mac upgrade...£800 to spend

deano · 1 Jan 2012 at 19:51

Hi,

currently have an early iMac 24in core2duo 2.66 with 8Gb of ram on this page gets a score of 4107

Was look at the below options

imac i3 3.07 score 5670 (thinking probably not worth it)
mac mini i5 2.5 6393 (screen and keyboard won't be an issue)
mac pro 2.66 QUAD 6510 (old but quick and could raid some disks for some additional performance )
current iMac i5 2,5 QUAD 8030 (would be nice but over budget)

any thoughts....?

reasons for wanting to upgrade is that the current iMac has get sluggish and is noticably slow at times with the spinning coloured wheel appearing often. I have reloaded lion onto it and restored from time machine but appears not to have made much difference

thanks

theheyes · 1 Jan 2012 at 20:41

Before running out and buying a new Mac, have you tested the memory and/or hard drive? Either one could be at fault here because that computer shouldn't be sluggish.

lamboman · 1 Jan 2012 at 20:54

Either boot using the Option key, then repair disk permissions, or go to Applications, Utilities, then Disk Utility, and repair permissions through there. No need to verify.

That could, not definitely will, fix the issues. I'd be surprised if it didn't!

deano · 1 Jan 2012 at 21:03

memory is new from crucial 8Gb about two months ago disk checks out in Disk Utility and S.M.A.R.T status is verified.

I ran the repair disk permissions a few times doesn't seem to make a great deal of difference to be honest.

Thanks for the input so far

memyselfandi · 1 Jan 2012 at 21:04

Given that a 2.0Ghz Mac Mini (early 2009) with 4GB isn't sluggish with Lion and doesn't display the spinning ball often makes me think that theheyes may well have a point and the OP should be looking at a possible hardware issue.

I doubt it is just a software issue which could be fixed with a repair disk permissions run given that the OP says that he has reinstalled the OS. OP can try it but it probably won't fix their issue.

edit: nevermind OP replied while I was typing .... OP could try just reinstalling Lion and not recovering from Timemachine to see if the issue is being introduced with the restore and hence see if the issue occurs just with a clean install.

deano · 1 Jan 2012 at 21:11

Ok thanks will do a clean lion restore and see how it performs.

If the issue is the time machine restore any ideas how to restore settings and apps?
Thanks