I recently bought a Mac Mini and I was wondering if it would be a wise choice to upgrade it to a PowerMac G5. I don't do anything intensive with it -- just surf the web and am planning on doing a lot of web design and creating my own website/forum. Do you think upgrading the Mini to a PowerMac would be a wise or unwise choice? I'm always under the impression that "faster is better", but of course the costs involved need to justify the needs. Anyone who does a lot of web work out there (or can imagine what it is like to do this) -- is a Mac Mini enough for my needs? Would appreciate any feedback. Thanks!
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Upgrade Mac Mini to PowerMac G5?
- Thread starter kanpachi
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You already have a mini, right? Well, if you're unhappy with the performance, you'll certainly see a drastic improvement if you get a Power Mac.
Otherwise, it might just be cheaper to get a fast external hard drive and max out the RAM, assuming you haven't already.
Otherwise, it might just be cheaper to get a fast external hard drive and max out the RAM, assuming you haven't already.
If you are going to be doing a lot of web work, professionally, where a few seconds here and a few seconds there of processing time will add up to make a difference in productivity, (such as, for example, editing a large table in Dreamweaver which can be painfully slow, or running a search and replace against 100's of files in a site), and you can write off the expense against income, then by all means, go for a Dual 2 GHz.
If you are just doing webstuff I would say throw in a 1gb stick of ram and maybe upgrade the hd to a 7200rpm drive and call it good. That 1.42ghz mini should take care of any photoshopping/web developing you need to do. In all reality, unless this is your profession, or if you need to do video stuff, I wouldn't see it worth it to buy a PM. Quite frankly, my 867mhz G4 PB does everything I need it to for web stuff easily and it only has 640 ram and a 4200 rpm drive.
I'm also doing a lot of web-desing work as I have my own site and I find my eMac (specs below) just enough for it. I dont think that your mini's CPU (which is twice as fast as mine) cannot handle web-work.
Keep mini and probably add RAM, cause mini's HD is 2 slow for large swap-files.
Keep mini and probably add RAM, cause mini's HD is 2 slow for large swap-files.
I do web design full time and my mini can more than handle it. Trust me, you'll be wasting thousands to upgrade to a PowerMac. It seems like a lot of people on the forums always jump it and say UPGRADE, UPGRADE! because the faster the processor the more people drool. If you can throw away money for the novelty, go for it.. if not, your mini is more than adequate.
www.phantom9.us was made on a mac mini.
www.phantom9.us was made on a mac mini.
??
I guess this is not including this site then.
So why did you design it on a mac mini if you have a G5, just so you could say that you did??
Nuc
It says on your site that "all sites are designed on an Apple PowerMac with dual 2.5GHz G5 processors....."mikemodena said:I do web design full time and my mini can more than handle it. Trust me, you'll be wasting thousands to upgrade to a PowerMac. It seems like a lot of people on the forums always jump it and say UPGRADE, UPGRADE! because the faster the processor the more people drool. If you can throw away money for the novelty, go for it.. if not, your mini is more than adequate.
www.phantom9.us was made on a mac mini.
I guess this is not including this site then.So why did you design it on a mac mini if you have a G5, just so you could say that you did??
Nuc
I have access to a G5 but I use the mini for everything.. but I put the PM on the site because it looks better, although the mini is a workhorse.
mikemodena said:www.phantom9.us was made on a mac mini.
That site shows as a blank page...
EDIT: Never mind. Problem solved.
Thank you all for the very helpful replies. I guess you don't need to get the latest and greatest machine to do web design. Glad to hear that.
I have another dilemna now, however, and I hope some of you patient folks out there can help me out again. I move around a lot from place to place, so I am considering getting a 12" PB instead of keeping the Mac Mini. I currently have a 20" ACD that goes with the Mini, but do people think that a PB 12" + 20" ACD is better or a PB 17" (hopefully it will be portable enough)? I was a previous owner of a 12" PB, but the screen wasn't any good in my opinion, but now that it is a necessity for me to move my computer from place to place, I will need to consider this option again. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I have another dilemna now, however, and I hope some of you patient folks out there can help me out again. I move around a lot from place to place, so I am considering getting a 12" PB instead of keeping the Mac Mini. I currently have a 20" ACD that goes with the Mini, but do people think that a PB 12" + 20" ACD is better or a PB 17" (hopefully it will be portable enough)? I was a previous owner of a 12" PB, but the screen wasn't any good in my opinion, but now that it is a necessity for me to move my computer from place to place, I will need to consider this option again. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I love my 12" PB, it does everything I ask it to and more. Well, for a portable machine. Mine doesn't have a superdrive, and it also has the 867mhz G4 and 32mb VRAM, so its not quite as fast as the new ones. I'd say it'd be fine. And actually, I like the screen on my machine, only thing I could ask for is maybe if it were a little brighter.