Our current home pc is ancient and slow, It’s running windows vista which isn’t supported anymore and besides which, the screen just goes blue now and again so it’s time for an upgrade.
I have an iPhone, an iPad and an Apple Watch so I guess it makes sense to get an iMac for my next pc.
The daughter has started comp this year and has to go online more and more for homework purposes and I’m getting the push off her more and more for a new pc, so to my question.
I’m looking at John Lewis online now and their cheapest iMac is £950 for a 21.5” 2017 with an Intel Core i5 processor or £1,100 for a 2019 21.5” with an i3 processor.
Which is the better choice? I can’t really afford to go for anything more expensive with Christmas right around the corner.
I guess this wasn’t such a quick question after all
Cheers.
What’s your use case? Do you have the rest of the specs I.e graphics card, is the Hardy I’ve solidstate or played as well as the speed of ram?
I would always stick to an i5 over am i3 but if the the ram, hardrive and graphics are much faster it can help compensate.
Since you have a monitor, keyboard and mouse from the old PC, have you considered a Mac Mini? It’s also worth looking at the Apple refurbished site for reduced items. They come with a full Apple warranty.
At the moment there is a Mac Mini with a 256GB SSD on the refurbished store for £929.
https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/produc...8e110bac481390
On the iMac specifically, be careful with the bottom of the range models. They come with a spinning hard drive which has a massive impact on performance. Once the computer is built you can’t add an SSD easily so for system longevity it really is worth getting an SSD.
Have a look at the Apple refurbished store you might find a better option. Also if your current screen is okay why not consider a Mac mini?
https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/refurb.../imac-mac-mini
Well Mac hardware are very , very, very overpriced .Originally Posted by jaytip
Our current home pc is ancient and slow, It’s running windows vista which isn’t supported anymore and besides which, the screen just goes blue now and again so it’s time for an upgrade.
I have an iPhone, an iPad and an Apple Watch so I guess it makes sense to get an iMac for my next pc.
The daughter has started comp this year and has to go online more and more for homework purposes and I’m getting the push off her more and more for a new pc, so to my question.
I’m looking at John Lewis online now and their cheapest iMac is £950 for a 21.5” 2017 with an Intel Core i5 processor or £1,100 for a 2019 21.5” with an i3 processor.
Which is the better choice? I can’t really afford to go for anything more expensive with Christmas right around the corner.
I guess this wasn’t such a quick question after all
Cheers.
If you don't have a professionnal workflow (I have around 10 apple devices iirc) that demands Apple's ecosystem , I would suggest to not dive in it !
Furthermore , unless you use open source software with brew or mac ports , you have to pay for almost every little piece of software you might need !
If you intend to run Mojave osx , choose a recent and decent hardware configuration
HTH
Envoyé de mon Pixel 3 en utilisant Tapatalk
Whatever you get make sure it has a SSD rather than a HDD, the difference in speed is amazing.
This.
And if OP wants to save some money I'd advise to buy 2-3-4 old Imac and optionally swap HDD to SSD.
I was in the exact same position and sprang for a MacBook Air recently. Got it on student discount via my son, and I’ve been very pleased with it. It has also meant I’m now using it to browse a lot more in the evenings - and I was considering getting a new iPhone as the screen on my iPhone 7 is a bit small. With the MacBook I’ll now keep it for another year or so, so the MacBook has saved me buying a new iPhone. Isn’t ‘Man Maths’ wonderful!!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
The old rule of thumb was to buy the most recent and most powerful machine you could afford. I still have a 2009 iMac that I upgraded with Yosemite a couple of years ago, which is still going strong, along with a 2010 mini Mac and a 2010 MacBook Pro. The mini Mac and MacBook Pro were both upgraded with max memory and solid state drives and they boot up within seconds and still run powerful software.
The hard drive for both is a 1TB HDD. Graphics cards, the 2017 has an Iris Plus Graphics 640 and the 2019 has a Radeon Pro 555X. I’m not going to lie and pretend I know the difference, I really have no clue.
I don’t want to go down the Mac Mini route, I’d like to get the all in one so that I have the wireless mouse and keyboard. It’s a nicer, cleaner solution.
Regards the hard drive. Looking on Apples website they do a thing called a fusion hard drive. The only desktop I can see on there with an SSD is over 4K
All my work and home environment is mac - so I am bias. I think the Mac mini option is the best, make sure you have at least 256 SSD and 8gb ram.
Of the iMacs Core i5 processor 2019 model will be best and will last longer. You could also plug in the PC monitor to increase desktop.
Last edited by Franco; 11th November 2019 at 17:08.
I really don't recommend getting either of those iMacs. The 1TB hard disk is a serious bottleneck on performance. Startup times increase significantly and apps take a lot longer to load. They will also be a lot slower in use. It really is criminal that Apple still sell computers with spinning hard drives.
The Fusion hard drive is not worth getting either. It still performs a lot slower than an SSD. You can customise the iMac on the Apple website. It costs £180 to change from a 1TB hard drive to a 256GB SSD on the base 21.5" iMac. Go to this page:Regards the hard drive. Looking on Apples website they do a thing called a fusion hard drive. The only desktop I can see on there with an SSD is over 4K
https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/buy-mac/imac
then select the base model. The next page lets you upgrade the system.
https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/buy-ma...to-3.6ghz-1tb#
It is an expensive upgrade considering how much SSDs cost but it will totally transform the system and keep it usable for more years.
Last edited by Phil Lee; 11th November 2019 at 17:57.
You can have them for a mac mini.
If it's just for general school use, then get a Windows laptop. That's what I did with my kids at that age.
And I am an Apple Mac user.
Pete
Moved from a rarely used windows machine to a MacBook about 6 months ago. Never looked back, use it so much more & so much more stable.
I’d always been put off by the price, but well worth it. Buy the best your budget gets, even if second hand. You will not be disappointed IMHO
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
We’ve got a HP Envy laptop, but the battery just drains on it so fast all the time that we barely use it.
But if I buy the Mac Mini and then the keyboard and mouse, I’m up to the price of an iMac anyway, so figured may as well get the iMac.
I didn’t realise I could do that. Thank you.
Here’s the rub, the mini in the referb store @ £9xx is more “powerful”, but will you notice this if it’s just homework and web browsing?
If it were me and buying one I’d try to find the extra to go to 16gb of ram too as this generally can’t be increased after perchase on Mac’s nowadays, and will also have an impact on useable lifespan.
Not sure anyone pointed this out but if you know someone who is at / has children at uni or in the educational profession you might save some money on a new Mac.
https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/campai...cation-pricing
Totally agree
This is from my 27" late 2013, which came with a HDD
This year upgraded it myself to 1TB SSD, speed improvement was unbelievable
If you like apple stuff (and there is good reason to imo) then yeah get an iMac or Mac mini. If the use case is just your standard school stuff then I would get one from the Apple refurb store. Make sure it has an SSD, do not buy a HDD or a fusion drive!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Bought an iMac, Retina 4K, 21.5-inch a couple of years back and it's brilliant. Wish I'd escaped from all that windows nonsense years ago! And the screen is just brilliant, if I look at a windows monitor now it looks out of focus, the Mac is so pin sharp. If you have to buy secondhand so be it, there are some nice ones about but definitely try to get the iMac.
Also the startup time is amazingly quick when compared to Windows limping into life!
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
Have you got access to an Apple corporate discount via work?
This is what I’m seeing at the moment on the Apple website via my own discount:
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Last edited by mrsammyp; 13th November 2019 at 18:48.
This has a spinning hard disk so should be avoided.Have you got access to an Apple corporate discount via work?
This is what I’m seeing at the moment on the Apple website via my own discount:
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
You can change the hard drive on the options page, I was just showing the discount based on budget.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Thanks for all the advice guys. I’m just finalising a deal with a member on here for his.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
