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iMac vs Mac Mini

rgarjr said:
nice purchase dude. Opening up a mini is fun.
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thanks. it was funny actually, when i ordered the ssd, the site has an insurance policy in which if you break any peripherals while installing them, they will replace it for you for free - it costs £2.

But i dont have a fear of breaking the ssd, just the mini
 
ed-hawco said:
OK, that seals the deal. Thanks for the input; I'm going to buy right away.

And I'm going to look into the HD self upgrade option. Funny enough, the idea of popping a new HD into a Windows machine seems no scarier than brushing my teeth, but the Mac Mini seems so self contained and "proprietary" that I'm terrified! I'm going to search the forums for tips. Thanks!
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I thought the same thing until I watched this video from OWC. And here is one with just pictures. It looks easy. If you can open up a PS2 or any other computer you can do this.
 
see, I would love a mac mini. Just as much power as I need, quiet, small footprint...
But I swear to :apple:, it drives me up a wall every time I have to move my computer around, as I currently have a PC (a la tower). I am a micro managing perfectionist, so running the cables takes a while, and I have large, meaty man hands that I use well on construction sites and the like, so screwing DVI and VGA cables into their slots is like fitting a giraffe into a thimble.

so I think I am getting an iMac and a hackintoshed netbook (HP mini 1000) looking forward to college in two years.

:eek:
 
5400 vs. 7200 HDD

But seriously, is there a noticeable difference between a 5400 RPM and a 7200 RPM HDD? Because I think the 320 GB is big enough for me, but I'm worried about the speed (when loading photo into PSE or Lightroom, etc.). I'm not sure the gain is worth the trouble of replacing the HDD when capacity isn't really the issue. Any opinions?
 
ed-hawco said:
But seriously, is there a noticeable difference between a 5400 RPM and a 7200 RPM HDD? Because I think the 320 GB is big enough for me, but I'm worried about the speed (when loading photo into PSE or Lightroom, etc.). I'm not sure the gain is worth the trouble of replacing the HDD when capacity isn't really the issue. Any opinions?
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Yes there is a difference, a good western digital drive at 7200rpm will be much better than the stock apple puts in.

I will be removing the drive and adding a 30GB SSD, the mini will fly with that in it. All media is kept on a mybook 2TB connected via firewire 800.
 
In my case, I think I'm going to go with a small HDD (120 GB) and get a big, fast external drive for my data (3.5" 500GB 7200 RPM, in one of those matching enclosures from OWC). I'm assuming that being connected with FW 800 on a six inch cable will be pretty darn fast.

Which leads to another question. I'll have the OS on the built-in drive and the data (mostly photos, but also iTunes music & podcasts, etc) on the external. But should I put the aps on the internal or the external?

I've always been lead to believe there is a performance advantage to having aps and data on separate drives (the drives can be working independently at full speed simultaneously, as opposed to task-switching if everything's on the same drive). However, which of the two do you think would be best, from a performance point of view?

(A) OS and Aps on slower internal drive (direct SATA connection) and data on FW800 external drive.

(B) OS on slower internal drive (direct SATA connection) and both aps and data on FW800 external drive.

Or is this all just a bunch of hair-splitting? :)
 
Once you go SSD, you don't wanna go back. The only thing preventing me from getting a high-end iMac is there is no SSD option right now, I can put one in it seems, but it looks like way more work.
 
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