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Ok, biting the bullit and buying an Imac - need advice please

Following on from my earlier deliberations, We've decided to go with the iMac.

Definately the 24 inch model, as research has shown the screen to better quality (not just bigger) and more suited to imaging applications from the photography side of things.

But,

Can someone with a graeter technical understanding than me help me out on the following (and why)

Are a 2.93 gig intel 2 dual core processer and NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 256MB memory graphics card worth £300 more than a 2.66 Gig intel 2 dual core processer and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics card. In terms of performance (as opposed to the raw hardware costs)?

Even 2.66 gig will be a marked improvement on what we've got at the moment, and I don;t use a pc for gaming.

Wondering if, in reality, I would notice the difference?

Cheers

For photography side of things I doubt you would notice any differences. The GeForce 9400M is a fairly powerful bit of kit.

Would suggest you go for the 2.66 and as much memory as you can afford.

I'm running a 2.00 gig Mac Mini with 2GB of RAM and has the 9400M graphics and it happily runs Lightroom/Aperture all day long long, no worries. Could do with 4GB for Photoshop work, but 2GB suffices most of the time.

I do use it mainly for image processing, e.g. converting from RAW, touch-up, filters, some HDR stuff etc.

Cheers

Ian

Cheers Ian

The imac comes with 4gig ram as standard. Will look at upgrade costs.

8gig is £800...bugger that :lol1:

Don't get memory from Apple, buy a low memory configuration and get it from crucial.

Steve

Steve is absolutely spot on. When it comes to memory, only purchase direct from Apple if you're not paying the bill, otherwise it is a serious rip-off. Buy the ram elsewhere, and crucial seems to be pretty good.

An 8GB kit from Crucial is £576.14 (inc VAT) so even if you could get the iMac without any ram you'd still be saving a few quid, but as it comes with 4GB you'd need a 4GB kit, which is £288.64 (inc VAT), which isn't too bad. That's from crucial.com/uk. You could possibly find it cheaper elsewhere, perhaps if you went with Kensington or PNY.

I have to say I'm quite surprised that the base config if 4GB, but then the last mac I purchased was in 2006, came with a whopping 512KB of RAM :D

If anything I'd spec a larger internal drive, simply as upgrading the HD on an iMac will void the warranty :( I really wish they'd make it easier to do this as upgrading the HD on my iMac was a bit of a pain, having said that, I did not have to dismantle it as much as the G4 iBook that I needed to replace the drive on.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Markus (Post 8744604)

Cheers Guys

Markus,

We use an external hd to back up to, and I can't see the need for a 1terrabite HD over 640 (?) gig, to be honest.

Noted on the buying ram from Crucial :thumb:

So..

Next question!

Data transfer (specifically itunes data) - software shouldnt be an issue.

Assuming I back up to the external drive, which I think would be compatible (from reading your posts on my earlier thread), what do i then do with the itunes data files & folders that have been created in XP?

cheers

That's an interesting question! It's something I've never actually done.

< time passes >

I've had a quick look at my configuration here (I've got Boot Camp on my iMac).

For iTunes the locations of things are as follows (these are the defaults)

PC
My Documents -> My Music -> iTunes

Mac

Home -> Music -> iTunes

Home being your home folder, which can be accessed via the "Home" option under the "Go" menu in the Finder.

I've looked at the structure of those folders and they seem to be the same. The key file would be "iTunes Music Library.xml" as this is the file that contains all the information about the tracks, including a reference to where on the disk the file is located, seems to be a file:// type url.

Now, this presents a problem, as the location on the Mac, even with a default install is going to be different, thus copying over the "iTunes Music Library.xml" isn't going to help much, as it'll be pointing to a location that does not exist on the Mac, for both the iTunes Music folder (or whatever folder you told iTunes to pick up the music from) and for the individual track themselves.

On a pc itlooks like:
file://localhost:c:My Documents:My Music:iTunes:iTunes Music:Artist:Album:Track

On a Mac it looks like

file://localhost/Music/Artist/Album/Track

As mentioned, the location will be different, let alone the fact that the path itself is a different format due to the different path separators used by Mac and PC.

Obviously the music files themselves will be ok, it's just the library and playlists that are an issue. For playlists you could use iTunes export option, and then import the file on the Mac and it'll generate the playlist from the music, however, I have a feeling that would probably use paths as well, and again we're into the different location deal here.

You could copy the "iTunes Music Library.xml" file and open it on the Mac and perform a search and replace on the paths, however, that might take a while and you'd need to change all colons to slashes and if you happen to change one where you shouldn't it could cause problems.

What might be a better solution is to simply copy over the music and then follow the steps I mention in this thread. Basically you're re-creating the Library file.

I'm unsure as to what to do about playlists though, apart from manual re-creation, which isn't much fun.

Just be careful you don't accidentally order an Immac.
Hopeless at doing spreadsheets.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Markus (Post 8744810)

Cheers Markus. Will ask the guys in the apple store when I go back later today. Your library file option seems like the best one.

Playlists not such an issue, I need to redo them anyway, to be honest.

The apple store guys have said bring in your data and we'll copy it over for you. Thats all well and good exept I live 150 miles away (although work in walking distance)

Might think about bringing in the the external drive and they can do it form there mind you......

Here's another question. Me and Mrs DD have separete Itunes libraries on the same pc, with different user accounts. Presumably can do the same with the mac?

late addition

I've just had a play with itunes. Could I not simply download the latest version of itunes, and select the "add folder" option, adding the music folders?

Yes, you can have separate accounts on the Mac. Simply go into System Preferences -> Accounts and create a new account. This creates a completely separate Home folder, so music, documents, prefs, all the usual stuff will be unique to each user, the same as on XP.

As for iTunes, yes, that is essentially what my other thread talks about, you copy over the music files themselves, change the prefs in iTunes to NOT copy files when you add to the Library, then use the Add to Library option (There is only a single option on the Mac, as it'll allow you to add files or folders) and it'll read the information in, but keep the music where you want. Ideally I'd say to keep the music in the iTunes Music folder, as then you can re-enable the "copy music when adding to Library" option, so when you add new music, it goes into the same folder.

When you do go to the store I would be very interested to hear what the chaps will do when it comes to the music and getting iTunes to pick it up. It's possible they may have some utility to smooth things over, and I'd love to know what it is. Having said that, I could probably knock up an applescript to go through the library and replace the path separators.

Seems I'm a moron :D The paths are NOT colon separated in the PC version of the file, they are slash separated.

:D

That's never been in debate :D

Anyway, as an experiment, here's waht I did.

copied the itunes folder from c:\mydocuments\my music and relocated it somewhere else

deleted the itunes folder from c:\mydocuments\my music

removed itunes from the pc

downloaded the latest version of itunes

clicked on file - add folder to library (copy files not checked in preferences)

found the relocated itunes folder and clicked "ok"

itunes then created a new itunes folder in c:\mydocuments\my music, in which is now to be found a new xml library file and three database files (genuis, extras, library) and an album artwork file, but no music files (although there is an emply itunes music folder)

Music is playing fine from the alternate location (despite it showing to be in the original location in preferences?)

sorted :thumb:

Well, i can get it to work on the windows pc, so should be able to do it from the soon to be aquired Mac

Cheers

Oh it'll work alright, I've no doubt about that. My thought was trying to preserve the Library file, so that you didn't need to use the "Add..." options, but for this type of move you would need to.

If you know somebody at college or Uni, you can get a pretty good discount if they order it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Markus (Post 8745051)

Oh it'll work alright, I've no doubt about that. My thought was trying to preserve the Library file, so that you didn't need to use the "Add..." options, but for this type of move you would need to.

ok

piece of the proverbial

copied everythng to external hd

then copied itunes music to the mac, into home, music, itunes.

then copied the library file over by using the import playlist command.

all works, including playlists preserved

took minutes :)

ps - the imac rocks :thumb:

file transfer soooo easy!

Excellent! Silly question I know, but when you double-click on a track to play it, I assume it does play and doesn't moan that it cannot find the track?

yup, it plays :thumb: