OK, opinion time. I'm looking at two Mac Mini's I can purchase for good prices. One is a 1.42 G4 running Leopard for $275 and one is a 1.83 core2 duo for $400. I want to set up a home file/media server. Obviously either one would work, but I'm wondering which is the better value and bang for the buck for what I need. Any thoughts?
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Mac mini 1.42 G4 or 1.83 duo for home file server
- Thread starter cschell
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+1 on getting the Core2. It will run laps around the G4, not to mention it will actually support Snow Leopard (if you want that), and it can run virtualization stuff (if you want/need that).
For the extra ~$100, you should really get the faster one...
For the extra ~$100, you should really get the faster one...
Do you think the extra horsepower will be needed for just serving files around the house? By the way thanks for your opinion.
It won't necessarily be needed just for serving files, but if you ever want to expand it uses beyond just a server, you will be grateful for the extra HP.
Not to mention, if nothing else, the Core2 models are newer and are likely to
A) Last longer, since their components are less physically aged
B) Be supported longer. Like I said, if you are at all interested in SL, you will NEED an intel-based Mac. PPC is going away in terms of support, and it would sure suck if some new snazzy use for the mini comes up only for you to find it is not supported on PPC...
Not to knock the Mac Mini G4, but I would go for the Mac Mini w/ 1.83 GHz C2D. (1) Much faster and (2) future proof (Snow Leopard+). 
Good thoughts, hadn't really thought about SL. Second question, do you think that the $400 price is right considering the new mini release?
http://www.mac2sell.net/
Offer cash and see if you can bring it down a little bit. I'd say $350 is fair.
NO. The performance bottle neck will be the rather small and slow internal disk drive. For use as a server you will want to buy a large and fast external Firewire disk.
Serving files is does not require a fast CPU or graphic card.
The Mini can run BSD UNIX if you like and become a very sophisticated server. I suspect the G4 PPC has a lot more "power" than the little ARM inside the Time capsule" or the typical NAS device
Another bottle neck is the network. If the Intel Mini has Gibabyte Eithernet (1000BaseT) then it will be much faster then 100M it Eithernet Provided that you have gigabit level networking on all the cliet side and switch too. (I don't know if 1000BaseT is on the Intel Minim or not)
I wouldn't invest any money in a PPC machine anymore. The Intels have gigabit, the PPC minis do not.