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Re: To: Jolly Roger/RE: iMac "i3" (Mid-2010)

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On 2015-01-25, sctvguy1 <sctvguy1@invalid.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 25 Jan 2015 15:13:03 +0000, Jolly Roger wrote:
>
>> A Core i3 is the low-end of the Core series, but is much better than any
>> of the Core 2 Duo models.
>> 
>> How much RAM is installed in it? You will want at least 8 GB of RAM
>> installed if you wish to run the latest operating system, Yosemite.
>> Adding more RAM will almost always result in faster operation. So it's a
>> good way to extend the life of a machine.
>> 
>> The hard drive may or may not be relatively slow. If it's the stock
>> drive for this model, it will be a 7200 RPM drive, which is typically
>> faster than 5200 RPM drives. At some point, you might consider replacing
>> that with an SSD at some point for a huge speed boost, to give the
>> machine additional life.
>> 
>> Keep in mind the machine is already 4 years old. As a result, some new
>> features in the latest versions of Mac OS X will not work with this
>> model. For instance some Continuity functionality will not work with
>> this Mac due to the older Bluetooth hardware in it and so on:
>
> We do not have iPhones.  I have an old Pantech Breeze flip phone!  No 
> worries there.  My wife has a Motorola AtrixHD, so we are all Android on 
> the phone front.
>
> What other things would start "not" to work?  Would I be able to get 
> security updates?  New versions of iTunes, Safari, etc?

Not running Mac OS X 10.6, no. See below.

> That is what I would be concerned about.  Would my iPod Nano still 
> connect to iTunes and synch?  Stuff like that. 

The latest version of Mac OS X 10.10 "Yosemite" runs on the iMac
(Mid-2007 or newer); so your model is included. Apple typically supplies
security updates for several major OS versions back from the current
one. IIRC, Apple stopped supplying security updates for Mac OS X 10.6 in
early 2014. So right off the bat, if you want security updates and newer
versions of iTunes, Safari and so on, you will want to upgrade to a
later version of Mac OS X. Since 10.7 and 10.8 were transitional
releases with a fair share of issue in each, you'll likely want to avoid
10.7 and possibly 10.8 as well. Mac OS X 10.9 "Mavericks" is relatively
stable, and many people have few problems at all with 10.10 "Yosemite".
Personally, if it were me, I'd put Yosemite on it.

>> The price is perhaps just a tad on the high end of what I would expect
>> to pay for a used machine of the same model:
>
>> <http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40%7CR40%7CR40&_nkw=Apple+iMac+%
> 22Core+i3%22+3.06&LH_Sold=1&LH_Complete=1>
>> 
>> But it's far less expensive than one of Apple's current refurbished
>> offerings (which are newer models):
>> 
>> <http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/imac>
>
> Yes, those prices are way out of my league!  I really dug around a lot, 
> and thought that $599/refurbed with a 90 day warranty was pretty good for 
> this model.

Yeah. It's a decent price for a refurbished iMac of that model, I think.

> I would knock it up to the full 16 gigs of ram

That's great. You won't have to mess with RAM again after that. And
you'll likely never have to worry about poor VM performance due to
insufficient RAM.

> and the 500gig HDD would last me forever.  Is there a place inside to
> add an SSD drive?  Or would I have to lose the optical drive(which I
> really want to burn CD's/DVD's).

Actually, you'd *replace* the hard drive with the SSD, which would give
you an incredible boost in performance across the board, since the
bottleneck for many operations on the computer is the speed of the hard
drive. SSDs are also much more energy efficient (they consume ~30% of
the power of a typical hard drive) and run much cooler, which will
extend the life of the machine as well. They are more expensive (per
gigabyte) than hard drives though. So you will want to plan ahead for a
decrease in storage space or plan for the extra expense for roughly the
same amount of storage. This will give you an idea of the cost for
various sizes:

<http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_6G/>

SSD prices do go down over time too. So you could put this on the back
burner as a future upgrade possibility once you start feeling like your
iMac is running too slowly and showing its age.

-- 
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

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Thread

To: Jolly Roger/RE: iMac "i3" (Mid-2010) sctvguy1 <sctvguy1@invalid.net> - 2015-01-24 23:59 +0000
  Re: To: Jolly Roger/RE: iMac "i3" (Mid-2010) Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> - 2015-01-25 13:26 +1300
  Re: To: Jolly Roger/RE: iMac "i3" (Mid-2010) Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2015-01-25 15:13 +0000
    Re: To: Jolly Roger/RE: iMac "i3" (Mid-2010) sctvguy1 <sctvguy1@invalid.net> - 2015-01-25 16:26 +0000
      Re: To: Jolly Roger/RE: iMac "i3" (Mid-2010) Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2015-01-25 16:59 +0000
    Re: To: Jolly Roger/RE: iMac "i3" (Mid-2010) Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2015-01-26 11:48 +0000
      Re: To: Jolly Roger/RE: iMac "i3" (Mid-2010) Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2015-01-26 15:10 +0000

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