possible.

Honestly, I’m happier than I thought I’d be. It’s hard to walk away from 2TB of internal storage and 8GB of RAM, but this iMac runs circles around the PowerMac.  Everyday tasks, even something as menial as scrolling through hours of Tumblr, are exponentially faster, and I can finally edit photos with Aperture without having to wait seemingly endless seconds for each adjustment to process and display.  And don’t get me started on the SD card slot.  It’s my favorite feature of this computer.

Do I wish I had waited until todays upgrades? Not particularly. The CPU bumps were minimal and the GPU bumps were excellent but I don’t play games and I have a hard time believing I’ll want more power from my current spec.  The SSD option is the only thing that really makes me salivate and feel any regret.  I imagine sometime next year, as SSD prices continue to drop, I’ll realize that I’ve used my Superdrive less than a dozen times, at which point I’ll head over to iFixit, build up the guts, and pop open my iMac to replace the Superdrive with an SSD.  If USB3.0 had been included in todays updates, then I would be crying right now (and posting this iMac on Craigslist, and preordering a new model).

So anyway, that’s the perspective of a lifelong tower user whom has just happily switched to iMac.

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Notes

  1. ahoraonunca reblogged this from mrgan
  2. wedontneedroads reblogged this from mrgan and added:
    My turn. I’m a student in Software Engineering, which means I need to work both at school and at home with various OSes,...
  3. lucius said: I’m really happy with my MacBook 13” from late 2008 with an SSD. I’ve been looking at the new desktops but I find I can run Photoshop, Illustrator, Xcode, etc. all fine on my MacBook. So I’m not sure what my next Mac will be.
  4. fatmalovestodraw reblogged this from mrgan
  5. steelopus reblogged this from mrgan and added:
    I’ve owned and used...Dual 2.5Ghz PowerMac G5 tower as
  6. willw said: Exactly how I feel. In March I moved from my 3-year-old Mac Pro to a 27” i7 iMac and I have never been so happy with a decision. Having everything in one package, not relying on external add-ons, one cable, less heat, it goes on.
  7. mrgan posted this