iBox (the hardware)

$135 will buy you a nice 2 Tb external drive, no?

Hm, hold off on the extra storage as Thunderbird (hic!) external drives come out?

ddt

bolt

Here's the thing: I want to keep a Snow Leopard partition once Lion comes out. I want to have space for a Windows installation (Fusion, probably). And I want to have a fair bit of room in my main partition. I'm afraid that a 1 TB internal drive won't be able to handle all of this. And my experience is that external drives make pretty crappy boot drives--maybe Thunderbolt will change that, but it's too early to say.

In any event, thoughts on 2.7 vs 3.1?

1 Tb should be able to give you plenty of room for a *boot* drive. No matter how many OS versions you'll install. Each OS takes 10 Gb, tops. Give each environment 200 Gb and you'll have plenty of room to move around.

This is exactly the scenario that Apple had in mind when they removed the option to upgrade your own HD. $135 for a 1 Tb upgrade. Pathetic...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/2011 11:53AM by tliet.

My mom's school is getting an iMac and I advised getting a refurb last-generation partially for this reason. Though now I've seen reports to the contrary - it might be much to-do about nothing from OWC. Read the comments here: http://9to5mac.com/2011/05/12/owc-choose-your-new-imac-hard-drive-wisely-you-only-get-one-shot/

Can't you buy the SSD AND 2TB option? It's more money, but this was the serious failing of the iMac for me … (well one of three… botched bluetooth and cloudy screen being the others).

My Chromebook was delivered today.

Don't like it.

Specifically, I can't stand the trackpad. No opinion on the OS yet.

Can you attach a mouse?

Yes... and I might have to. This thing is practically unusable with the shitty trackpad.

Actually, maybe I can't use an external mouse. Haven't tried it yet but there are reports that it doesn't work.

For the rest of my complaints, this guy has hit pretty much all of them:

http://www.metalev.org/2011/06/why-im-not-keeping-my-samsung-series-5.html

Follow-up: I ordered my iMac on Friday, when word came out that Lion had gone to golden master. I'd resigned myself to the 2.7 GHz model, but at the moment of truth went for the 3.1 GHz one instead. It's more computer than I need at the moment, but I figure it won't be in two years. Plus, and this is purely psychological, going from 2.53 GHZ in my MPB to 2.7 GHz in the new iMac just didn't seem like that much of an upgrade. I know this is stupid, I know that the quad-core i5 gets a lot more done per GHz than the Core 2 Duo does--but the 3.1 GHz makes my lizard brain go, "Oooh, shiny!" while the 2.7 GHz doesn't.

I ordered the 2 GB hard drive as well. It looks as though this may be a de facto stock configuration: the first email I received after placing my order stated that it would ship in 2-4 business days and would arrive around July 12-14, but within three hours I received notice that the computer had shipped from California and would be delivered on July 6. (And FedEx tracking shows that it actually arrived in Indianapolis last night, so I'm hoping to have it on Tuesday). I'm not really surprised, as I'd think many people who want the more powerful CPU would also want a bigger hard drive.

Hoping for the best. This is the most I've spent for a Mac (not accounting for inflation) since I bought my Mac SE FDHD in 1989.

Good luck Jeff; I envy you. For the first year ever, I've put my tech purchasing on hold. Well, after the iPad 2. I was going to update my MBP this cycle, buy a MacBook Air when they have new models, and get an iPhone 5. All on hold, because of the economy and uncertainty at work.

Enjoy it, Jeff.

I'm with you, JW.

I was planning on replacing my MBP a few months ago but various work/life stability issues got in the way.

My unavoidable nerd desire for new gadgets has, luckily, been sated by things I've managed to get for free. Specifically the tablet and Chromebook I got as a Google IO attendee. I also won a sweet pair of BlueAnt headphones from a contest they had on Twitter.

Speaking of the Chromebook, I've been using it as my primary system since it arrived on Wednesday. I've adjusted to the trackpad for the most part but it's still sub-optimal. I'm going to try to keep using it for a full week before I go back to my MBP. I thought about selling it once I've finished my week-long shakedown but I'm realizing that there are many times when it could come in handy... especially with the free 100MB/month data service from Verizon.

The new iMac is here; I partitioned and reinstalled the software last night; ran all updates and began loading software today. Geez, this thing is fast. I'm running simultaneous Handbrake re-encodes on the new iMac and on my old 20" white iMac (2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo). These are EyeTV HD files (recorded at 960x540 iPad setting) exported to .m4v (4.24 GB), re-encoding with Handbrake to knock them down to about 2 GB. I'm running the detelecine filter and cropping a couple of pixels off the right side (EyeTV tends to insert a row or two of white pixels on the right, for some reason). So far the old iMac is averaging about 16 fps; the new one is averaging 72 fps. Not a bad upgrade, that.

The speed boost won't be nearly as pronounced on most things, of course. But so far I'm impressed. And in addition to being fast, the thing is freaking huge. (cue Michael Scott).

EDIT: Should have noted that I'm using Handbrake's default iPad setting, with the modifications noted.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/10/2011 11:15AM by Jeff Cooper.

yeah, I think I'll bite on this model iMac. Just give me a couple of months.

OK, you can have September and March. Hands off October.

Mac Pro… mark my words. Very happy with it… 

any chance we'll see the rumored slimmer rackmounted pro? Also, how long before we see shipping thunderbolt drives?

What, no comments on the new hardware?

I'm slightly disappointed about the new MBA, I was kind of hoping for a machine that could house 8 Gb of RAM. The new mini is interesting, Apple seems to increase the margins on them more and more. It's now possible to configure a Mac mini for 1500-1800 euros without a display.