Best mac for Garageband on a budget

[jinny1]

My friend is a songwriter and wants to get a mac and use garageband as a composing/demo tool. She only has vocals, guitar, and maybe down the road a midi keyboard.

She's on a really tight budget and I was wondering if an off the shelf mini would give her the power she needs to run Garageband.

I saw a 1.66 intel mini with 1GB of ram on craigslist for $699. That's more than budgeted, but I think the extra ram would be the most essential thing.

Also, if you buy from the Apple refurb shop, can you get them to upgrade the ram?
Thanks,
Jinny

 

[mdickson]

The 1.66 ghz mac mini will be fine for that. But instead of buying off CL I'd get one form the apple retail store for $699. Granted, it only comes with 512mb of ram, but you can buy a 1 gig stick of ram for under 75 bucks.

 

[DavidLeblond]

I'm no expert, but I've been able to do small dumb songs using the provided loops on my 933MHz iBook. It starts to choke when I have a lot of software instruments, other than that its fine.

So for demoing I expect it to work fine.

 

[Applespider]

The RAM is important but so is the speed of the HD. On a 4200rpm drive in my 1.25Ghz Powerbook, even with 1.25GB RAM, Garageband doesn't like more than three or four long tracks.

 

[jinny1]

The 1.66 ghz mac mini will be fine for that. But instead of buying off CL I'd get one form the apple retail store for $699. Granted, it only comes with 512mb of ram, but you can buy a 1 gig stick of ram for under 75 bucks.

I watched a video of someone installing ram into a mini....It looked really tricky, but I'm willing to try that route.

I'm skittish about buying off craigslist and inheriting someone else's problems, but if it's still under warranty I could still get it serviced as the second owner, true?

 

[mdickson]

I watched a video of someone installing ram into a mini....It looked really tricky, but I'm willing to try that route.

I'm skittish about buying off craigslist and inheriting someone else's problems, but if it's still under warranty I could still get it serviced as the second owner, true?

I wish I could answer that question, but I just don't know.

I typed 'retail' in my original post, obviously it should've been 'refurb'.

 

[Killyp]

If you start using effects and virtual instruments, it will take up the CPU in no time at all. I'd want at least a Duo...

 

[jinny1]

If you start using effects and virtual instruments, it will take up the CPU in no time at all. I'd want at least a Duo...

So, maybe she'd be best served getting the refurb duo and upgrading the ram later.

 

[ricgnzlzcr]

I recorded a handfull of songs with various loops and tracks on a 1.33 Ghz powerbook with 768 ram. It was just fine. A core duo mini would do the job amazingly.

 

[jinny1]

thanks everybody!

I'm gonna recommend the refurb duo.

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preview "I'm In".