???? re: switching to IMAC

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24" Imac, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz, 1GB RAM, 250GB HD.
Hi,

I've been a long time PC user and after a good while lurking here and reading all the encouraging posts I've decided to make the plunge. I am looking at purchasing the 24 inch imac with no other upgrades other than the Apple Care protection plan.

What I would like to know is if I will be okay with the 1gig memory or if I should upgrade. I guess my main concern is that when the new Leopard OS becomes available will the machine run it without additional memory. Otherwise I plan to use the imac for surfing the web, downloading music/videos from itunes, watching videos, some basic home productivity (Quicken, word processing, basic spread sheets, maintaining home digital photo collection) I'm really not into any gaming or any intense video editing, etc.

Any comments will be appreciated.
 
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15" 2014 MacBook Pro, i7 2.5Ghz, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD; iPad 3, iPhone 6
Hi,

I've been a long time PC user and after a good while lurking here and reading all the encouraging posts I've decided to make the plunge. I am looking at purchasing the 24 inch imac with no other upgrades other than the Apple Care protection plan.

What I would like to know is if I will be okay with the 1gig memory or if I should upgrade. I guess my main concern is that when the new Leopard OS becomes available will the machine run it without additional memory. Otherwise I plan to use the imac for surfing the web, downloading music/videos from itunes, watching videos, some basic home productivity (Quicken, word processing, basic spread sheets, maintaining home digital photo collection) I'm really not into any gaming or any intense video editing, etc.

Any comments will be appreciated.

More memory is always better, that's it. The question is about balancing investment with how much things will improve.

Using iPhoto gobbles up RAM like a stray dog in a butcher's shop, especially if like me you have thousands of photographs. Also, if you use Office 2004 on an intel machine, it's fairly RAM hungry.

I'd go for 2 gigs and yes it's likely that Leopard will benefit even more from having extra RAM than Tiger... not that you have to upgrade of course! :alien:
 
OP
A
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More memory is always better, that's it. The question is about balancing investment with how much things will improve.

Using iPhoto gobbles up RAM like a stray dog in a butcher's shop, especially if like me you have thousands of photographs. Also, if you use Office 2004 on an intel machine, it's fairly RAM hungry.

I'd go for 2 gigs and yes it's likely that Leopard will benefit even more from having extra RAM than Tiger... not that you have to upgrade of course!

Thanks for the reply. It looks like I've already shot my budget as we are over 2 grand so far. I guess my next question is how hard is it to upgrade the memory at a later date (ie, is the case easy to work on, etc) I intend to buy from an Apple store and I would probably let them do the upgrade down the road if necessary.
 

Jem


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Upgrading memory is incredibly easy, two screws to remove the access panel and then they just pop out with a couple of levers.

The only issue is that 1GB is supplied as 2 x 512MB and you only have 2 sockets for RAM so you would be needing to buy 2 x 1GB to get to 2GB and put the old RAM on eBay to recoup some costs.

I bought my 20" core duo with the base 512MB and it was a little sluggish from time to time - especially running rosetta apps like Office 2004. I went up to 1GB for a while (I bought a pair of 1GB modules but 1 was faulty) and it made a huge difference, putting in the 2nd 1GB hasn't been as noticeable.

Steer away from Rosetta apps (e.g. use NeoOffice instead of Microsoft Office) and 1GB should do the job nicely for the time being :)

As to Leopard requiring more, I believe most significant releases Apple have made of an OS perform better for the same hardware than the previous release (i.e. the opposite of Windows releases!) so you should still be OK with 1GB even then.
 

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