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A new iMac

John L

New Member
Well I had been thinking about it the last year or so anyway but I think all the PC vs Mac debates here on this forum recently may have subliminally lit a fire beneath me. Last night I got a new iMac 21.5..

This is the first chance I've had to play. Very cool, but I kinda feel like someone cut the fingers off my right hand.
 

MikePro

New Member
i'm very happy with my imac. bogs down a bit on complex files in photoshop/illustrator, but still way better than any PC i've ever been used to.
 

The Vector Doctor

Chief Bezier Manipulator
i'm very happy with my imac. bogs down a bit on complex files in photoshop/illustrator, but still way better than any PC i've ever been used to.

Have you considered upping the memory? If you get alot of beachballs you need more memory. Or open up activity monitor and look at the "page outs". Excessive page outs means your machine is accessing hard drive memory (scratch disk) instead of actual RAM which slows things down

I think that if you are have more than 10% of your page ins vs page outs you are accessing too much HD scratch. Google to find out more, don't rely on what I am saying here as this is from what I remember reading

I upgraded my Macpro from 1mb to 7mb and it made a world of difference
 

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cmaxdesigns

New Member
I just purchased a new 27" imac I5 about a month ago. It came with 4GB of Ram. I went down to Fry's and added 8gb of ram for $147. So now we have 12GB of ram. I run the OS software and VMWare Fusion (Windows 7) at the same time without a hiccup. I use all sorts of filters in Photoshop with large files on the Mac OS while I am processing (Ripping) prints on the Windows 7 OS under one Imac. It is great. I have yet to need anymore power or memory.

I must note that we tried doing this exact same setup on our MacBook Pro 2.8 Intel Core 2 Duo and the laptop could not handle this effectively (the reason we upgraded to the Imac).
 

MikePro

New Member
most definately will be upgrading memory, eventually... i'm not THE designer at the shop, so I get all the scraps in terms of budgeting :)
our designer here runs a MacPro with all the bells and whistles.... on which i play when he goes home for the day.
 

MikePro

New Member
out of curiousity, i looked into it... and my 2.5 GHz iMac is capped out at 4GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM.
on the other hand, my MacBook Pro 2.66GHz intel Core2duo can be upgraded from my 4GB 1067 DDR3 to 8GB for only 100bux! should be sweet, considering I just recently installed Adobe CS5 master collection and final cut studio 3. gonna need all i can get!
 

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
out of curiousity, i looked into it... and my 2.5 GHz iMac is capped out at 4GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM.
on the other hand, my MacBook Pro 2.66GHz intel Core2duo can be upgraded from my 4GB 1067 DDR3 to 8GB for only 100bux! should be sweet, considering I just recently installed Adobe CS5 master collection and final cut studio 3. gonna need all i can get!


How many programs of the adobe suite do you think you'll have open at a time? I usually have 5 running spread out across 3 monitors and it eats RAM pretty quick if you don't watch it.
 

Mainframe

New Member
imac 24 here, I love it, running 2 sign machines at once yesterday, vp540 in windows and a plotter on the mac side, no problems-enjoy
 

"Deposit Please"

New Member
. It's rumored that the imac is getting a refresh before the end of 2nd Q 2011. Not sure what the changes will be. I 'm currently running the older imac, but hoping the refresh will include an optional matte screen. I can't stand reflection/glare.
 
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