I am seriously thinking about purchasing a top line mac mini. By just looking at the specs, it seems to be on par with the low level unibody Macbook. I was wondering if it could handle programs like Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks etc.? I know for definite I would have to upgrade the ram. I just don't want to have to spring for an iMac or Macbook if I don't have to. I have a nice monitor to go with it as well. Any suggestions??
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How powerful is a top model mac mini??
- Thread starter xxplosive1984
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The Mac mini is effectively a desktop bound MacBook without a display.
If your time is money you might want to consider a more powerful Mac. Otherwise the Mac mini is fine.
If your time is money you might want to consider a more powerful Mac. Otherwise the Mac mini is fine.
Right now I have a compaq laptop 2.4 core 2 duo, but I really would like a mac. Would you consider a low level uMB pedestrian? Just a question.
It depends entirely on your workflow. You'll end up with a somewhat slower machine when your current 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo. You'll have to get the higher end Aluminium MacBook to get 2.4 GHz.
That Compaq might have a faster clock speed, but over performance is not just determined by clock speed, but also efficiency. A 1.6Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo could run circles around a Pentium 4 3.00Ghz, despite being roughly 1/2 the clock speed. I think the Mac Mini is fine. The components are definitely better than a Compaq, which is HP's low end line of computers.
Remember that you have 14 days to return/change it if it's not powerful enough (if you live in states, there'll be 15% restocking fee).
FTW. My hackintosh scores a 6600 geekbench under OS X, but only 5700 under XP SP3.
This could be down to many reasons, including driver optimisation and software design. Windows and OSX operate differently.
To the OP though:
My friend had a G2 Mac Pro and he recently bought a top end Mac Mini and upgraded it with a 500GB hard drive and 4GB ram. For what he uses it for he finds no need to turn on his power hungry Mac Pro (although his work flow has changed since the downturn...).
For general computing the Mac Mini is perfect. Think about all the people who are happy with the Atom, and the Mac Mini is at least twice as fast.
Are you planning on selling your Compaq laptop to fund the purchase or are you thinking of buying a whole new machine? If you're planning on not selling your compaq then you could always get an iMac for roughly the same cost as a low level uMB. You might even be able to plump up for a 24". You could still use your Compaq laptop when you want some portability. Or you might want to sell the Compaq and put it towards a top end MacBook or entry level MacBook Pro fund.
What kind of thing do you want (laptop or desktop), how much do you think your budget will be and what do you usually do with your machine? 2.0GHz vs 2.4GHz wouldn't be very noticeable in a lot of things.
If OSX wasn't designed to work on your Hackintosh then it wouldn't work now would it?
Drivers for the Mac have to only cover a few models, on windows they have to cover many more models. Drivers are created to cover the most amount of hardware with the least amount of files. There is probably code for graphics cards that people don't use any more.
Lastly, OSX and Windows have different optimisation stragedies, as do the driver companies for each platform. The benchmarking program may show OSX being faster here because it doesn't test the parts where windows is faster.
BTW i'm not arguing which one is better, just that you need a broader scope of data before you can declare a winner.
I like my OSX thank you very much
i found the same results when comparing geekbench on this i7 system using 10.5.6 and then using vista. I dont have the exact numbers but they were much more drastic than cavemans. It took a while to get everything supported..but after getting all 8 cores and 6gb of memory properly recognized in osx, i would get geekbench scores over 12000..they wouldnt get over 10500 in vista.
I also ran cinebench in both OSs and saw similar benefits in osx. This was running a ati hd4850 (right after netkas released the kexts for it...it was obviously not comparable before witout quartz extreme support).
one last benchmark was using Zbench (zbrush 3d modeling app benchmark) in vista and in osx version. once again, osx was faster..
i would have never guessed that this would happen across the board like that with all of these apps...it definitely opened my eyes to the benefits of osx. It ran pretty stable on this i7 system, but i actually run osx 10.5.6 fulltime now on my gateway laptop. it is much faster and more reliable than when i had vista on it. I am so pleased with osx that I am going to buy my first mac tomorrow (a mini)
I also ran cinebench in both OSs and saw similar benefits in osx. This was running a ati hd4850 (right after netkas released the kexts for it...it was obviously not comparable before witout quartz extreme support).
one last benchmark was using Zbench (zbrush 3d modeling app benchmark) in vista and in osx version. once again, osx was faster..
i would have never guessed that this would happen across the board like that with all of these apps...it definitely opened my eyes to the benefits of osx. It ran pretty stable on this i7 system, but i actually run osx 10.5.6 fulltime now on my gateway laptop. it is much faster and more reliable than when i had vista on it. I am so pleased with osx that I am going to buy my first mac tomorrow (a mini)