Confused as to which Mac to buy

My school is switching over to mostly iMacs and OSX Lion has really grown on me. I like the Unix usability and the simplicity of the iMac system. Since I have access to Macs at school I'm just looking for a desktop system. I want to be able to be able to do photoshop, play StarCraft II in better graphics than I do now, eventually add a nice speaker system, and code in the C++, assembly, Python, and other languages. My questions are:

How would I go about getting a nice speaker system for an iMac?

Would the standard $1200 iMac suit my needs?

Since it only has USB 2.0 ports, would I be screwed if the industry switched over to 3.0?

Thank you for your time!

Josh138 said:

How would I go about getting a nice speaker system for an iMac?

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Any good electronics store (or online store) will have external speakers.

Josh138 said:

Would the standard $1200 iMac suit my needs?

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Probably. Depends how "deep" you get into Photoshop...and how much gaming you do.

Josh138 said:

play StarCraft II in better graphics than I do now,

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Kind of difficult to say...we have no idea what detail level you currently run StarCraft II at.

Josh138 said:

Since it only has USB 2.0 ports, would I be screwed if the industry switched over to 3.0?

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It will most likely be backwards compatible.

- Nick

Josh138 said:

How would I go about getting a nice speaker system for an iMac?

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I have a set of Boston Acoustics I picked up that sound great. There are plenty that will work - just depends on how deep your pockets are.

Josh138 said:

Would the standard $1200 iMac suit my needs?

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Depending on how much gaming you really expect to do, the $1200 will not work as well as the iMac with the 1GB vid card with more RAM. Honestly, if gaming is your focus, go with a PC that you can change out cards and such.

For Photoshop, upgrade the CPU and up the amount of RAM and you will see a noted difference. The video card will not make much of a difference for Photoshop.

Josh138 said:

Since it only has USB 2.0 ports, would I be screwed if the industry switched over to 3.0?

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Not screwed at all. I have a few USB 3 drives that work fine with my MBP. If we get lucky, Thunderbolt will be the new standard.