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Mac mini a good buy?

W

willie45

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 27, 2007
234
5
Hi

My wife has a mid 2007 white iMac 2.4Ghz core duo machine and is looking to upgrade. She uses it for mainly routine internet and email type stuff but she also uses iPhoto for her RAW files. Obviously this machine struggles with the latter and she wants to upgrade. The question is would an entry Mac Mini be good for her? She is looking at the basic mode 1.4Ghz with 8Gb RAM.

Would this be a significant upgrade for her or not?

Thanks for helping

W
 
Processing RAW files needs a good CPU so adding a SSD & ram to a core duo machine will not help much. Maybe look at the refurbished mini models and then you can put some of the savings to a third party SSD if it is really needed.
 
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The 1.4 mini with the standard drive is a pain to use. We have one where I work and its terribly slow. Like others have said go with something that has flash storage.
 
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Since she has an iMac, she'll have not only to get the Mini but a monitor. If you can afford it, consider the 21" iMac whether new or refurb.
 
Thank you all. Would the 21" iMac basic model perform as well as a MM 2.6Ghz? I'm not sure but we already have a screen which was used on another pc lying around the house

Also if I got the 2.6Ghz mini should I buy one with a 1TB fusion drive or 250Gb SSD?
 
The base iMac does turboboost to 2.7 GHz but that is dependent on cooling. For short bursts you will have the same performance, but as heat builds up it will slow down. So it will be near, and produce a bit of fan noise whenever you push it hard. For occasional use its not bad.

The fusion drive keeps track of what files are used more often and keep them on a SSD (12% of the 1 TB), while swapping in files as needed from the hard drive. It will be slower than a pure SSD as every time you use a new file it takes a bit to move it over to the SSD, but not by much for most tasks. Unless you know you need a SSD, the fusion drive gives you most of the speed benefits with more storage.
 
While the base 2014 mini is basically bad news, it does has a processor twice as fast as your 2007 iMac. The 1TB Fusion drive (option) in the new mini and iMac no longer have a 120GB SSD but a 24GB SSD. You either need the 2TB Fusion drive on the iMac or a pure SSD drive for best performance. For photography use you may also want to consider how much disk space you need. A system with just a 256GB SSD may not have enough space, forcing you to an external drive for the images.

That said, while the SSD (or Fusion) drive will greatly improve boot and program launching time, I haven't found it particularly advantageous for Photo apps. They seem to be fast no matter what the drive.
 
talmy said:
The 1TB Fusion drive (option) in the new mini and iMac no longer have a 120GB SSD but a 24GB SSD.
Click to expand...

As far as I know, the new Mac Mini was released on late 2014. It has a storage option with Fusion Drive combines 128GB(SSD) of superfast flash storage with a traditional hard drive. You are right about new iMacs, which was released on 2015, that have Fusion drive option with 24GB Flash(SSD) storage in it. Probably, upcoming, next generation Mac Minis will come with Fusion drive, 24GB Flash(SSD) storage in it.
 
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