Used iMac opinions

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Hi,

I'm looking for a way to store my photos and have them accessible to both my ipad and macbook while also having them backed up elsewhere. I was considering a NAS system but am not sure if I'm tech savvy enough to get that set up. Another idea then was to get a macmini and have it set up in the house, use it as the base to download all pics and enable sharing so the ipad or macbook can grab pics from it. While looking into the options I checked craigslist and found that an older iMac can be found for a decent price. Would this work as well as I hope?

Any opinions/info would be great, so far I've seen some iMacs listed as G5, a bunch with 17" screens and a few with 20 and 24" screens. Not sure what all the differences are between the versions.

Thanks
 
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Rather than buying a computer just to store and share photos, why not use a cloud service like DropBox? This would let you have an offsite backup so if a catastrophe struck at home (say, a fire), you would still be able to access your photos.
 
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A cloud service is an option but somewhat costly from what I've found
 

Raz0rEdge

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Modern NAS' are a cinch to setup and provide very nice web-based (or otherwise) frontends to manage the entire system and all of it's services..

Your initial instinct was correct and you don't need a lot of tech knowledge to set these up..

An additional benefit of the NAS' is that you get the nice built-in backup facility with various levels of RAID.
 
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Modern NAS' are a cinch to setup and provide very nice web-based (or otherwise) frontends to manage the entire system and all of it's services..

Your initial instinct was correct and you don't need a lot of tech knowledge to set these up..

An additional benefit of the NAS' is that you get the nice built-in backup facility with various levels of RAID.

I'll look into that option some more. I'm looking for a place to store all my pics and have them still accessible to multiple computers/ipads. From my research it seems that the easiest option would be to have another computer to download memory cards to directly. How easy will sharing be with a NAS? I suppose if it was connected to the network via ethernet cable I could wirelessly backup my macbook but can anyone get to that back up to see/use the pics?

Any recommendations on a good NAS I should look into?
 

Raz0rEdge

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I would suggest looking at Synology NAS' and specifically this live demo they have of their NAS' frontend. Read about DSM that makes is easy for you to share data and do the things you want with photos and so on..

If I were going to upgrade my current NAS, I'd go with a Synology..
 
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That Synology is really neat, had no idea that was available. Did a quick look and there are plenty of options with a huge range in price. Maybe something like a ds112j or 212j?

So basically the macbook would use it for backup via time machine and other users could log in and look at the pics? Or do the photos have to be put into a dedicated photo folder for sharing purposes?

Sorry for all the questions but I'm a caveman when it comes to this stuff...
 

Raz0rEdge

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Yes, most NAS' have a facility to act as a HD for Time Machine backups. I use my ReadyNAS for that. As far as photos goes, take a look at DS Photo+ for that..

Read through the documentation on that website to see how things work, I don't own this NAS so I can't be certain as to the specifics..
 
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Thanks, I'll do some reading about these things.
My main concern is the photos, making them available for sharing amongst users, my backups are currently done on an external hard drive which I will keep doing.
 
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As a suggestion use two backups as a hard drive will always fail, sooner or later. And steer well clear of G5 iMacs if going that way. PowerPC days are well and truly behind us. A mid 2011 iMac at least is the way to go.
 

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