Hey guys, I'm a fairly recent switcher to mac, getting my first second hand mini (1.66 ghz 1gb ram 60gb hd) around 5 months ago.
The OS didn't knock me over, but i never expected it to on a baseline consumer machine. But its a heck of a lot better than XP eh
. So i can't wait to buy my next mac when leopard is released!
So heres my slightly unique situation:
I'm 16 years old, and dad gets fairly major discounts through work, (we pay 43% of the retail price through edu discounts and tax deductions.)
We have a spare 20 inch dell display which is fine and is a reason im leaning slightly towards a headless machine, but is not a massive factor, but something to take into account.
Now what I'm looking at is either the 2.4ghz 20 in imac with 2gb memory, or the 2.8ghz imac with 2gb memory, or the baseline mac pro, probably also with a memory upgrade. I'm just curious to know in what ways the mac pro is better than the imac performance wise, seeing as the top end imac isn't too much cheaper than the bottom mac pro.
Now I suppose with this purchase I'm being a bit greedy in the sense that i don't really need the power of any of these machines, as the only real apps i use that really upset my mini in a big way are imovie, sibelius, and most importantly parallels. I also do a fair bit of video converting and youtube stuff, but really 80% of the use of this computer is word processing and internet.
But that aside, if you guys would tell me whether the leap to the mac pro is worth it for me considering i can afford it and have a display, or if its not worth getting the baseline model if I'm only really going to upgrade memory to 2 or 3 and maybe chuck in another hard drive.
Thanks in advance! 
edit: thanks guys for your input! yes, I'm hoping this machine will last me a long time, and ill definitely be getting that second hard drive for my windows partition, or however it works with bootcamp, ill stick up another thread when i place my order
The OS didn't knock me over, but i never expected it to on a baseline consumer machine. But its a heck of a lot better than XP eh
. So i can't wait to buy my next mac when leopard is released! So heres my slightly unique situation:
I'm 16 years old, and dad gets fairly major discounts through work, (we pay 43% of the retail price through edu discounts and tax deductions.)
We have a spare 20 inch dell display which is fine and is a reason im leaning slightly towards a headless machine, but is not a massive factor, but something to take into account.
Now what I'm looking at is either the 2.4ghz 20 in imac with 2gb memory, or the 2.8ghz imac with 2gb memory, or the baseline mac pro, probably also with a memory upgrade. I'm just curious to know in what ways the mac pro is better than the imac performance wise, seeing as the top end imac isn't too much cheaper than the bottom mac pro.
Now I suppose with this purchase I'm being a bit greedy in the sense that i don't really need the power of any of these machines, as the only real apps i use that really upset my mini in a big way are imovie, sibelius, and most importantly parallels. I also do a fair bit of video converting and youtube stuff, but really 80% of the use of this computer is word processing and internet.
But that aside, if you guys would tell me whether the leap to the mac pro is worth it for me considering i can afford it and have a display, or if its not worth getting the baseline model if I'm only really going to upgrade memory to 2 or 3 and maybe chuck in another hard drive.
Thanks in advance!
edit: thanks guys for your input! yes, I'm hoping this machine will last me a long time, and ill definitely be getting that second hard drive for my windows partition, or however it works with bootcamp
, ill stick up another thread when i place my order 
