Opinions on 20" iMacs

wibbly · 31 Oct 2013 at 20:47

I've been looking around for a desktop machine for work.

I've been offered the option of a 20" iMac at a reasonable price and am wondering how good they are.

I know there a few years old now but are they still capable of running at a reasonable speed.

Most of my work is done online, a bit of Photoshop work and for pleasure I use Lightroom etc.

I know it's all a bit vague, but I'm a bit unsure how good they are by today's standards.

lamboman · 31 Oct 2013 at 21:54

Really can't say much until we know the price and the model! However if you already have a display, keyboard and mouse, you're better off with a more recent Mac mini and a KVM switch.

wibbly · 31 Oct 2013 at 23:39

Thanks, I'm afraid at present details are sketchy. All I know is it's a 20" Aluminium iMac. Not much to go on is it

I've been down the route before of hooking my MB Air up to an external monitor with pretty mixed results. Didn't work too well tbh. I have a wireless keyboard/mouse, but am reluctant to go this route again.

I think I want a desktop for the office along the lines of an iMac of some kind.

wibbly · 2 Nov 2013 at 07:19

Managed to find out a bit more regarding the spec

Intel core duo 2.66 (2009)
320GB HDD
4GB Ram
8X DL SuperDrive

So, how would this handle real world technology today, worth it or not?

Sagalout · 2 Nov 2013 at 08:06

That's a similar spec to the Mini I use at work. It would be fine for general use with an 8GB ram expansion, but it will struggle with the latest Photoshop CS6. I use Pixelmator instead as I'm a light user (mostly use it to cut up images for web builds) but before that I used CS4 and that actually ran OK.

Mavericks runs fine on it too.

wibbly · 3 Nov 2013 at 12:37

Sagalout said:
That's a similar spec to the Mini I use at work. It would be fine for general use with an 8GB ram expansion, but it will struggle with the latest Photoshop CS6. I use Pixelmator instead as I'm a light user (mostly use it to cut up images for web builds) but before that I used CS4 and that actually ran OK.

Mavericks runs fine on it too.

Thanks buddy... appreciate your comments.

I might give pixelmator a try. I use CS6 quite a bit for the same thing. I use LR a fair bit too, so I'm guessing it may struggle a bit! :eek:

wildman_33 · 4 Nov 2013 at 21:32

If its a 2009 model it should be capable enough for those uses. Id look for some cheap ram and a smallish SSD for it and it should feel quite fast.