My Mac of choice at the moment is not yet here, but will be fairly soon. I currently work on an iMac 27” 2.9 which came from the Apple store and like all Macs arriving here for more than 5 years, it was refurbed by Apple. My iMac of choice would be a faster 3.4Ghz iMac 27” i7 which by being newer comes with Thunderbolt. I hae a bunch of non-Thunderbolt drives and they will fit via an adapter. I can’t really see a difference in speed on PS with what I do for the i5 and i7. I tend to stick in the $1600-1800 range at the refurb store where the savings are in the $270 range. The one real speed advantage is having a Fusion HD vs normal 7200 rpm drive, as Fusion offers a 128GB SS drive component which makes it run frequently accessed software a lot faster. Stuff the box with 32GB of RAM from datamemorysystems.com rather than Apple’s pricey RAM, install it yourself as they have made it really easy now (if you get nervous, ask a guy who knows ho to use a screwdriver or Geeks.com), and you’re in hog heaven. I also prefer a wired in keyboard and trackball as then if you wake up at 2AM and want to write you don’t have to go looking for batteries if your mouse it toast. Apple refurb products are all eligible for Applecare which folks say they never use, but I use it on all my Macs, usually in the last 20% of the warranty. I recently replaced a cracked motherboard for example and it would have cost $350 plus install. This iMac is nothing like the 20” one you have now. The old 20” had a max of 8GB of RAM and the newer box takes 32GB. Everything in PS runs faster when the scratch disk is RAM vs. the HD. Jan Spaghetti King Art Faul The Artist Formerly Known as Prints ------ Art for Cars: art4carz.com Stills That Move: http://www.artfaul.com Greens: http://www.inkjetprince.com Camera Works - The Washington Post . |
