I have a Dell, my third, now 6 years old running Vista (upgraded from XP 5 years ago).
I am looking at replacing it over the next couple of months with either the all-in-one Dell XPS 27 or the iMac 27. I am particularly interested in video editing. Most of my software will need replacing whichever I go for as most is now 10 years + old.
Both are not yet available (Dell deliver is "Christmas"). We already have a 2 year-old iMac 21 in the house (spouse's) which has impressed this long-term Windows user very much.
The Dell will be about CHF300 cheaper for a better spec. But it's Windows 8 v Mountain Lion.
The new top of the line iMac actually has a Nvidia 680MX GPU inside, it's a gaming monster. Stick boot camp on it and I imagine it would be a "best of both worlds" beast if you don't plan on upgrading for a while.
I currently have been fighting with Roxio 2011 on my Vista PC and gave up as it crashes every 5 minutes and can't handled HD. Have tried Apple's standard iMovie and will certainly go for FC...
Not teaching you to suck eggs here but just make sure you are running regular backups with that Fusion drive.
I've been looking into this fusion drive, and actually got one working on an older mac pro. It looks as if it does it's thing at the block level and not at the file level. This basically means that if either the SSD or the spinning rust drive fails then it's game over for your data. Both drives are dependent on one another so if the SSD fails you will not be able to read data from the normal drive and vice versa.
It's a nice idea, and it does speed the machine up, but it's somewhat less safe than using the 2 disks separately.
Yep, except you're running a 3TB Fusion drive, so really you would need at least 3TB backup drive.
It'll probably work initially as you're unlikely to fill up 3TB very quickly, but you may find yourself having to replace the backup drive for something larger sooner than you would expect.
You might also want to check out some kind of online back up system like crashplan [1]. Although you just missed out on their awesome black Friday sale.
Time machine is by far enough for his needs IMHO. I like to sing the praises of time machine and time capsule. Its extensive, painless, and completely saved my ass once when I had a hard drive fail on my macbook. Every apple owner should use time machine.
Great specced machine by the way, you will enjoy it! At least from online pics, it also looks gorgeous. Hopefully delivery won't take too long.
The only potential problem is that in the case of theft, Time Machine will only be use if the thief leaves the backup drive. Likewise a fire would take both items...