I have a two month old top-of-the-line new iMac I got for my home office and added another Apple Cinema Display to the set-up in order to get a lot more real estate. I have to say – it has been painful two months for the computer has been difficult to use.

You see, I am used to working on a MacBook Air (13-inch version) and even though it doesn’t have the fastest chip, it is feels brisk and extremely responsive. It has a lot to do with how it is designed but it also has to do with the use of solid storage drive. The SSD (128 GB MB) takes away any lag I have in using the computer.

In comparison, the iMac has a conventional drive. It seems unresponsive compared to the MacBook Air. I have a sneaking suspicion that what I have is a faulty drive. But I cannot tell for sure. The computer hangs, the drive starts to whirr aggressively. There have been times when I am about to hit save on the WordPress and the computer just goes into a loop for a couple of minutes and essentially inducing a panic that comes with a lost blog post.

Today, I am putting it back into the box. It is time to take it back to Dr. Apple! I might add a SSD just to get real performance from the iMac. For now I have gone back to MacBook Air with the 27-inch Cinema Display screen set-up that has kept me company for years.

Om Malik

Om Malik is a San Francisco based writer, photographer and investor. More....

16 thoughts on “MacBook Air & Solid State Drives FTW”

  4. I have a somewhat similar experience with my more-than-two-year-old iMac. After using my MacBook Air at work, coming home to the iMac seems a bit painful. BUT my experience does not seem to be anywhere near as painful as yours. Sometimes, when the iMac bogs down (with three family accounts and lots of apps open) I reboot it and it screams (comparatively speaking, still slower than the Air) again. I think you’re right; your iMac looks like it has a hardware problem that needs to be addressed.

    1. I am about to ship it to Apple for fixes 🙂 I guess enough people have given me that feedback to know that is an actual problem!

  6. I too have experienced the same thing. I used an 11″ MacBook Air as my main machine for a while. I then bought a top spec 15″ MacBook Pro only to find it was actually slower for doing everyday tasks.

    1. I found the 11 inch wasn’t that responsive! However the 13 inch one feels better somehow

  7. I just setup a new 15″ Macbook Pro and a 13″ Air for a customer. The Air is ‘snappier’ but when push came to shove the Pro won out. The Air cpu gets overwhelmed too easily for my taste. Ideal? Macbook Pro or iMac with SSD 🙂

  8. Om – I went thought the exact same thing. Finally I gave my wife my iMac (sort of an upgrade for her) and bought a Thunderbollt display for my latest model Air 13″. Couldn’t be happier! Super responsive and awesome display with tons of real estate. I’m using a wired keyboard because it seems to wake my Air upon docking better than the BT Apple keyboard. Just added the Twelve South BookArc Air the other day, and my desk is super organized now.

  9. I’ve had 3 iMacs in recent years – trading in each one after 2 years use via the folks at PowerMax.

    Although the Hitachi HDD they use are not my favorite and probably never will be – they’ve been adequate.

    Had troubles like this with the 2nd iMac I had and Apple just had me swap it out with the folks at PowerMax for a new one which worked fine.

    1. Lucky you! Lot of people on twitter said they were having problems similar to me!

  10. Roberto 🙂 nice one.. OM definitely seems that something is wrong, access for a disk is 10’s of milliseconds seek time.. so seconds indicates a serious problem.

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