Need help choosing options for 24" iMac

[gulfbeach47]

<p>Kelly I see you posted another sample. Do these relate to my iMac 24"? Not being funny. It is just confusing me a little more with Boss hog, HP, Vista and all the specs. Ok, I am going to try and figure out all the other post and come up with a new iMac 24" model but it will take an hour or so to go through all this. Thanks for helping me out everyone. John</p>

[kelly_flanigan1]

<p>Garrision; I just have this lab notebook with several pages for each computer; it radically reduces futzing; ie a mini IT department. Thus any battle spent building one box is documented;and a sister box when built is trivial. When ram and cpus were super expensive; one would spend say 5 to 10 times on ram and hardware than say photoshop. Its like if my latest HP mini tower was 350 bucks; and cs4 was say 50 bucks for a fully legal version. Looking back thru the notebook on what older hardware costs were is abit amazing; OR its like failed of good investments too.:) From a business standpoint keeping track of theses costs are done too.</p>

[gulfbeach47]

<p><strong>Original Poster Update</strong><br>

<strong>Brad,</strong> I went to the OWC site. Am I reading this correct. Apple offers 4GB Ram 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 2x2GB for <strong>$150.00</strong> and OWC offers the same size for 4.GB Matched Pair 2GBx2 for <strong>$48.00?</strong> What about quality of the two brands? Also, I am not familiar with <strong>Firewire 800 Drive</strong>. Looking at OWC I see a wide array of them. All shapes/sizes and huge price differences. What are the main puposes of it? Is it a Ext. H.D. plus some moree features? I would of read more about it but it is taking me forever to type.<br>

<strong>Godfrey</strong> and others suggest <strong>Time Machine. </strong>Godfrey says all I need is an extra hard drive. Do you mean External H.D.? Plus I thought you were saving all your computer on yoyur ext. h.d. when you copy everything?<br>

Do I need the Apple USB Modem or will the modem provided by my cable company that I use on my PC work?<br>

Let me see if I am getting this right. The options that there are a difference of opinions from posters are: <strong>Hard Drive- Either 500Gb or 700GB</strong> <strong>Memory- Get 4GB but some say get 4GB now and some say get 2GB now and later buy 4GB from another company.</strong> After reading post regarding Office 2008 vs iWork I took a look at Office 2008. I was leaning towards iWork because of the templates and the way you can drag a photo into them. This would save a lot of time for my business. then I looked at Office 2008 and it has a similar option. I have never done much more then Microsoft Word and a few spread sheets. But I would probably lean towards the Office 2008 because of being familiar with it unless there is something that iWork offers that knocks my socks off. I might be able to get Office 2008 at a discount from the college. I will have to check. I looked online and only saw the higher end versions for some reason. <strong>Patrick</strong> also suggest to get a calibration tool soon.<br>

<br>

iMac, 24-inch, <br />2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo <br />2GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 2x1GB <br />500GB Serial ATA Drive <br />ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO w/256MB GDDR3 <br />Apple Mighty Mouse <br />Apple Keyboard <br />iWork '09 preinstalled <br />Accessory kit</p>

 

[Uhooru]

<p>John, listen, you get the smallest amount of ram you can when you buy from Apple it is 2gb. Then you will buy 4GB (two 2GB dimms) from OWC and replace the ram. Overall a savings of $110 USD. The OWC ram is every bit as good as Apple's branded ram. Apple doesn't actually make their own ram, they buy it from a ram manufacturer, I'm not sure who, some say Crucial, some say Corsair. There are several brands of quality ram that work well in macs. The cheapest is OWC and I"ve never heard a complaint. Another is Crucial, they are more expensive, but excellent, and others, but OWC seems to be the best price and I've only heard good things about it. To me you're over obsessing about this, you wouldn't have 10 people recommending it if they thought it was crap would they? For Educational discounts for both your computers and software, look at the Apple Website, you can order direct from them, they will ship it to you. </p>

<p>OWC also makes good external HD's. They basically make the cabinet and then put a branded Harddrive in the container. You can't have too much hard drive space. I don't use time machine, because I still am using Tiger, but I think it requires an External Hardrive or maybe Apple has their own "Time Machine Module". Others know more about this. But basically in Time Machine your entire system in regularly backed up to an external drive so you always have a backup. I would actually get two large drives. One to back up your internal HD, and one just for your images. I keep most all my images on external drives.</p>

 

[sasvata__shash__chatterjee]

<p>John,</p>

<p>I am not a Mac user (even though as a computer geek I have loved Apple products from the Apple IIe and the Macintosh days for their now-gone use of Motorola/Freescale processors), but hear me out about a really large internal drive versus a large enough one....</p>

<p>The internal hard-drive you get should be large enough for your OS and applications, and future growth, paying heed to the advice that the hard-drive is hard to replace on an iMac. But I advise you to think of not storing your images & media on the local drive. I strongly recommend buying an external <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks">RAID-1</a> drive system that you can either connect by a network or firewire or USB. This will reduce the frequency of backups you need to make, since the system will only loose data if all the drives fail at the same time. To eliminate even that risk, you'd still do periodic backups either to a drive that you will store offsite, or over a network to some offsite server. But, the beauty is that you can take advantage of the low probability of failure and spread out the secondary backups, since the primary backup is taken care of by the RAID redundancy.</p>

<p>Of course, access from/to a networked/external drive is inherently slower than an internal drive. I find the speed adequate for browsing the library and even standard edits, etc. I import from camera directly on to the RAID drive. If performance is really slow, it would be better to temporarily copy the file/directory being worked on to the local drive and then copying back to the RAID drive when done.</p>

<p>Just thought I'd throw a monkey-wrench in :-)</p>

[jose_angel]

<p>John, I`m absolutely new to Apple, I bought my 24" iMac one month ago. I wanted a trouble free, easy to maintain machine. I can tell you my experiences:</p>

<p>Don`t hesitate buying the highest RAM available. You`ll be grateful with yourself. I bought it factory mounted for convenience and guarantee.</p>

<p>After two weeks I had almost 300Gb of space occupied (images and a few applications). Thanks God I bought a bigger HDD. If you`re a dedicated photographer, 500Gb seems a bit scarce to me. If you don`t mind using external drives, it`s ok, thought.</p>

<p>The "Time Machine" backup system alone is worth the switch to Apple. I finally bought a wired iomega HDD (the white one with USB and firewire) instead of the Apple wireless thing which was too expensive.</p>

<p>The wireless "Mighty Mouse" is absolutely worthless. It`s beautiful and works good as a paperweight... if you want one buy it at the same order because will be way cheaper. If not, forget it. I`m buying another non-Apple wireless mouse. The wireless keyboard will be cheaper too if you buy it at the same order.</p>

<p>When I ordered my iMac by phone (Apple store on line), the salesman offered me some Apple items (MP3-MP4 devices, speakers, etc.) Have a look at all of them before the order because the price is really interesting. I stupidly refused to buy anything and now I regret from it... if you don`t want a smal iPod for $10 perhaps you know somebody who want it...</p>

<p>About iWorks, some friends adviced me to buy it instead of MsOffice... they say that iWorks is good enough... but <strong>-all of them-</strong> finally bought&use MsOffice for Mac. Take your own conclusion. It will cost you the same preinstalled or not (at least when I ordered mine). I`m still debating about it... to buy Office first and then iWorks or vice-versa... 8-P</p>

<p>I`m currently testing Aperture 2 (trial version) and although I like it so much I miss a lot the selective tool on NX2. If you like CS4, I think I`d avoid Aperture and buy Lightroom. I`ve had Ps for PC and now can live with Elements but to be switching between applications for just a pair of adjustments is a pain to me. It makes me to desire the Ps+Lr choice.</p>

<p>If you want to save, with the Nikon software and Elements you can do almost everything.</p>

<p>My next buy will be the calibration device, mostly because I experienced a high fade along the time on my previous screen. I`d like to have a bit of control over it.</p>

[gulfbeach47]

<p>1. Time Machine has me confused. <strong>Doesn't Mac offer all the cd's you would need in case of problems with the computer for a system re-install, like PC does (or did the last time I bought one)?</strong> that would stink and make me think twice about a Mac if they don't.<br>

2. I click on Time Machine to read about it and when I click on price it takes me to Mac OS X v10.5.4 Leopard for $129.00. Is this a one time deal or is there an annual fee? Also if I am reading correctly your info is stored online somewhere? <br>

3. Can't you copy all your computer data in case of a problem on your ext. h.d.?<br>

4. Due to lighting and power surges (even though I have surge protector) I don't keep my ext. h.d. hooked to my computer all the time. <strong>I drag it out once a month and do transfer. Am I the only one that does this?</strong> Not sure if I mentioned earlier that the power to my home lost it's neutral a couple fo months ago and I lost my stereo, modem, dryer and some lights. Don't know how my PC was spared. But it seems that there is a big chance that PC and anything else plugged in could of been fried.<br>

5. I guess it is not possible to upload your computers operating system and other important info that Time Machine will store on a site like my SmugMug link? Dumb question but I aleady mentioned that I am not computer savvy.<br>

6. <strong>Last but not least, if I am buying the 3 year protection plan, won't Apple support fix the any problems during first 3 years that Time Machine covers in regard to getting my Mac up and running again? I'm not talking about lost photos/music. Just the machine itself.</strong></p>

[jdean1]

<p>If it is so hard to change out an internal hard drive in the imac and you can only have one of them, wouldn't it make more sense to buy a smaller internal drive and a larger external drive or 2 just in case the internal drive fails which sooner or later they most all do.</p>

[godfrey]

<p><em>> 1. Time Machine has me confused. Doesn't Mac offer all the cd's<br /> > you would need in case of problems with the computer for a<br /> > system re-install, like PC does (or did the last time I bought<br /> > one)? that would stink and make me think twice about a Mac if<br /> > they don't. </em><br /> <br /> Writing the contents of a 500G hard drive to CD or even DVD as backup is an ongoing and overwhelming maintenance problem, and ultimately very slow and inefficient. <br /> <br /> - Hard drives are more reliable and 10-100x faster than optical media.<br /> <br /> - Hard drives are reusable. <br /> <br /> - Space requirements are daunting. To backup 500 Gbyte data store to DVD-R requires over 100 non-reusable DVD media disks. And the time required to write all that data to DVD-R is impractical. <br /> <br /> <em>> 2. I click on Time Machine to read about it and when I click on<br /> > price it takes me to Mac OS X v10.5.4 Leopard for $129.00. Is<br /> > this a one time deal or is there an annual fee? Also if I am<br /> > reading correctly your info is stored online somewhere?<br /> <br /> Time Machine is an embedded component of the Mac OS X "Leopard" (v10.5.x) operating system. If you're buying a new machine, it's included with the machine. When Mac OS X "Leopard" is superceded, ie: with "Snow Leopard" (v10.6.x), if you wish to upgrade to Snow Leopard that's when you'll pay the $129 price for a new major revision of the OS. <br /> <br /> <em>> 3. Can't you copy all your computer data in case of a problem on<br /> > your ext. h.d.? </em><br /> <br /> Yes, you can. But to do it manually, without backup software operating on a regular basis to manage what NEEDS to be copies, is both space and time inefficient, never mind likely to be done inconsistently and incorrectly. Backup software is essential when one is working with the data capabilities of today's computing maehines for consistency and correctness, and efficiency. <br /> <br /> <em>> 4. Due to lighting and power surges (even though I have surge<br /> > protector) I don't keep my ext. h.d. hooked to my computer all<br /> > the time. I drag it out once a month and do transfer. Am I the<br /> > only one that does this? Not sure if I mentioned earlier that the<br /> > power to my home lost it's neutral a couple fo months ago and I<br /> > lost my stereo, modem, dryer and some lights. Don't know how my<br /> > PC was spared. But it seems that there is a big chance that PC<br /> > and anything else plugged in could of been fried. </em><br /> <br /> You don't have to have Time Machine's data store connected and active at all times. It just works best that way, with the least risk of losses if power outage or other issues intrude on normal operations. <br /> <br /> If you have power problems, you should be more concerned with power filtering and sufficient battery backup to protect your valuable data and computing machinery. Yes, if you have such problems with your power, it is miraculous that you didn't lose everything. <br /> <br /> <em>> 5. I guess it is not possible to upload your computers operating<br /> > system and other important info that Time Machine will store on a<br /> > site like my SmugMug link? Dumb question but I aleady mentioned<br /> > that I am not computer savvy. </em><br /> <br /> Yes, that's correct. <br /> <br /> <em>> 6. Last but not least, if I am<br /> > buying the 3 year protection plan, won't Apple support fix the<br /> > any problems during first 3 years that Time Machine covers in<br /> > regard to getting my Mac up and running again? I'm not talking<br /> > about lost photos/music. Just the machine itself. </em><br /> <br /> No warranty protection can cover everything. Your data is the most valuable thing in your computing system. The APP (which I strongly recommend btw, it's a great plan) covers manufacturing defects and incidental failure/problems with Apple hardware and software that might develop from normal runtime operation of the system. It *does not* provide insurance to cover personal data recovery and other critical services from a catastrophic loss of power. <br /> <br /> Godfrey<br /> </em><br>

<em></em></p>

[godfrey]

<p><em>> If it is so hard to change out an internal hard drive in the imac<br /> > and you can only have one of them, wouldn't it make more sense to<br /> > buy a smaller internal drive and a larger external drive or 2<br /> > just in case the internal drive fails which sooner or later they<br /> > most all do.</em><br /> <br /> The issue is that internal drives operate on a faster, more robust communications bus than an external drive. You can go with a smallish internal drive and base your data, or even the operating system, on convenient external drives if you are willing to accept a significant reduction in system performance. <br /> <br /> Modern OSes like Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista, etc, are full-time virtual machine architectures. For best performance of the OS, page memory performance besomes the bottleneck when physical RAM is exhausted. Internal drives, due to the fast busses and other optimization strategies at the OS level, are simply much more efficient at handling these conditions and provide greatly superior performance. <br /> <br /> The 'inevitable' disk failure or upgrade operation is in practical use an infrequent issue, so for most people the trade off of a larger internal drive's performance and convenience vs the more easily performed replacement/re-copying of external drives with their lower performance capabilities. <br /> <br /> Godfrey</p>

[jdean1]

<p>The above answer would be enough of a reason to me to build a pc and put 3 rather large internal drives which is what I did. I just have an aversion to propietary hardware be it mac or pc. I guess I am just one of those guys that doesn't mind tinkering inside my pc case.</p>

[gulfbeach47]

<p><em>Godfrey- "Time Machine is an embedded component of the Mac OS X "Leopard" (v10.5.x) operating system. If you're buying a new machine, it's included with the machine. When Mac OS X "Leopard" is superceded, ie: with "Snow Leopard" (v10.6.x), if you wish to upgrade to Snow Leopard that's when you'll pay the $129 price for a new major revision of the OS."</em> <br>

<strong>Are you saying that it comes with the system at no additional charge? If not then where and how much money does it cost for Time Machine?</strong><br>

<strong>And I am still unclear if Mac includes operating system discs with your purchase or would they download these in case of problems if possible?<br /><br />Without a doubt I would get the 3 year protection plan. From what I am reading you are saying the the plan will take care of computer problems but photos, music and data are my problem for the most part? That seems to be how my current plan works after having Dell do a couple of system re-installs for me after virus attacks. </strong></p>

<p>"The 'inevitable' disk failure or upgrade operation is in practical use an infrequent issue, so for most people the trade off of a larger internal drive's performance and convenience vs the more easily performed replacement/re-copying of external drives with their lower performance capabilities."<br />Godfrey<br>

<strong>I have read this paragraph a half dozen times and still not sure if your saying go with a larger internal drive or smaller. Please clear my fuzzy head:) What size?</strong></p>

[gulfbeach47]

 

<p ><a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=3857012">Jerry Dean</a> <a href="http://www.photo.net/member-status-icons"></a>, Jan 22, 2009; 02:32 p.m. The above answer would be enough of a reason to me to build a pc and put 3 rather large internal drives which is what I did. I just have an aversion to propietary hardware be it mac or pc. I guess I am just one of those guys that doesn't mind tinkering inside my pc case.</p>

I'm not a tinker guy at all. Just need to get a basic machine to work on photos w/CS4/Lightroom 2.

I know that I am making too big a deal of my choice but I need to get it ordered like 3 days ago and needed to know if my option choices were adequate. It looks like this Time Machine might come with the system but I will need to pay more to get it working online somewhere correct? I am hopig I can fool with that later. I will get basic memory and add more later. Still wavering on the 500GB vs 750GB

Here is what I have now come up with.

iMac, 24-inch, <br />2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo <br />2GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 2x1GB <br />500GB Serial ATA Drive -<strong>500 or 750GB H.D.?<br /></strong>ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO w/256MB GDDR3 -<strong>Adequate for photography w/no gaming correct?<br /></strong>Apple Mighty Mouse <br />Apple Keyboard <br />iWork '09 preinstalled-<strong>opt for Office 2008 instead<br /></strong>Accessory kit

 

[godfrey]

<p><em>> > Godfrey- "Time Machine is an embedded component of the Mac OS X<br /> > > "Leopard" (v10.5.x) operating system. If you're buying a new<br /> > > machine, it's included with the machine. When Mac OS X "Leopard"<br /> > > is superceded, ie: with "Snow Leopard" (v10.6.x), if you wish to<br /> > > upgrade to Snow Leopard that's when you'll pay the $129 price for<br /> > > a new major revision of the OS."<br /> > <br /> > Are you saying that it comes with the system at no additional charge?</em><br /> <br /> Yes, that's exactly what I said. To use Time Machine, all you need to buy in addition to the computer system is an external hard drive. <br /> <br /> <em>> And I am still unclear if Mac includes operating system discs<br /> > with your purchase or would they download these in case of<br /> > problems if possible?</em><br /> <br /> Every Apple computer system comes complete with the operating system and many useful user applications installed, and on backup DVDs. Take it out of the box, plug it in, get to work. <br /> <br /> <em>> > "The 'inevitable' disk failure or upgrade operation is in<br /> > > practical use an infrequent issue, so for most people the trade<br /> > > off of a larger internal drive's performance and convenience vs<br /> > > the more easily performed replacement/re-copying of external<br /> > > drives with their lower performance capabilities."<br /> > <br /> > I have read this paragraph a half dozen times and still not sure<br /> > if your saying go with a larger internal drive or smaller. Please<br /> > clear my fuzzy head:) What size?</em><br /> <br /> I didn't realize it was so difficult to understand. Simple answer:<br /> Go with a 500G drive. If you can afford the additional option, upgrade your configuration to a 750G drive for more data space. <br /> <br /> With regard to your other choices, no need for anything but the default graphics card for photography, and if you prefer Microsoft Office (or have a specific need to use it for compatibility with other systems) by all means. <br /><br /> Godfrey</p>

[godfrey]

<p><em>> <strong>Jerry Dean:</strong><br /> > The above answer would be enough of a reason to me to build a pc<br /> > and put 3 rather large internal drives which is what I did. I<br /> > just have an aversion to propietary hardware be it mac or pc. I<br /> > guess I am just one of those guys that doesn't mind tinkering<br /> > inside my pc case.</em><br /> <br /> If you're one of those who would find the notion of building a PC from scratch easy, then opening up the iMac case to replace a hard drive is nothing more than a fussy bit of tedium to open up the case and close it again. The drive is a perfectly standard SATA device connecting in a perfectly standard way to a SATA bus connector. <br /> <br /> For a person who ISN'T comfortable mucking about inside their computer, the iMac is a challenging machine to open and work on. Those people will bring it to a repair technician to have that work done. It's not a big deal. <br /> <br /> (I'm perfectly comfortable mucking about inside any computer. However, I have work to do to make my living and mucking about is non-profitable time wasting in many cases. So when my laptop needed a bigger hard drive and I realized that I would spend two hours assembling the right tools and such to do the job correctly, I simply paid a technician $60 to do the job for me. I made $600 in the two hours, by working on my desktop system and producing photographs for a job, while he did the computer work for me. A good tradeoff in my opinion ... I enjoy doing the photography more than working on the computer anyway.)<br /> <br /> Godfrey</p>

[gulfbeach47]

<p>Godfrey..thank you....all clear now. It was not your fault about info being hard to understand. I am not good with comprehending and plus I am on pain meds which makes it even more fuzzy. I'm amazed that I am not making more spelling errors then I already am. I appreciate your help and others greatly.</p>

[garrison_k.]

<p><em>For a person who ISN'T comfortable mucking about inside their computer, the iMac is a challenging machine to open and work on. Those people will bring it to a repair technician to have that work done. It's not a big deal.</em></p>

<p>As he mentioned having three drives in the case running with the faster sata connection, I think Jerry was referring to the fact external drives have to be attached by the slower fw800 and this alone would make him shy away from an iMac. That's what I inferred anyway.</p>

<p>I disagree with your advice on the standard video card being sufficient. OSX and CS4 will pass the graphics duties off to the video card if the card can handle it. If it can't, it will bog down the system. The faster the card, the better with CS4. The newer i7 cpu is designed to just this as well. In a very short period of time to come, with an i7 and CS4, the graphics card is now as important as ram. Maybe even more so.</p>

<p> </p>

[mnigro]

<p>Why do you assume an imac is more reliable than a pc built by any of the majors? I have three $350.00 Gateways with 4 gb of ram and a 750 gb Seagate hard drive that have performed flawlessly for over three years. I use $400.00 Viewsonic VP 225Owb flat panels which give me true color. I even use an eight year old HP xw 4100 graphics workstation that has been problem-free.<br>

I buy my 750 gb hard drives from Tigerdirect-now for $89.00- and change them out every couple of years just because I never shut down my machines. I only mention this as I believe the Apple reliability thing is an overused myth. And, I'm not going to get into unstable color thing with Apple monitors.</p>

[godfrey]

<p>Garrison,</p>

<p>Again, for someone like Jerry, the iMac isn't the right machine ... he likes to tinker about and the iMac is not designed for tinkering like a slotted system with cards and such. If he wanted to use an Apple machine, the Mac Pro tower would be a better choice. Room for several internal drives, etc. If he wanted an iMac because it met his computing needs, however, because he likes to tinker about changing a drive simply wouldn't be a problem. </p>

<p>The iMac 24" standard video card is *sufficient* even for Aperture, which utilizes the video card much more than either Photoshop CS4 or the operating system. That doesn't mean buying a higher end graphics card is a bad idea: it will help to some degree on total performance and allow certain things that are completely dependent upon it. It's simply not *necessary* given what I understand John Hill is intending to do. PLENTY of people make a living doing image processing on significantly less capable machinery than what John is considering ... like me, for instance. </p>

<p>Godfrey</p>

[jdean1]

<p>Michael.....anyone that would pay what they want for a crippled unupgradable imac has to think they must belong to an elite cult or really believes that they just work I guess.<br /> So it seems that there are others besides me that believe a pc can get the job done without issues for much less $.<br /> One would have admit that imacs really look great and that Apple has done a great job with their marketing.<br /> It's not just imacs that bother me it is notebooks also, simply because I can't fix it if it breaks. Here is an example, my girlfriend had a 4 year old Sony desktop that is very slow. I am going to replace the motherboard, cpu, and new 4gb memory for about $235.00 and she will have basically a new computer.<br /> Saying all that though, if I were in the market for a notebook I would consider a macbook pro.</p>

[g.e._woodford_iii]

<p>Hi John and all:<br>

I am in the same situation as John but I do ont have the same time constraints as John.</p>

<p>Several of you mentioned that Apple may be upgrading its iMac line. Do any of you know if they will offer a 30" version? If not, what would you recommend as a second montor. I currently have a gateway 19" flat panel monitor.</p>

<p>John: Good luck with your transition from PC to iMAC! I for one would be interested in hearing how it goes for you.</p>

<p>Later,<br>

G.E.</p>

[Brad_]

<p>>>> Several of you mentioned that Apple may be upgrading its iMac line. Do any of you know if they will offer a 30" version? </p>

<p>Nobody knows (outside of Apple). There's speculation...</p>

<p>>>> So it seems that there are others besides me that believe a pc can get the job done without issues for much less $.</p>

<p>And there are some that don't care that much about the $. They just enjoy using a well-integrated system and robust OS; not having to worry about viruses and other nonsense.. It's not just about the hardware...</p>

<p>On the other hand, <a href="

guys are way happy</a> with their OS choice! Rock on...<br>

<br /></p>

[patricklavoie]

<p>"..anyone that would pay what they want for a crippled unupgradable imac has to think they must belong to an elite cult or really believes that they just work I guess..."</p>

<p>Nope, im just not comfortable working on a windows environement, being a mac user for the past 25years...old habit are hard to change. Its easier for me to instal / repair / upgrade / on a mac vs a pc, and i dont want i dotn ahve the time for a learning curve.</p>

<p>I hate having to hit ctrl + c to copy vs cmd + c ..im so use to keyborad short cut that it f*** my workflow having to rethink for the pc.</p>

<p>Other than that, i have nothing against pc, and im fortunate enough to get any mac i want, since i can also deducted them (and all other epson, material, ink, paper, magazine, travel, lunch) from my business.</p>

<p>So im i a mac fanatic or elitist for that? i dont think so, im just use to a certain type of OS, and like the slick look of Apple product, as i like volkswagen, canon, lacoste, wacom, nec, lacie...just a matter of feeling good with those product.</p>

<p>_________<br>

On a side note, for a reason i ignore, i dont know much mac user that switch over to pc, but i know a lot of pc user that switch for mac..they must be changing OS for a reason? they cant suddendly been brainwash or win the loto?</p>

 

[jdean1]

<p>Its easier for me to instal / repair / upgrade / on a mac vs a pc</p>

<p>I guess I am misinformed, I was under the impression that an imac was not upgradeable, other then the memory and maybe a hard drive, so the graphics adapter is upgradeable also? How about the optical drive, I assume there is no way to replace the monitor?</p>

[Carl Stone]

<p>Of I made my living repairing PCs, I might also find fault with an iMac. But, Patrick makes his living with Macs, so he has another view. </p>