Buying iMac - Advice needed

[Sheza]

Heya,

I've been thinking about buying an iMac, and I had a few questions about performance etc.

I am gonna be using mostly for design/office/web etc, but I have a few games I'd like to play with BootCamp e.g. Call of Duty Black Ops and I would like to use Parallels for Windows applications too.

So I was wondering;

1) Will the base model iMac be sufficient to do this?
2) How easy is it to upgrade the graphics card in iMacs?
3) Is the higher model iMac 21.5 or the base model iMac 27 worth the extra price - especially for what I am looking to use it for?

Thanks in advance,
Sheza

 

[talmy]

1) Yes, except possibly games (I don't play games so can't address this)
2) No, consider it not upgradable. Only easy upgrade is RAM. Disk upgrade is possible but difficult.
3) Depending on what you mean by "design" work, the 27" is much better for apps that use many palates and like lots of screen space such as Adobe CS.

 

[Sheza]

My position with the 27" is a bit like this:

It's not really needed, but considering it's just a little extra on top of the 21.5 higher model, it might be good to have?

 

[DethOn2Legs]

I am a designer as well, and I frequently run Adobe DW PS AI Br Firefox, CyberDuck, email client, chat client, itunes, and whatever else is necessary at the same time. I use a 27 at home and a 21.5 at work, and the difference is very noticeable. I think the extra money for the 27 inch is definitely a worthwhile investment. Plus, I have had screen discoloration problems with my 21 at work, and none with my 27 at home. But I think it's because I had to burn dvds for like two days straight at work, since the discoloration is right on top of the disc drive.