who is using the baseline 27"?

[ZMacintosh]

Im contemplating picking up a new baseline iMac 27" to replace a cinema display i purchased a couple years ago for the same price; i recently sold it for roughly the same price i paid for it...which was a major surprise and im still craving a nice display and a decent computing system.

Currently i have a 17" unibody 2.66 and i absolutely love that machine that has been my desktop replacement since February and would like to use it as a portable workstation as its been pretty stationary and use the imac as a backup machine, bootcamp, and small gaming machine that i will also port my 17" over for dual display mode.

i use light Logic Express and Final Cut express and iMovie. as well as Photoshop & dreamweaver.


the only games im looking at are; Left4Dead and maybe CoD4, and probably the latest Age of Empires.

so nothing too intensive.

I just want to know how much you push your current 27" Baseline as i dont necessarily think id need a total computing package when i mainly use my 17" for most high end work.

 

[JAWWC]

I use the full Final Cut Studio 3 suite as well as Adobe CS4 with it for my job when I do some work from home and have no issues with it at all. Run smoothly and the screen is amazing for Final Cut Pro, plenty of space to work with.

 

[powerbook911]

The baseline 27-inch is an amazingly quick and component computer. I think they're fantastic. The only other side to that is the Quad machines have potential to be 2-3 times faster than it, including your MBP.

With the pro applications you mentioned, it might be worthwhile to wait a while and spend the extra bit to get the Quad power.

However, if you only wanted the display, obviously the 27 is just as good as the others, display is no difference.

 

[alexk82]

multi tasking

while i don't use those apps, i do a lot of multi tasking. for instance yesterday i was ripping a dvd with handbrake, dling a torrent, and had parallels in the background, while watching a short avi waiting for stuff to get done and saw no real lag. granted parallels was probably suspended, dling a torrent isn't so cpu bound. I did take a look at the cpu and saw that my processes where 90 something percent of the cpu load. it was nice that the screen was large enough that i didn't have to minimize the application windows so small that i couldn't really see what was going on for each of them

 

[iMatthew]

For me, my 27" baseline replaced a G4 Mini and an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ so for me its a powerhouse behind all belief

As for multitasking I was watching a DVD, had StarWars galaxies card game running in VMware windows, Photoshop Elements and a few other smaller programs running and it didn't even flinch so I'm very impressed with it and the screen is amazing.

As a test I loaded up Lord of the Rings Online in Bootcamp and had it running at native resolution with everything on high and textures at very high and got 50+ FPS - very impressive!

 

[ZMacintosh]

hmm good reviews and info guys.

i think the 17" uMBP 2.66 is a sleek enough and powerful enough machine to be a main workhorse and the iMac27" will be a secondary distribution computer running bootcamp & SL, also sending out movies & audio from the system and stream it over the network as well as using it for post-production while i use the umBP for regular raw work.


i might snag one up of the baseline c2d's before the holiday weekend. =)

 

[Fozzybadfeet]

I have the baseline 27" and I personally love it. I've started to heavy my workload through light room and photoshop. Add in some final cut as well and it still runs very smooth. I don't have any complaints with it and I was fortunate to get an iMac that didn't have any problems. If you could afford the Quad, then I think you should go for the Quad.

 

[tjsdaname]

I Have the base 27" an it runs amazingly smooth

24sec boot up, runs final cut express awesomely.
it is all around an amazing computer