Mac mini 1.25 vs. 1.42

[AndrewTosh]

I am going to be buying a Mac mini in the near future. I'm confident that I can upgrade the RAM myself, after all, I did replace the AC/Sound board in my old Lombard:

(and yes, I got it back together! 😉 )

Okay, silly pictures aside, do you guys think the 1.42 ghz G4 is worth the additional $100? The extra 40gb is nice, but really if I want more storage I have Firewire and USB 2 enclosures around the house that I can put a big, cheap IDE drive in when I feel the need to. The 80gb drive is basically worthless to me.

I just feel like it might be worth upgrading the part that would be cost-prohibitive, if not impossible to replace, the CPU. Then again, $100 is 1/5 of the Mac mini's price, and it probably only makes a marginal difference.

Am I going to notice any huge difference? Will there be a point where the 1.25 isn't fast enough for some stuff, but the 1.42 is? What do you guys think?

-Andrew

 

[yamabushi]

The performance difference would be barely noticeable if at all. Make sure you upgrade the RAM from 256 since that will provide a noticeable improvement. I plan on getting the 1.42 with most of the options myself and a few 1.25's with 512 RAM and iSight cameras as gifts.

 

[AndrewTosh]

Thanks. 🙂 Yeah, I'm just going to put 1GB in. 1.25Ghz should really be more than enough. I'm typing this now on a Pismo G3/500 and use a Duron 1.1Ghz as my PC, both of which I find to be pretty usable.

-Andrew