So, my aging 27-inch iMac (mid-2011 model) is finally on its last legs, and can no longer get updates or a new OS. It has performed flawlessly for almost 10 years, so it really owes me nothing at this point. It recently started shutting down after about an hour's use, and a quick web search told me that this was due to overheating. These units are notorious for lack of ventilation, and now I'm sure I've got a pantload of dust in there as well. I considered sending it out to be cleaned, but that does not resolve the issue of obsolescence.
I had been agonizing for weeks over replacement options. One consideration was image processing, which meant SSD + lots of power was the way to go. Adobe Lightroom always ran very slowly on my Mac, and its lack of processing power was one of the reasons.
This afternoon I picked up an HP Envy laptop with the following specs:
- 17.3" FHD IPS LED display
- Multi-touch enabled touchscreen
- Intel Core i7-1065G7 Processor
- 1 TB SSD [3]
- 4-cell, 55.67 Wh
- 16 GB SODIMM DDR4 SDRAM
- Bang and Olufsen sound
- NVIDIA GeForce Graphics
- Fingerprint reader
I usually have a hard time with laptop keyboards, but this one is huge and backlit and includes a numeric keypad.
I'm pretty pleased. The only fly in the ointment is that my copy of Lightroom 6 is on a CD-ROM, and this laptop does not have a disc reader. Would anyone know if I can just copy the one on my Mac over to my external drive, then pull it in from there? Or am I royally screwed? I don't mind buying a whole new version, but it seems silly to do that if I don't have to. Or I could just buy an external reader, do the transfer, then return the reader...