About to replace late 2006 iMac with latest model

You must not expect more than a subjective response to your question. We all have different opinions, some more knowledgeably backed than others, but all will be genuine.

Having said that it seems your mac could be its last legs, although mine, the same age as yours has performed immaculately. And having read the early reports on the new Mac I can only say thank goodness for that. I will not buy the new model until there is a substantially better reaction.

Were I in your position and I was able to get a used 21" or 27" mid / late 2010 that would be the direction I would aim. A Snow Leopard with rosetta, the optical drive and all ... much better machine, albeit it is not officially supported.

The key to it all is the use you plan to put it to. If you want a work horse, SL is your OS X, if your needs are less serious it probably doesn't matter. But as I said, it's merely my (subjective) opinion.

Good luck, whichever way you go. 😀

Hi Slow Burner (and seventy one),

I upgraded from a 2006 Mac Pro to a late 2012 27" iMac and I could not be more pleased. Admittedly I moved from a 12GB RAM system to a 32GB and a Fusion drive but it's just that much easier to use and maintain. Peformance when uisng things like Handbrake (an excellent all purpose goto for video conversion etc) is so much faster. It is also a good deal faster when Photoshoping esp. applying filters.

I used the setup assistant to move everything across then, when it was all up and backed up, removed some old junk left over from long gone software.

I also moved, after long thought, to a DROBO 5D for backup and time machine. It and the people at DROBO have been brilliant. Time machine works normally but I now have a 9 GB partition for it to use so hopefully plenty of spare. So far have just tested it by restoring deleted movies and a few word documents.

Enjoy making your decision and don't be too concenred by negative comments :-)

as an after thought: have checked booting off the DROBO partition via USB3 - works fine

Yes, I would recommend upgrading. A friend who was on a iMac 2007 said his shiny new iMac 2012 is great, and loads faster.

Seventy one's advice (about Rosetta) shouldn't bother most people who don't run PowerPC software anymore. Criticism of Lion and Mountain Lion is common, but IMO they're both faster and generally better than SL. The one thing I dislike about ML is it's removal of support for Logic Pro 8 (easily fixed with a little hackery) 🙂.

But that's just my opinion. If you dislike ML then don't buy the new iMac. Also, be aware it doesn't include an optical drive and Apple's optical drive is overpriced and fails quickly. I would recommend a Samsung external.

It sounds to me like your iMac is on it's last legs....at least the internal hard drive. If you can't make a new Time Machine backup I would advise you replace your iMac as soon as possible.

Assuming your three-week old backup is sound you should have no problems moving everything over to a new Mac. I would recommend you use the Setup Assistant that appears when you start up the new Mac (and note: It only appears the first time you start the new Mac; you can move everything over later on via Migration Assistant, but you may see issues with accounts if you opt for that route).

I don't think you need the Genius Desk for Setup Assistant. You only have to power up the new iMac, answer a few questions....select "....From Another Disk..." When it asks how you want to move everything over....connect up your Iomega external drive...and wait for it to finish. (Could take several hours depending on the amount of data you're moving).

A couple of notes:

1. If your Iomega is a Firewire drive you'll need a Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter to connect it to your new iMac.

2. If you need to load CDs or DVDs remember the new iMacs don't contain an optical drive. You would need to get an Apple SuperDrive or third part external burner if you need that functionality.

I'm puzzled by the comment made in Seventy One's post questioning the reliability of the new iMacs. I upgraded from a 24" early 2008 model to a 27" model and everything works flawlessly. I hardly ever see the beachball anymore.

Less the reliability aspect, Mike, more the general feeling I get that Mountain Lion has not turned out to be all it should be. Lion, you will recall lasted little more than a year before bring replaced and I read comments from many well respected contributors who don't appear to like Mountain Lion.

As I said at the start of my post, it is a very debatable matter and the spread of replies shows that is the case. The clue to my thinking is in the term I used 'work horse'. And that should be the guide for Slow Burner.

Ah....I misunderstood, then Seventy One.

I will agree with you that Mountain Lion isn't the "rock solid" update to Lion I expected it to be. (Unlike Snow Leopard which really was, in my opinion, a HUGE stability improvement over Leopard). Mountain Lion seems to have an insatiable thirst for RAM...not a desirable "upgrade" in my book.

Maybe the next OS will be Tame Mountain Lion?

I think Mountain Goat has been mentioned a few times 😀.

I loved the expression Snow Pu55y but with it's correct characters i believe it is banned. 😁

If I understand your question, it's about whether you can safely migrate your data to a new computer, given the fact that you're unable to back up the old one.

The answer is "no." If you want help with your backup problem, give complete details.