Is it OK to buy a 20"? :)

[akdj]

Seriously

For what I need it for, to save a couple hundred bucks, is it OK to purchase the 20" with it's noted LCD deficiencies, less overall screen area, etc?

I am buying the stripped down, bare bones 2.4g with 1g RAM, 250HDD, only to pop the drive, put in a 1TB and another stick of RAM for 2g total. I run a mobile sound company, have for 20 years. Last year, I digitized the music to hard drive and with a total of over 125,000 songs, we need big hard drives! The problem, all summer, this summer...we have been using MacBook Pros with external drives. We always have two (1tb) drives hooked up for redundancy sake via F/W.

Hence, the iMac experiment. Obviously, cost-wise, there is no comparison. The iMac wins hands down, even if I went with the 3.06

We are also thinking about space consideration and consolidation (footprint) without the mess of wires, the incredibly flexible firewire cords we all know and love...as well as HDD power cords.

Also, security. With a collective of music this extensive, we don't want to lose it, have it stolen, or have it duplicated. It is, in fact, one of the big expenses...both financially and time wise, for one of these businesses. Without the music being on externals, it can be locked by admin priveleges, I am assuming, so it cannot be duplicated. This is obviously in the case of employees, not that I don't scrutinize during my hiring process, but ya never know.

Anyway, that all said, is it OK to buy a 20"? Also, for storage, I can get a bit smaller Pelican case with the 20, saving another C note or so

Jer

 

[Phil A.]

I'd say that unless you're doing photographic / video work where you need the accuracy of a 24 bit panel, the 20" will be fine.
I'm not sure how practical the plan to replace the HD is though - it's not straightforward to replace the HD in an iMac, so unless you feel confident opening it up, you may be better going for a bigger HD on a BTO machine.

 

[BOSS10L]

Jer,

I went through the very same agony myself recently. Just bought my new 20" iMac today as a matter of fact. I went back and forth over and over which to get, and I'll be honest, my reasons are much more pedestrian than yours are. That being said, I agree with Phil, I think the 20" will be fine for you, but as he pointed out, swapping the HDD might be a little more difficult than most people bargain for. I've built my own machines for years and I'm not willing to crack open my iMac's case. I'll add external storage via firewire or USB if the need arises.

Nothing wrong with going BTO either, I'm just very impatient, and the wife and I wanted to have our new desktop in place before my next semester starts on Monday.

 

[akdj]

Thanks guys

Pulled the trigger at my local Mac shop, as they had a 1tb drive in stock, from OWC, and they matched the price. Charged me a $50 set up fee to put the new drive in and I traded him the 250gig (that came with it) for a 1g stick of RAM. So, two gigs of RAM and a 1TB HDD, I'm ready to ROCK!!!

Thanks for the vote of confidence. Reading some of the "Which one should I buy threads" I was beginning to wonder if the 20" was a bad deal with the monitor, etc. I am really Happy! So is my wife. I have it set up on the breakfast bar right now, doing the updates. Compared to my 23" ACD and a 24" Gateway 2400, I think this monitor looks great! No issues here. I haven't done any kind of calibration, nor will I need to on this machine. But, I am impressed with the "low cost" offering from Apple.

No hesitation to recommend this sub 1500 machine, with warranty and HDD swap

Peace

Jer