Which iMac, retina or non retina?

[steveatesh]

After lots of thinking and reading I'm going to replace my PC with an iMac. My budget will allow me to consider either the 27" non retina but upgraded to i7 chip, 1Tb fusion drive and 16 gig RAM: 3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2X8GB
1TB Fusion Drive
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2GB GDDR5

For £2109

Or the new 27" retina with upgraded 16gig RAM 3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x8GB
1TB Fusion Drive
AMD Radeon R9 M290X 2GB GDDR5

For £2159
I will still need to run some programs that only run on Windows so will need Parallels 10 too. However, there has been a suggestion that Windows in parallels has problems with the retina display on the MacBooks. That would put me off the retina if that was true but I am drawn to the idea of a retina display until I read about that apparent problem.

I'm interested in your views, which spec would you go for and why? The extra power and assured compatibility of the non retina specification, or the new retina screen model? Or is the i7 overkill for my computer needs?

I'll mainly use it for small business (Office, Minitab, some specialist software) and hobby of photography.

[steveatesh]

DAVEVO9 said:

Will the retina mac be able to run bootcamp?

That's a very good question, I had only considered the Parallels thingy. I'll chase that one up.

[steveatesh]

Leithen said:

You can do RAM upgrades easily (panel on the back) and a lot cheaper than via Apple.

Thanks for that, I'll look into that. Crucial I understand?

[steveatesh]

Apple have told me that Bootcamp and Parallels are not affected by the retina screen Windows will work fine apparently.

[steveatesh]

Update to say thanks for everybody's help and advice.

I have ordered the Retina iMac i5 with 8 Gig Ram and Fusion 1Tb drive.

I am ordering the extra 8Gig RAM from Crucial which saved a fair old bit, and an OSX compatible Samsung optical from Amazon, again a fair saving for something that will only be used now and again.

Parallels 10 too, so no doubt I'll be back for more advice when i get it - around two weeks time.

Can't wait now. we never grow up do we!

[steveatesh]

gizlaroc said:

I think you will find that you will have 2 x 4gb sticks in there.

You may need to order 2 x 8GB sticks or just live with 12gb for now.

It has four user accessible memory slots, comes with 2 x 4gig and I'll order another 2 x4 matched RAM chips from Crucial, making the 16 gig in total, and save just under £100 on the Apple upgrade to a similar amount of RAM.

Or have I missed something?

[steveatesh]

Re retina versus non retina iMac. I thought long and hard about that but ended up with retina based on various reviews about the retina screen and how good it is for photography, plus as the screen is so important when working for a long time it made my mind up. Plus the man maths that when I had specced up the non-retina imac to similar innards there was not a lot in it.

Horses for courses of course, as with everything.