Windows and Apple networking and iMac value

[degrub]

I would not unless for business.
I would invest in Applecare to extend the warranty instead. You have a year from purchase to buy it usually.

[Aram Hăvărneanu]

SSD upgrades are always worth it.

[bcooter]

SSD upgrades are always worth it.

Though the cost is higher, I would go to a minimum of 1tb internal SSD.  Even finding a refurbished computer from a dealer that specializes in machines for graphics, photography and film will save you a lot of headaches.   I have a few dealers I work with, for upgrades or repairs I use a shop in santa monica, one in london and buy my machines from a company in Minnesota (macs4u, talk to Wolfgang)* that configured two 2015 15" macbook pros that are just rockets.  I don't know what SSDs they use but I can go from location to studio, plug them into a monitor (or monitors) keep working and they fly without overheating.

I also have moved to the new small black G drive external SSDs for storing and working files and see zero overheating  where the fan kicks in.   I have even gone back to some older machines and had them replaced with internal SSDs and they transform the machine.

The G drives are silent don't overheat and are rugged.   Previous I stored on 1 and 2 tb lacie rugged and have hundreds of them, but when I need to pull legacy footage for a project, I pull the data to a g drive because the speed difference is more than worth it and in the last 6 months have bought over a dozens of the g drives with many more to come.

https://www.cinema5d.com/a-fast-g-drive-ssd-r-is-all-you-need-when-editing-on-the-go/

I try to use computers until eol and stay 1 or two operating systems behind, as I don't like beta testing to find what software works, what doesn't.

*I have no affiliation with macs4u, other than as a full paying customer and they have saved me thousands. 

IMO

BC

[vjbelle]

FWIW..... the Samsung X5 external SSD are blazing fast in comparison to the G drives ( and also T5 Drives ).  They cost more but faster is always more expensive. 

Victor

[Dan Wells]

That particular iMac is a problem machine that will probably lose support from Apple relatively quickly for a couple of reasons. It's a "super-cheapie" configuration meant for schools.

Most importantly, it's the only Mac currently sold that lacks a high-resolution display. With the retirement of the old MacBook Air, everything else has a Retina display. At some point MacOS and applications will come to expect Retina.

Secondly, it's very slow. Not only is it one of the few remaining dual-core Macs, that's actually a mobile dual-core CPU, while all other iMacs use desktop CPUs. It's the low-end configuration of a discontinued 13" MacBook Pro  in a desktop case.

Third, it has no SSD at all. Most Macs are pure SSD, and MacOS is optimized for that. Some iMacs use a Fusion Drive, which has a small SSD for caching with a larger hard drive for storage. A few rare cheapie configurations are hard drive only, and this is one of them.

Here's an iMac that's about the cheapest I'd go - it has a Retina display, a quad-core desktop processor and a Fusion drive. It's also upgraded to 16 GB of RAM - 21.5" iMacs are a real pain to upgrade, and it'll cost about $100 in labor (plus the RAM) if you ever want to upgrade. This is a B&H link, but you might get it cheaper, perhaps refurbished if you look around - these have been out for quite a while.

[Joe Towner]

Having opened multiple iMacs in the past few months, it's very easy, and completely worth it.  I would actually recommend against doing a Fusion Drive - it makes the upgrade to a SSD a complete disassembly PITA.  Just did a 5K iMac and the night & day differences between the SATA drive and a 2tb SSD is unreal.

The Fusion drive uses a small PCIe drive that's under the board on the right (under the arrow). To get to it, you have to remove everything.  Had to do the hinge on this one as well - 9 screws in a line holding the on to the L leg for the thing.

[nemophoto]

It's very easy to network the two systems together, provided you know or able to do a little network troubleshooting and assigning IP addresses as necessary. (Most of the time, IP addresses are assigned dynamically, but some things I want a fixed addresses -- network drives, printers, etc.)

I work on Windows, my wife -- a graphic designer, has used Macs for years (though has no issues on a PC). I have a desktop (Ethernet) a laptop (wifi) and my wife has a desktop (Ethernet), and we both have iPhones. Throughout the house we have multiple other devices. We have four network printers in the office -- two via Ethernet, two via wifi.

For data networking, we have two NAS drives (from Synology) on which we keep both work and personal files we want to share. (For us, things like Dropbox, etc. are kludgy for ordinary day to day work. I do use OneDrive for files that I need both in the office and when I'm out on a shoot.) All this work pretty seamlessly, partially because our router is easy to manage. Almost two years ago I replaced our old router and two repeaters with Netgear's Orbi mesh router. Best thing I did. Not only is it easy to manage (on a computer, with my phone etc.) should I need to do anything, but speed of downloads and upload improved dramatically throughout the house, especially streaming movies.

Hope this helps, though you've had a lot of good advice.

[Alan Klein]

I finally got this for $999.  Thanks everyone for your help.  I also got her a WD Passport 2gb for backup. 
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1342554-REG/apple_mmqa2ll_a_21_5_imac_mid_2017.html