27 Inch iMac opinions

James J

James J

James J

Soldato
Joined
4 Dec 2002
Posts
14,520
Location
North Lincolnshire
Just after some opinions from people who have bought the 21 or 27 inch iMac (although its the larger size I'm looking at for now). I have a very good MBP (15inch i7 model) but I'm really feeling the restricted screen space on it for working at home, although its still ideal for university. Due to this I've been considering moth balling my windows PC and going fully mac but before spending a fair chunk of money I'd like opinions on the quality and uses of the iMacs.

Firstly I wouldnt use it for games as I have a very good spec base unit already (i7, 5870 and 6gb ram) but my monitor is dying with a really bad backlight bleed problem. I was toying with the idea of buying a 27 inch apple cinema display for my macbook pro with a seperate keyboard (already have a magic mouse) and going down that route, to then see the actual price of it which isn't far off the prices of iMacs lol.

I do a fair chunk of music creation, photo editing, web designing and complex word/excel documents etc and having many things open at once on a larger screen would be a god send (especially with exposé and spaces etc)

So basically, given my situation, is it worth going down the iMac route or the cinema display route? I'm a uni student so I naturally have HE discount to play with and the price isn't really a problem either.
 
I sold my 4Ghz i7, 6Gb, SSD, 5870, 24" Dell and got the 27" iMac. Couldnt be happier TBH.

I have also pimped my iMac.

Also depending what sort of gamer you are then the iMac with bootcamp could be everything you need.
 
7 months later, and the screen on my freinds 27" imac still makes me drool.. It is quite simply a phenomenol combination of size / resolution / colour / and sharpness. The feeling of 'real screen estate' is nice. The only other option is a 30" with 1600 pixel high screen, but they don't come with a kick ass computer built in to them (yet )
 
Spit said:
I sold my 4Ghz i7, 6Gb, SSD, 5870, 24" Dell and got the 27" iMac. Couldnt be happier TBH.

I have also pimped my iMac.

Also depending what sort of gamer you are then the iMac with bootcamp could be everything you need.
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May I ask exactly what you use your iMac for by any chance?

Also what did you pimp your mac out with mate?
 
I love my 27" iMac, however, after purchasing my wife a 13"mbp I think I probably should have got a mbp and the cinema display. Just for the flexibility more than anything else. That said it's easily the best machine I've owned to date.
 
Chief Wiggum said:
I love my 27" iMac, however, after purchasing my wife a 13"mbp I think I probably should have got a mbp and the cinema display. Just for the flexibility more than anything else. That said it's easily the best machine I've owned to date.
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Very interesting! May I ask what you use the MBP for? Its interesting to compare workloads of these machines to see if the extra few hundred over the cinema display is worth it
 
Mostly use the mbp for surfing and a bit of web work, but mrs wiggum mostly just uses it for the web. My imac I use for my photo work and some web work, but having used both and if given the choice again, I'd have got the 15mbp and a cinema display, the iMac is only a 4gb i3, the original one I had was a faulty quad i5 from the refurb store so ended up getting a brand new one from a store in the end.

Haven't really stretched them yet as have been really busy with work for the last few months, but they both seem to run things pretty well in general
 
Chief Wiggum said:
Mostly use the mbp for surfing and a bit of web work, but mrs wiggum mostly just uses it for the web. My imac I use for my photo work and some web work, but having used both and if given the choice again, I'd have got the 15mbp and a cinema display, the iMac is only a 4gb i3, the original one I had was a faulty quad i5 from the refurb store so ended up getting a brand new one from a store in the end.

Haven't really stretched them yet as have been really busy with work for the last few months, but they both seem to run things pretty well in general
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The annoying thing about my i7 mbp is the fact its actually a dual core cpu, not a quad. Having a proper quad on OSX must seriously fly
 
I needed a new monitor for my 3 year old good specification Windows machine so went to have a look round a couple of weeks back.

Came out of shop with a new 21.5 iMac and it's superb, could not be happier. Had a couple of weeks playing round with new OS and Office 11 and my PC will soon be going up for sale as I can't see myself using it any longer, may get a cheap laptop if ever I need windows for anything?
 
I sold my high end PC just before the summer and bought an i5 27" iMac. I use it for all my office type work, the odd game and lots of virtual machine work. Ive got a windows 7 boot camp install but to be honest it's been a good couple of months since I booted it I just use a vm or 2 for when I need a windows app.

I also use a Dr Bolt hdmi conversion box thing to run my xbox and ps3 throu it and if you have a decent pc change your card to a 6870 and you can use the iMac as a monitor for it.
 
J1nxy said:
I sold my high end PC just before the summer and bought an i5 27" iMac. I use it for all my office type work, the odd game and lots of virtual machine work. Ive got a windows 7 boot camp install but to be honest it's been a good couple of months since I booted it I just use a vm or 2 for when I need a windows app.

I also use a Dr Bolt hdmi conversion box thing to run my xbox and ps3 throu it and if you have a decent pc change your card to a 6870 and you can use the iMac as a monitor for it.
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Just bought the i5 27 inch imac earlier today and it arrives on wednesday!

I probably wont go to a 6870 as I've got a 5870 in my base unit and I really cant be bothered doing a sidegrade like that which will be costly lol. Looking forward to having the extra screen space to really get into a crapload of revision I've gotta go through for january (wooo! not)

Will let you know how I get on
 
The only reason I said about the 68xx series is that they work straight out the box with the imac as a target display where the 58xx series don't work.

Hope you like your iMac and the screen in superb :)
 
J1nxy said:
The only reason I said about the 68xx series is that they work straight out the box with the imac as a target display where the 58xx series don't work.

Hope you like your iMac and the screen in superb :)
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Aye its abit of a sod that is to be fair but nevermind
 
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