My own circle of confusion.

[slitherjef]

I am in the market to reduce my aging i7-860 windows system's footprint. The large tower is taking up space and power and I just want something less obtrusive. I am not a huge gamer, I do play the sims 3 every so often, but not much else. The card I am using in my desktop is a geforce 8800 gts. Way overkill for pretty much everything I do.

The main objective is:

Photography. I shoot in raw format and usually convert to tiff (I know, I can just edit the raws and need to start doing that, it will save disc space). I do shoot HDRs and panoramas from a 5DmkII camera.

Also:

Web

Light word processing (can use pages)
Light HD video (from 5DmkII, canon vixia HF G10 and sometimes a gopro hero) as well as time lapse photography. I have not got to the point of editing - yet, but mostly stitching the videos together, or just uploading them to youtube.

Now, I do have the base model mid 2012 15" MBP with the quad i7 (sandy bridge) chip stocked with an M4 SSD and 8gigs of ram. I suspect this would take care of anything I need to do with video editing, but what if I wanted to port my work between two computers?

I guess right now I am leaning toward a mac mini. But I can't decide which one?

The mini would be pushing at least a 27" full HD LG monitor. I am not sure if I need two.

Should I just get the base i5 mini and eventually upgrade the ram and install an SSD and dual boot windows 8? Or should I just get the base i7 and eventually do the same?

Thoughts?

[paulrbeers]

Is there a reason you even want a desktop? Connect a monitor to your MBP and use a bluetooth keyboard and mouse and you basically have a desktop. Advantage is that you one computer for everything and you don't have to worry about what resides on what computer....

[slitherjef]

That is a good point. The thought had crossed my mind. The sticking point was mouse and the large screen I recently bought.

[k.alexander]

Originally Posted by slitherjef

That is a good point. The thought had crossed my mind. The sticking point was mouse and the large screen I recently bought.

You can use the external mouse and the screen with the MBP "docked".

As for which mini to pick, I would strongly recommend going with the i7 mini. I just picked up the same thing after debating b/w that and the i5 mini and the 2011 and the 2012 iMacs 21.5". My primary use for the mini will be web/office and also photo storage and editing, namely Aperture and PS, I don't think my editing is as involved as is yours, and I'd still say take the i7 over the i5 without any doubts.

[slitherjef]

Originally Posted by k.alexander

You can use the external mouse and the screen with the MBP "docked".

As for which mini to pick, I would strongly recommend going with the i7 mini. I just picked up the same thing after debating b/w that and the i5 mini and the 2011 and the 2012 iMacs 21.5". My primary use for the mini will be web/office and also photo storage and editing, namely Aperture and PS, I don't think my editing is as involved as is yours, and I'd still say take the i7 over the i5 without any doubts.

So, pretty much, the 15" MBP in my lap would render a mac mini (either one) redundant. I do have an Apple tv (2nd gen) that I could mirror to my larger tv or connect it to my larger monitor.