Mac Mini

[JPT]

Hey, in the next few months my school will be getting 2 Mac Minis and I am kinda the tech adviser there... Would it be wise to get the Mac Minis now, or later to see if they get upgrades? Right now they are just waiting to see what's going to happen with Leopard, but as you know that has been delayed until October

Anyway, right now we don't absolutely NEED them, but it would be a great thing to get.

[bartelby]

Well the general rule of thumb is:

If you NEED it now, then buy now.
If you don't, then wait.

[papadopolis1024]

wait till NAB atleast (I think sunday is there keynote) and WWDC if you CAN.

[CRAZYBUBBA]

Seeing as school begins in sept, I'd def wait for WWDC- June

[SalukiWildcat]

If I were you, i would at least wait until after NAB, and even after WWDC in June. You may see the (hopefully) new C2D mac minis by then.

[JAT]

Why? The CD Mini is plenty for everything I can imagine a normal school needing. Why worry about a slight speed increase with C2D? I wish I had a Mini for my work computer.

[suneohair]

Originally Posted by JAT

Why? The CD Mini is plenty for everything I can imagine a normal school needing. Why worry about a slight speed increase with C2D? I wish I had a Mini for my work computer.

Slight speed... C2D...

Mini....work computer...


Wow man. You should educate yourself.

[SkyBell]

Originally Posted by JAT

Why? The CD Mini is plenty for everything I can imagine a normal school needing. Why worry about a slight speed increase with C2D? I wish I had a Mini for my work computer.

Originally Posted by suneohair

Slight speed... C2D...

Mini....work computer...


Wow man. You should educate yourself.

Actually, he's right on the spot. I hate it when people under-estimate the Mini. They assume it's not actually good for work. Please. Buy one and then tell me how you feel.

[JAT]

Originally Posted by suneohair

Slight speed... C2D...

Mini....work computer...


Wow man. You should educate yourself.

Uh, gee, must be I dumb.

I am typing this on a Mini 1.66. Have you ever even seen a Mini in person? You obviously haven't seen one operate. 10-20% increase at same clock speed is slight in my vernacular. You want to call it major, go ahead. Then maybe get yourself a dictionary.

You seriously think that a Mini wouldn't be as good as the cheesy Optiplex with a Pentium D inside that I am forced to use at work? Get a clue. My Mini runs XP faster in Parallels than the hardware D can. Not that I would use XP if I had a Mini at work.

[janey]

Originally Posted by JAT

Why? The CD Mini is plenty for everything I can imagine a normal school needing. Why worry about a slight speed increase with C2D? I wish I had a Mini for my work computer.

the only reasoning i can see for waiting for upgrades is that prices on older models may go down as a result. or, that you're getting slightly more futureproof 64bit c2d machines for the same price as the current cd minis.

btw, my mini runs like crap and has what I believe is a major cooling issue. my athlon64 x2 3800+ box with the same amount of ram and similar specs (except the gfx card) in a larger box with a widescreen lcd costs roughly the same as the mini sans display plus ram and hard drive upgrades (160gb 4200rpm...now upped to 100gb 7200rpm)...this was after the amd price cuts cause of cd/c2d release by intel and it's even cheaper now. It does a lot pretty well, runs XP better than the mini, runs gentoo better than the mini...runs vista better than the mini (the last one is subjective, and mostly due to the fancy aero crap I can use with the non-****** gfx card i have in the pc).

[Father Jack]

Although I use a Mac pro for about 70% of my work, I use a Mac Mini for the rest.

The Mini is a very underestimated computer that I definitely wouldn't want to be without.

FJ

[janey]

Originally Posted by Father Jack

The Mini is a very underestimated computer that I definitely wouldn't want to be without.

I really wish Apple had something between the Mac mini and Mac Pro that didn't have an integrated display like the iMac.

The lack of upgradability is killing me, but size-wise the mini is just so much more appealing to me than the mac pro (don't have the space...PCs have lots of drives and hence have big cases... )

[Father Jack]

Originally Posted by janey

I really wish Apple had something between the Mac mini and Mac Pro that didn't have an integrated display like the iMac.

The lack of upgradability is killing me, but size-wise the mini is just so much more appealing to me than the mac pro (don't have the space...PCs have lots of drives and hence have big cases... )

It's a pity you don't have the room for the Mac Pro, it's very expandable.
I have three hard drives inside the Pro and still room for one more. This saves on desk space if you regularly use external drives. The monitor can be wall mounted saving you even more room.

FJ

[janey]

Originally Posted by Father Jack

It's a pity you don't have the room for the Mac Pro, it's very expandable.
I have three hard drives inside the Pro and still room for one more. This saves on desk space if you regularly use external drives. The monitor can be wall mounted saving you even more room.

i regularly use external drives, but the vast majority of my drives are being used by my raid array for my fileserver. Four drives, I dunno about expandability...much better than the mini's 1 2.5" but...

My gaming PC alone has room for 6 full sized hard drives (I think...I see 3 in there currently spaced out but enough room for 3 more), plus enough extra bays to modify for another 2 or so. Unfortunately my PSU only has enough connections for 6 SATA drives, but if the rest were IDE then it probably could power all of them. I don't have a Mac Pro, but having been around them enough, I'd say my gaming PC is roughly the same in size, which makes it huge