Ok so I decided to switch over from the Windows world to Mac, and dove in head first. I knew I would be getting the new unibody 13", but was also in desperate need of a desktop. My only two real option were the mac mini and the Imac. I read as much info as I could find and started leaning towards the mini mac.
I was hesitant because I kept reading how a major upgrade was comming next week for the Mini. Of course those posts started March of 08. Also there were the threads on how pathetic the mini was and horribly outdated it is. Well after some soul searching I went ahead made a lead of faith and picked up the 2.0 mini and laptop on sunday. After leaving the apple store we went frys and picked up a 21 inch ACER monitor for 140.00 and 4 Gigs of ram for 40.00. I already had a keyboard and mouse giving me a grand total investent of 960.00.
The first thing I did was set up my new system and conect it to the AEBS that I also got. I downloaded the software updates and was up and running in a couple of hours. I downloaded all of my music(thank you senuti) uploaded around a thousand pics and three hours of home movies. I loaded iMovie and started to see what the little guy could do. It worked amazingly well for only 1 gig of ram but I could tell it was pushing what its capabilities were. The next day I cracked the case dropped in the 4 gigs and it was like my mini was on crack, it straight flew. Loaded programs like nothing an could run 4-5 aps at a time without a hickup. I am flat out impressed.
Now contrasting my cousin just picked up a nice dell system for less money with much better specs. 500gig HD 3gigs of ram and a 2.8 C2D. However the thing seems to take forever to load basic programs like IE explorer and it slows to crawl when using heavy memory programs like the video editing programs. I didnt have the heart to show him my mini.
So yes the specs on other systems may look much better but I think the problem is that when you have something that works very well you dont go and screw it up because there is a newer slicker piece of hardware out there.
On another note while we were at the apple store I saw three separate people leave with new mini's. For all the complaining about them updating the system it seems that people love whats already on the market.
I was hesitant because I kept reading how a major upgrade was comming next week for the Mini. Of course those posts started March of 08. Also there were the threads on how pathetic the mini was and horribly outdated it is. Well after some soul searching I went ahead made a lead of faith and picked up the 2.0 mini and laptop on sunday. After leaving the apple store we went frys and picked up a 21 inch ACER monitor for 140.00 and 4 Gigs of ram for 40.00. I already had a keyboard and mouse giving me a grand total investent of 960.00.
The first thing I did was set up my new system and conect it to the AEBS that I also got. I downloaded the software updates and was up and running in a couple of hours. I downloaded all of my music(thank you senuti) uploaded around a thousand pics and three hours of home movies. I loaded iMovie and started to see what the little guy could do. It worked amazingly well for only 1 gig of ram but I could tell it was pushing what its capabilities were. The next day I cracked the case dropped in the 4 gigs and it was like my mini was on crack, it straight flew. Loaded programs like nothing an could run 4-5 aps at a time without a hickup. I am flat out impressed.
Now contrasting my cousin just picked up a nice dell system for less money with much better specs. 500gig HD 3gigs of ram and a 2.8 C2D. However the thing seems to take forever to load basic programs like IE explorer and it slows to crawl when using heavy memory programs like the video editing programs. I didnt have the heart to show him my mini.
So yes the specs on other systems may look much better but I think the problem is that when you have something that works very well you dont go and screw it up because there is a newer slicker piece of hardware out there.
On another note while we were at the apple store I saw three separate people leave with new mini's. For all the complaining about them updating the system it seems that people love whats already on the market.
