Managing photos on '07 MBP or '09 IMAC

[NoTime]

I currently have a 2 year old MBP and use iPhoto to manage my pictures. I am planning to get a new 21.5" iMac (maybe a 27"). When I bought the MBP the salespeople at the local Apple store said the MPB was better than the then iMac for photo editing and management as it had more power/speed.

Is that still the case or would it be better to transfer all my photos to the new iMac since it has a big screen. For what it is worth, I don't need the mobility the MBP provides but I have young children who will be playing games on the iMac (I do back-up regularly). Does the recommendation change if I move to Aperture instead of iPhoto?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Jaiden]

Really it depends on the specs, but when comparing a 2 year old MBP to a brand new iMac (with aperture), the iMac will tend to stand out. Keep in mind when making your decision that having faster processing speeds isnt going to mean anything if you can barely see your images or the color reproduction is terrible (not saying that either the iMac or MBP has problems with these, you may want to do some sort of comparison in store though).

- Jaiden

 

[ChrisA]

I currently have a 2 year old MBP and use iPhoto to manage my pictures. I am planning to get a new 21.5" iMac (maybe a 27"). When I bought the MBP the salespeople at the local Apple store said the MPB was better than the then iMac for photo editing and management as it had more power/speed.

Is that still the case or would it be better to transfer all my photos to the new iMac since it has a big screen. For what it is worth, I don't need the mobility the MBP provides but I have young children who will be playing games on the iMac (I do back-up regularly). Does the recommendation change if I move to Aperture instead of iPhoto?

Thanks in advance.

The new iMac has better specs than your MBP. the CPU, RAM, isk and all s beter on the iMac. Two years is a long time

Aperture license allows you to run one copy on a desktop and one on a portable. Most people keep the main library on the desktop and a subset on the notebook. Aperture makes it easy to move parts of the library between computers. "Projects" are self contains parts of a library that can move.

Buy a big disk for Time machine and in addition use another backup system and keep at least one copy of the backup off site. Aperture has a neat backup system caled "vaults

But be warned, Aperture has a learning curve. It is more complex than iPhoto

 

[Edge100]

The one thing the 07 MBP has over the iMac is the ExpressCard slot, which can be used to add an external eSATA drive, which can be up to twice as fast as a FW800 drive. Don't neglect HD speed as an important factor here; the HD is still the rate-limiting step for many photo operations, and moving your Aperture library to a fast external drive can pay huge dividends.

That said, the iMac is better in almost every other way, and FW800 is no slouch. I'd go with the iMac.

 

[stagi]

What are the specs on your MBP? I know my 3 year old MBP would be slower than a current iMac (which back then was a middle of the line model).