Old mini or Older iMac?

[JSENNY25]

I am looking to get a budget mac for my classroom and i am looking at two different models...The 2007 20'' C2D 2.4 aluminum iMac or the 2010 C2D 2.4 Mac mini.

Take away screen, keyboard, and mouse...I have extras for the mini.

I am talking about performance in a real world setting. Both geekbench scores are similar:

iMac- 3216/3595

mini- 3307/3635

The only real benefit I can see is if I MAX out the ram in the mini (16 as opposed to 6 in the iMac)

The they both have the same HD size, but the iMac spins at 7200 and the mini is at 5400.



Any help would be greatly appreciated.

FYI: the mini is $350, the iMac is $425, so I the difference is nominal and I would rather get the better mac for my needs (keynote, pages, iPhoto, iMovies,Garageband)


Here is a link to the everymac site

Here is the everymac.com score sheet:

 

[Intell]

The Mini, get the Mini. It's faster than the iMac in general every day computing and it'll likely have a longer lifecycle.

 

[JSENNY25]

Thanks

Thanks for the opinion.

I have another question.... It looks like both systems will probably be able to run the new operating system (Mavericks). Is there anything else I should really be concerning myself with?

 

[Intell]

The future. The Mini is more future resistant than the iMac. The iMac is very likely going to be dropped with what ever comes out after 10.9.

 

[dtjay7]

I just sold my 2010 Mac Mini and got the same iMac that you are looking at. But, when I got this iMac with a 256 GB SSD already in it and 4 GB of memory. I have upgraded the CPU to a 2.8 Core 2 Extreme. I changed because I liked the all in one of the iMac better than having separate pieces. I am thrilled with the change.

 

[fig]

I'd get the Mini and swap out the hard drive for an SSD.

You'll see a really noticeable performance increase for everyday tasks and it'll be a roughly equivalent price to the iMac (assuming you get like a 128gb drive).

 

[JSENNY25]

Thanks...

The SSD swap in both would be pretty nice.

I have also read that I can switch the processor in the iMac.

That might be kind of fun.