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About to order iMac 24"

R

RealEvil

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 5, 2007
334
32
Hi,

I have a MBP 2.4 GHZ now, and I am about to order a iMac (today ideally). I am entitled to the HE student discount which seems to work out about 12% approx.

I have priced the following machines:

24", 2.4 GHZ, 750GB HD, wireless keyboard and mouse. £1167 inc VAT etc
or
24", 2.8 GHZ, 750GB HD, wireless keyboard and mouse. £1306 inc VAT etc

So the difference is about £150 for the processor upgrade. Im not worried about RAM - I will order that direct from crucial.

What do you think? I understand there is a 10% performance increase for average office related tasks with the 2.8 processor, and with new iMac potentially out within 3 - 5 months I wonder if the 2.8 GHZ will compete OK with the new range?

Money is of course an issue in deciding but id really appreciate some views.



Neil
 
RealEvil said:
Hi,

I have a MBP 2.4 GHZ now, and I am about to order a iMac (today ideally). I am entitled to the HE student discount which seems to work out about 12% approx.

I have priced the following machines:

24", 2.4 GHZ, 750GB HD, wireless keyboard and mouse. £1167 inc VAT etc
or
24", 2.8 GHZ, 750GB HD, wireless keyboard and mouse. £1306 inc VAT etc

So the difference is about £150 for the processor upgrade. Im not worried about RAM - I will order that direct from crucial.

What do you think? I understand there is a 10% performance increase for average office related tasks with the 2.8 processor, and with new iMac potentially out within 3 - 5 months I wonder if the 2.8 GHZ will compete OK with the new range?

Money is of course an issue in deciding but id really appreciate some views.



Neil
Click to expand...

Personally, I'd go with the 2.4. In actual use you're not going to notice that much difference between the two, and it wouldn't be worth the extra £150 for me.
 
RealEvil said:
Money is of course an issue in deciding but id really appreciate some views.
Click to expand...

If money is an issue then don't spend it. If the 2.4 GHz machine does what you need it to now, it will continue to do so in the future. Some say that buying the best machine you can helps "future-proof" it. By the time the future has made this machine useless, the extra 0.4 GHz will be meaningless. Best wishes.
 
My 2.4 24"

Well.. I haven't used a 2.8, but I tell you the 2.4 with 4gb of ram ain't too shabby. I had it running an iDVD project (importing a video file), checking mail, had my instant messenger up and running, a torrent downloading and my World of Warcraft session (my poor lvl priest) running without a hiccup. Oh, also had a browser up and running. Simply awesome.. I couldn't do that before with my old PC, and while it doesn't sound like an intensive session, from my experience, it was.

Loving my iMac!!
 
At some point, you'll wish you had gotten the 2.8. It always happens that way. When I bought my old PowerMac G4, they had the 1GHz machine there beside the 933 MHz, but we thought "Eh, it's only a 66 MHz difference" so we got the 933, which honestly is still a great machine. But, for the past several years I have wished I had spent the extra however-much money, and gotten the 1 GHz, because when you get toward the end of a computer's usefulness, every Megahurtz and MB of RAM is really noticed, and will determine how long you can go before upgrading.
 
The only thing holding me back is that £1300 for a desktop is a lot of money... when I dropped that on the laptop it was difficult, but a decent laptop does cost a lot of money. I just have a slight mental block when it comes to desktops as - and this might be wrong - i find it easier to compare it more directly with Dells...

I just wish that Apple were slightly more reasonable with the hard disk pricing - to go from the stock 320GB to the 750Gb is a £150 premium.

Arrghhh! I think I just need to order it and stop thinking about it!
 
RealEvil said:
The only thing holding me back is that £1300 for a desktop is a lot of money... when I dropped that on the laptop it was difficult, but a decent laptop does cost a lot of money. I just have a slight mental block when it comes to desktops as - and this might be wrong - i find it easier to compare it more directly with Dells...

I just wish that Apple were slightly more reasonable with the hard disk pricing - to go from the stock 320GB to the 750Gb is a £150 premium.

Arrghhh! I think I just need to order it and stop thinking about it!
Click to expand...

You get what you pay for. If you get the iMac, you won't regret it. I would bet you a lot of money on that. I (personally) wouldn't pay half what I paid for my iMac for a similarly equipped Dell. "It's the OS, stupid!"
 
I was in your shoes a couple of weeks ago. I really liked the idea of a 2.8Ghz processor, but when it came down to the facts, I really didn't need it. Sure, it's nice to have if I ever DO need it, but those times are few and far between.

I'm really glad to see that you're going for the 24". I got the 24" 2.4Ghz with 4Gb DDR2 and a 500 gig HD. I havn't noticed anything that makes me worried about this product. It's great, and I don't regret 'skimping' on the hard drive.

Just assess your needs, and if you need the big processor, get it. I just decided that I didn't, and I still enjoy my computer games (WinXP) and can edit my pictures just fine. The ten percent didn't emphasize my choice at all.
 
i got the 2.4 with 4gb of ram and I like to think it's a pretty sweet set up....i don't think the extra cash is worth it for the 2.8.
 
Another vote for the 2.4. I went through the same agonising as yourself a few months ago but, after asking 15 zillion :)o) questions here, I was finally more than happy to go for the 2.4. And it's turned out to be more than perfect - everything runs like a dream.

Stupidly I ordered extra ram, to take it to 2GB, from Apple at the time - I wasn't aware then of how crazy their memory prices are. Have since upgraded it to 4GB (through Crucial) but (I started a thread tonight about this) haven't noticed a big difference, to be honest.

Trust me, when you start working with your iMac you'll conclude it was cheap at the price! I was a Dell user for 15 years or more but while their machines were fine nothing compares to this. You won't have any regrets.

Best of luck.
 
im with you

Im also in the same situation.

im just trying to understand is the 2.8Ghz Extreme is going to be much of a difference than the 2.4Ghz on the 24" iMac.

I dont care about the ram that comes with it, because it will be upgraded to 4 anyways so thats out of the idea.

Anyways i will pretty much be playing games on Vista/bootcamp along with on Leopard, some garage band, imovie and alot of Photoshop and Microsoft word.

So in mycase, would it be a good idea for the 2.8 or not :) thanks!
 
I'd get the 2.8Ghz processor if you can afford it. The REAL performance improvement will be in maxing out the RAM at 4Gb. I have a 24" 2.8Ghz iMac with 4Mb of RAM and it is VERY fast. I run Solidworks on WindowsXP in Parallel's and Solidworks runs faster than it did on my Windows 2000 box!
 
I went with the 2.4 myself. The 2.8 was not worth the price difference for me and this machine has been perfectly awesome. I did, however, max out the RAM to 4GB and that made a huge difference in performance, particularly when running Windows in Fusion.
 
So I went a little overboard in the end...

I ordered a 2.8 GHZ, 24" with 750 GB wireless keyboard and wireless mouse...

Then I ordered 4Gb ram from Crucial

Then I ordered a 500GB NAS and a enclosure for an old SATA disk I had to use for Super Duper backups...

I am now on the Ikea website looking for a nice new desk to put it on and a nice new chair.

I have it BAD. ;-)
 
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