OS X Lion for iMac - benefits?

My personal opinion is dependant on the HW you are running. I tend to like Snow Leopard on Intel Core 2 Duos, but like Lion on the i5, i7 processors. Without getting into too much technical details, if your HW and SW is suiting you with your needs, there is no reason to upgrade. Unless the additional benefits of Lion will dramatically help you in your work, I would stick to SL. The learning curve is not huge, but more features, hand gestures and some new User Interfaces to get used to too. I think if you are buying a new computer, you will get Lion anyway, for now, if you are happy and efficient with what you have, then no need to upgrade.

you will get used to the trackpad hand gesture, it is quite practical when you get to master it. I find it more useful as standalone, as it is much bigger than on my Mackbook Pro. I am not using any mouse at all on my iMac and that should say something. But Lion is much more than just that. However, I do find it a little sophisticated for my IUntelCore 2 Duo, but it runs as smooth as on my i5.

I have two iMacs... a 21" and a 27". The 27" is a 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 16GB memory. It came with SL pre-installed but I upgraded to Lion when it became available. I really like Lion. It is very stable and supports Photoshop and Lightroom which are my main apps, extensively used. Overall, I prefer the Lion GUI to SL. I use a Trackpad and a Tablet on this machine.

The 21" iMac is a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 8GB memory and is still running SL. I have no plans to move to Lion on this box. I use this machine for spreadsheet and word processing, again using a Trackpad in preference to a mouse as I have an ongoing problem with RSI which is exacerbated by a mouse.

I also have Lion on an MBP and MBA, both 2011.

iCloud is the main benefit, allowing me to easily keep my computers, iPhone and Ipad in sync.

You'll probably find lovers and haters of Lion in equal measure 🙂.

Personally, I like it but with some reservations. There are some new features I don't use Launchpad/Mission Control and I'm still not too keen on some things that have disappeared on some apps - Save As, particularly. I think there are still some bugs to be worked out - a lot of users seem to have wifi problems and also wake from sleep has the occasional blip.

The biggest problem for some is that some older apps that work in Snow Leopard will no longer work in Lion because Rosetta is no longer part of Lion. Some have been disappointed to find they've had to shell out more cash to upgrade to Lion compatible versions, and in some cases, found there is no Lion version available.

So if you rely on any old apps it's worth checking whether they'll work in Lion before upgrading.

In spite of a few negatives it seems to be rock-solid and I don't think the learning curve is that steep.

Make sure your Mac meets the spec and although it will work with 2gb RAM installed, 4gb would be much better.

So long as MS Office is 2008 or later you should be OK. Apparently the version from 2004 doesn't work.