Advice for purchasing a new imac

Hi,

This is my first post here and I hope it's in the right place.

Right now I have a 333Mhz imac. Yeah it works just fine but it's getting slow on some apps. And I want to upgrade to a newer imac. And I can't choose between the high end 17" one or the 20" one. Which of the two would be better to get? Yes price is an issue, but I can just afford both.

And I looked into both models and the only 2 things I'm undecided about, is:

1. is the 2.16 Ghz processor really that much an improvement over the 2.0 one?

2. Can I live with a 17" one or will a 20" one be needed? I have no idea.

Thanks in advance.

And a little info about myself so you know where I'm comming from. I've always used macs and pc machines as a kid. Pcs at school and macs at home. My first mac was an SE yes really old at the time, but I really liked it, and I moved up to the latest pre G3 machine, and my 3rd and lastes computer is the 333Mhz imac I currently own.

My main want for a new imac is for garage band, photoshop and iweb. I really want to edit my own cgi work, just for my own interests. And also for the past few years I have been writing lyrics and I want to break into the music making business and I think Garage Band will help me do it. And yeah making a webpage with iweb to promote my work might just help me too.

Yeah I am a casual gamer too. And sad to say most of the new games just will not run on my machine. Well some do work, but far from optimal perfoemance.

And my main aim is is the 20" model really worth the extra cost for me, or can all of mny needs be forfilled my the high end 17" model.

Based on what you are looking to do the high end 17 inch would be sufficient but I think in the long run you'll be happier with the 20. I am new to mac and when I purchased my first Mac 2 weeks ago I purchased a mini. Since I immediately enjoyed using a Mac over PC and felt it would be a long term thing, I returned it and bought a MacBook because it was really the better choice for me. To avoid that hassle you should get the 20.

I moved from an iMac 333 to an iMac G5 and one thing to take into consideration is that the new iMacs are wide screen so if you get the 17" then it will not be that much different than what you have now, just wider. Also most games sadly don't take advantage of wide screen.

You will need at least the 1 gb of ram if your going to use Garage band and it would also be good to get as large a harddrive as possible. Also don't go for the 17" model with the intel graphics card as the ATI one is much better. Photoshop has not yet been released for the intel Macs but is due for release this year (the PPC version runs under emulation). Their is also not a lot of games for the intel Mac so far but you could always use boot camp to run them in windows XP but not all games will run (try the demo's out first).

If your on a budget I'd say get the high end 17" iMac, put in a 250 gig or the 500 gig hard drive and get yourself a usb keyboard and Mic to use with garage band. If you can afford this and get the 20" then go for that. A bigger screen is always nice.

Thanks for all the advice. It really helped me. And I was so undecided between the two it wasn't funny. But I think the extra $404.80 Australian (I am an Aussie) is just too hard to justify for the bigger screen. So I think the high end 17" model will do me just fine. Yes I'll update the hard drive at a later date. I only have 80 GB now and that's only just half used at a stretch, but I think 250GB in the long run will be needed.

And Mr Bobbins you have a 17". Do you find it adequate for everything you do?

And is 1440 x 900 pixels HD quality?

Yes the 17" is big enough I find and the screen quality is great. I'm not sure about the HD quality.

Their is something else that you may want to consider and that is if to wait for the new OSX operating system to come out before buying !! It promises to be released in spring and will have the full version of boot camp (Beta version will expire but will possibly be for sale for about $30-If the rumors are to be believed)

http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/index.html

P.S You may not be using much harddrive space now but when you start using garage band that will all change. Music files take up a lot more space than MP3's.

Thanks again.

Yeah I see your point about the music. AIFF and the other music types are quite large files. And I suspect Garage Band's default file type will be large too. But I can upgrade the hard drive later. And the old ones will not be wasted so, no loss.

Yes I saw the keynote where steve talked about the leopard preview. And actually I liked all of the new features in it. And to be honest I think boot camp will be something I rarely use. I just don't have a need for Windows programs at the moment. But there is the point of waiting and having 10.5 shipped with the mac. Instead of getting 10.4 now and having to acquire 10.5 when it's released. That'd be around $100 extra.

But the question is can I wait that long? I probably could if I had to, but you know how it is, something this good, it's hard to be so patient.

Thank you so much for all of your advice.

Hmm, too true. I don't think I could wait. Lets face it you can wait forever for new better versions to come out.