Re: iMac now or later?

Lots of helpful comments. Not sure if the Mac Pro is noisy due to the fans or a complaining hard disk which of course could be serious. Relying on a 6 year old machine may be a risk factor. No harm done buying a tricked out iMac now.

You could consider the SSD option for maximum performance. If you decide to wait a few more months, Mountain Lion will be installed, you will possibly have seen updated Mac Pros to compare to the iMacs, the iMacs could see an upgrade as well which most importantly may be significant upgrades to the GPU as others have noted. Apple may increase the maximum memory limit as occasionally even 16 GB can be exhausted. The SSD options in a few months may be larger and faster than today. The CPU may see a modest increase. The internal hard disk will likely go to 3 TB since they have offered 2 TB since 2009. So if course if you wait you get more for your money but in the mean time you may be risking a failure on the 2006 Mac Pro and lost productivity. You can't go wrong with today's iMac if you don't need multiple GPUs or other internal I/O cards. You even adapt to seeing the glossy screen so it doesn't seem a big deal that matte is missing. You can always attach a couple of external monitors if needed. I still use an Apple 23" Cinema HD Display which works well with my HDV video.
Good luck.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB