Tiger on a Mac Mini.

[damax452]

I have been seriously considering the switch from PC to Mac over the past few months. I was just wondering if you guys think Tiger will run nice and speedy on a Mac mini (512mb ram, of course). Or should I wait for a Mac mini update and buy then?

I won't be performing any earth shattering tasks on the mac, internet, email, dvds, mpeg4 watching, and music mostly.

I am pretty familiar with PCs and pricing and, IMO, a $500 PC is useless. I am used to spending $2000+ for a decent PC. Is the same true for Mac or will I be happy with the Mini? the mini being only $500/$600 makes me a bit skeptical.

I would go for one of those new G5 powermacs but I really can't justify the purchase given that I know so little about OSX and what it can do. What should I do !?!

 

[za9ra22]

I have been seriously considering the switch from PC to Mac over the past few months. I was just wondering if you guys think Tiger will run nice and speedy on a Mac mini (512mb ram, of course). Or should I wait for a Mac mini update and buy then?

I won't be performing any earth shattering tasks on the mac, internet, email, dvds, mpeg4 watching, and music mostly.

I am pretty familiar with PCs and pricing and, IMO, a $500 PC is useless. I am used to spending $2000+ for a decent PC. Is the same true for Mac or will I be happy with the Mini? the mini being only $500/$600 makes me a bit skeptical.

I would go for one of those new G5 powermacs but I really can't justify the purchase given that I know so little about OSX and what it can do. What should I do !?!

I have a 1.25/512 mini which has been running Tiger for a few days. It's a rather smoother OS than Panther, a little faster UI and overall, has a more responsive feel to it - and Panther was pretty good. $500 for a Mac buys you a somewhat better system than you'd get for $500 in the PC world. Admittedly in a PC you'd get a faster processor if you shop around and avoid the cut-down Intel and AMD models, and you'd get a bigger box, but you wouldn't get a pro-level OS, nor such a suite of software. Ultimately, the value of a Mac is the integration between hardware, OS and software that is simply not present in the PC world.

Then you also have to figure that Macs stay in active use far longer than most PCs. Typically a PC will stay in use 3 years at most and then be considered pretty worthless. There are plenty of Macs out there that are 4, 5 or 6 years old and are still doing commercial-level work in graphics, design, video etc.

Get a mini, add 512Mb RAM and give it a whirl. It's not a major investment and if you don't like it (or if you like it so much you want to splash out on a G5 after all) you'll be able to sell the mini with relatively little loss.