I do not use aperture or lightroom rusty. DDP has done everything I've ever wanted as far as image browsing and RAW processing and its free with a canon camera. If I do anything with a photograph its through photoshop. No need to spend more money on things that I've already got covered. LR and AP might be better in some areas but I just don't think I use the additional features to justify the added cost. Once I got my iMac I try and do as little work on a PC as possible as its just that much nicer and easier to use. Any upgrades that a person does or extra processing speed that one adds to these computers is just an extra benefit as they run well even as a base model. I didn't notice a big difference on how my imac ran after I upgraded to the higher level of memory but I'm sure it improved on some level. I feel that with the additional money that you spend on the higher level models you will see small difference/gains that may or may not be noticed. As long as my computer turns on fast, wakes up from sleep mode quickly and open programs quickly I'm going to be a pretty happy user plus the need not to have to buy/load malware software and update that all the time. When I searched online about the actual difference between the i3 and the i7 processor (Youtube for example) with the parameters i mentioned there were very small differences between the 2. The only item that I think would make a bigger difference in speed would be to add a solid state hard drive for the programs and for general short term storage and access. Firewire 800 harddrives and a FW 800 card reader are a decent upgrade and that's where I'd spend the extra money. Maybe they will come out with a Firewire 1200 in the short future.


One idea would be to save your extra money for the insane price of gas, utilities and groceries which is only going to get higher before this years end. How much higher, we will have to see.