I did NOT buy an iMac

[davemchine]

I recently asked for advice in buying a new iMac. Through the discussion I was convinced to purchase an SSD drive in a thunderbolt enclosure instead. I opted for a 480GB drive that roughly matches my current internal 500GB internal drive.

The old drive could read/write at 90MB/sec. It took quite awhile to boot the iMac and it wasn't responsive for several minutes after booting.

The new SSD boots the iMac in 18 seconds and it was quite responsive at 30 seconds. A huge improvement. It writes at 145MB/sec and reads at 450MB/sec.

Here is the model I purchased, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IFDL...00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[Speedy]

Looks nice. Is the second Thunderbolt port on the back side?

[Black]

This is what's inside:
http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Internal-S..._1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1ZX07F4CCZK5TEAXZ5Q4

Glad it's working for you.

[pRICE cUBE]

My dreams of living vicariously through your purchase of a 2013 Mac Pro are dashed.

[davemchine]

There is only one thunderbolt port. Unfortunately a case with a second port is considerably more expensive. The computer is much more responsive now so I'm calling it a success.

[Robert M]

Dave,

I've been eyeballing the FireWire/USB 3.0/esata version of that enclosure. It's $59 or $69 for just the box. How is the build quality of it?

Robert

[davemchine]

It feels very solid. Has the look and feel of the last Mac Pro (cheese grater) . In reading the amazon reviews the most common complaint is heat. I'll have to report back on that after more use. I have it sitting on he iMac pedestal and it looks very natural there.

[davemchine]

Here are some pictures from my desk that may help is seeing how it looks.

[Catzilla]

Nice, you guys have such neat desks....

[davemchine]

I cleared off a few things for the benefit of the picture but I do keep my desk very neat. The little stack of items on the right is actually a problem for me. Unfortunately they can't be made to look any neater without spending a lot of money.

Tucked onto an unseen file cabinet are two drobo's, two mini stack's, and a hard drive dock.