Time for a new computer, I think...

[derekmac]

Well I'm trying to convince myself to either build or buy a new computer.  The reason it's hard, is that I will have to sell my beloved 24" iMac.  I really love my iMac, but I hate that it's not really upgradable.   

I'd like to build (need to use my A+ for something), but not sure if I'll be able to or not, due to us purchasing it through a purchase plan at my wife's work, she thinks she will need a quote for a system, not a bunch of parts.

I'm able to build what I want, minus monitor for around $1000, but am having a hard time finding a pre-built system with what I want for that price.  Most in that range don't have an SSD and HDD, and have crappy power supplies.

I think we're going to go into MysterByte on the weekend, and see what they have to say.

[Millhouse]

If you are in a position to build your own PC, that is what I would do. You get exactly what you want, not only in terms of spec, but also your preferred component manufacturers.

I put my first PC together back in 1999 and have done so ever since. Last year I put together my latest PC. Very happy with it, only thing added to it was an SSD a few months back.

PC is:

Asus Z68 motherboard
Intel Core i7 2600K o/c to 4.5ghz
16gb ram
128gb OCZ Verex 4 SSD
Samsung 1TB F4 HD
Corsair water cooler.

Here in the UK, it was faster and cheaper for me to buy the components and put it together. Whilst I could get close to what I wanted, there was always some compromise with buying a ready built machine.

[Grant Lamontagne]

If I were you I'd buy a canned machine then upgrade the HD, RAM and video card.  The days of building your own system and saving money are long gone now.

Try checking with tigerdirect.ca or newegg.ca as they often have some barebones/upgradable kits for next to nothing.

If you have time feel free to stop by this weekend while you are in town! 

Def

[mvyrmnd]

Your iMac is upgradeable - it's just not easy to do.

I got my 1st gen intel iMac (Core Solo) a new Core 2 Duo CPU so I could run Lion.

[derekmac]

Thanks Grant, I forgot about tigerdirect, looks like they have a few good deals.  I think if we had in on the weekend, it'll be the whole crew, and my grandmother is in the hospital, so I don't think I'd be able to make it for a visit unfortunately.

My IMac actually isn't too bad, it's an Intel core duo 2.4 with 3gb ram and a 320gb hdd.  I have mountain lion on it, and it runs great. Hmm, maybe I'm talking myself out of a new one, lol.

My biggest gripe with it really is only the size of the hard drive.  I don't trust external drives as we've gone through 3 in 3 years, all different makes. I have around 250 gigs of pictures that I don't want to lose.  If I build a new pc, I might actually go with a raid setup in it, that way if one disk goes, everything will be on the other one.

I'm also looking for a good "cloud based" backup solution, does anyone have any suggestions?

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[Grant Lamontagne]

I use Dropbox and Google Drive- both free for a limited amount but upgradable fairly inexpensively.

http://db.tt/w5hWAca

It's 2g free, but if you refer other people it adds 500 megs.  I'm up to almost six gigs now.   

Def

[mvyrmnd]

Thanks Grant, I forgot about tigerdirect, looks like they have a few good deals.  I think if we had in on the weekend, it'll be the whole crew, and my grandmother is in the hospital, so I don't think I'd be able to make it for a visit unfortunately.

My IMac actually isn't too bad, it's an Intel core duo 2.4 with 3gb ram and a 320gb hdd.  I have mountain lion on it, and it runs great. Hmm, maybe I'm talking myself out of a new one, lol.

My biggest gripe with it really is only the size of the hard drive.  I don't trust external drives as we've gone through 3 in 3 years, all different makes. I have around 250 gigs of pictures that I don't want to lose.  If I build a new pc, I might actually go with a raid setup in it, that way if one disk goes, everything will be on the other one.

I'm also looking for a good "cloud based" backup solution, does anyone have any suggestions?

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

The only way to back up 250GB online is to pay. Carbonite is an awesome online backup systerm thats automatic, and not very expensive.

A new HDD for your iMac is dead easy - there's no reason not to just upgrade that.

Also, a Time Machine backup is worth it's weight in gold. I'm an AASP (authorised apple blah blah blah) and I can tell you, customers who come to me with a Time machine backup always go home happy, the ones who don't, never do. A cheap external drive is all you need. Between Time machine and carbonite, I'll almost guarantee you'll never lose a thing.

[Gryffin]

My IMac actually isn't too bad, it's an Intel core duo 2.4 with 3gb ram and a 320gb hdd.  I have mountain lion on it, and it runs great. Hmm, maybe I'm talking myself out of a new one, lol.

My biggest gripe with it really is only the size of the hard drive.  I don't trust external drives as we've gone through 3 in 3 years, all different makes. I have around 250 gigs of pictures that I don't want to lose.

The hard drive isn't that hard to replace. Whatcha need to do is, find an Apple-authorized repair shop. They aren't as common as they used to be, but they're still around. Before you take it in, get yerself an empty external drive enclosure, and ask 'em to put your old drive into that, so you have a nice permanent backup of all your old stuff.

Assuming yours isn't like my old one, and doesn't have the hard 3GB RAM limit, you should add more RAM. 10.7 and 10.8 looooove lots RAM, and run MUCH better with 4GB+.

[Gryffin]

Also, a Time Machine backup is worth it's weight in gold.

This. THIS. A thousand times, THIS. Even though you've had lousy luck with external drives, it's worth it just for Time Machine. When my six-year-old MacBook Pro started to die a slow death, it saved my bacon several times. On a desktop machine, there's reason to NOT have a Time Machine drive attached; even if it doesn't last forever, they're cheap insurance. It's one of the absolute bestest features of Mac OS X, IMNSHO.

[derekmac]

The only way to back up 250GB online is to pay. Carbonite is an awesome online backup systerm thats automatic, and not very expensive.

A new HDD for your iMac is dead easy - there's no reason not to just upgrade that.

Also, a Time Machine backup is worth it's weight in gold. I'm an AASP (authorised apple blah blah blah) and I can tell you, customers who come to me with a Time machine backup always go home happy, the ones who don't, never do. A cheap external drive is all you need. Between Time machine and carbonite, I'll almost guarantee you'll never lose a thing.

I'll check out Carbonite tonight.  I think I recall reading good reviews about them.  There's an Apple store opening here in a couple of days.  I might give them a call and see what they'd charge to install one.

I agree 100% with everyone on Time Machine.  I used Time Machine with all of the external drives, and it has saved me before with deleting files.

The hard drive isn't that hard to replace. Whatcha need to do is, find an Apple-authorized repair shop. They aren't as common as they used to be, but they're still around. Before you take it in, get yerself an empty external drive enclosure, and ask 'em to put your old drive into that, so you have a nice permanent backup of all your old stuff.

Assuming yours isn't like my old one, and doesn't have the hard 3GB RAM limit, you should add more RAM. 10.7 and 10.8 looooove lots RAM, and run MUCH better with 4GB+.

I think that 4GB's is the max for my machine, but I've read that people have been able to install 6 and have the iMac recognize it.

[mvyrmnd]

Get a hold of an app called "Mactracker"

It's full of all sorts of juicy goodness like official and actual max supported RAM configs for all models of macs.

[Grant Lamontagne]

There's an Apple store opening here in a couple of days. 

After almost three decades of supporting Apple, even through the dark days I can't believe Apple is going to kill off Mac East.   

Apparently there is no such thing as iGratitude.

Def

[derekmac]

Get a hold of an app called "Mactracker"

It's full of all sorts of juicy goodness like official and actual max supported RAM configs for all models of macs.

Oooh, I'll be downloading that tonight!   

After almost three decades of supporting Apple, even through the dark days I can't believe Apple is going to kill off Mac East.   

Apparently there is no such thing as iGratitude.

Def

Hmm, I've never even heard of them before I don't think   

[powerring]

Get a hold of an app called "Mactracker"

It's full of all sorts of juicy goodness like official and actual max supported RAM configs for all models of macs.

+1.  I found out you could actually upgrade my iMac from 4 GB to 6 GB of RAM even though it isn't officially supported.  Works great!

[powerring]

Also, a Time Machine backup is worth it's weight in gold.

This. THIS. A thousand times, THIS. Even though you've had lousy luck with external drives, it's worth it just for Time Machine. When my six-year-old MacBook Pro started to die a slow death, it saved my bacon several times. On a desktop machine, there's reason to NOT have a Time Machine drive attached; even if it doesn't last forever, they're cheap insurance. It's one of the absolute bestest features of Mac OS X, IMNSHO.

This and I'll raise you a SuperDuper backup too.  SuperDuper can create a complete bootable clone of your internal drive to an external drive and is a fantastic complement to Time Machine.  Carbon Copy Cloner is also good.

[jzmtl]

There's an Apple store opening here in a couple of days. 

After almost three decades of supporting Apple, even through the dark days I can't believe Apple is going to kill off Mac East.   

Apparently there is no such thing as iGratitude.

Def

iMoney>iGratitude 

[Grant Lamontagne]

After almost three decades of supporting Apple, even through the dark days I can't believe Apple is going to kill off Mac East.   

Apparently there is no such thing as iGratitude.

Def

Hmm, I've never even heard of them before I don't think 
[/quote]

They have been selling Apple products since day one, and were the only ones selling and servicing Macs during the dark years.  They were pretty well the only ones a Mac user could turn to for many years.  Now that Macs are trendy they are opening stores everywhere and killing off these loyal dealers.

Def

[derekmac]

Ahh, after I Googled them, I now remember hearing their slogan on the radio before.

+1.  I found out you could actually upgrade my iMac from 4 GB to 6 GB of RAM even though it isn't officially supported.  Works great!

Woohoo, mine also says 6GB!  I'll have to pickup a 4GB stick for it, and ditch the original 1GB.  I can't believe they sold these with only 1GB of RAM in them!

As you might be able to tell, I've been convinced to keep my iMac    I bought a new Seagate 1TB external drive last night.  Staples had it on for $99, and we got 30% off that price as we bought a new printer.

Now I'm trying to deceide if I want to use BootCamp and run Windows 7 on it,    I "tried" running it before, and it actually ran great!  Maybe I'll upgrade the internal HDD first before I do that.

[derekmac]

Ugh, looks like it has DDR2 RAM, which seems freakin expensive!

[mvyrmnd]

Ugh, looks like it has DDR2 RAM, which seems freakin expensive!

On my price lists DDR2 isn't much more than DDR3...
Shop around.

[derekmac]

From what I can see looking around at a few different sites is that on average, a 4GB stick of DDR2 will run around $60+, but you can get a 4GB stick of DDR3 for under $20.  A 2GB of DDR2 seems to run around $30ish.  I'm not sure if it'll be worth it though to go from 3GB up to 4GB.

[mvyrmnd]

From what I can see looking around at a few different sites is that on average, a 4GB stick of DDR2 will run around $60+, but you can get a 4GB stick of DDR3 for under $20.  A 2GB of DDR2 seems to run around $30ish.  I'm not sure if it'll be worth it though to go from 3GB up to 4GB.

The biggest difference you can make to a computers performance is a SSD.

I have one in my 2009 MacBook, and the performance difference is like night and day.

I'd go 3GB, and put the extra cash into a SSD.