I couldn't agree with you more as I find myself very close to your same situation. I have a beast of a PC performance wise that I built (though mine is actually pretty quite for what it has under the hood) and I have a 2009 Mini that I cracked open and installed 4 gigs of ram and a 7200rpm / 320g hard drive in right after purchase. While the mini wouldn't touch my pc for high end gaming (I seriously doubt a mac pro would either) its perfect for just about everything else. I could not be more happy with this mini and find myself using it for just about everything and it runs like a champ.
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mac mini or mac pro: Which one should I get?
- Thread starter saxman1969
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I couldn't agree with you more as I find myself very close to your same situation. I have a beast of a PC performance wise that I built (though mine is actually pretty quite for what it has under the hood) and I have a 2009 Mini that I cracked open and installed 4 gigs of ram and a 7200rpm / 320g hard drive in right after purchase. While the mini wouldn't touch my pc for high end gaming (I seriously doubt a mac pro would either) its perfect for just about everything else. I could not be more happy with this mini and find myself using it for just about everything and it runs like a champ.
The Mini is still very expensive for a "desktop" using not only mobile components but with very low specs too. The $600-700 you pay for a Mini just isn't worth it unless you get it refurbished for cheaper. I'd say that machine is worth around $500 or just a bit less.
In general, I'd agree with this. The two things that pushed the mini into the "acceptable" category for me are the noise levels and the heat output. I only hear my mini when it's spinning a CD or DVD, and there's just a small radius of heat directly around the case itself, and being blown from the back.
It was also a big step up performance wise from the Athlon PC I built back in '04, and that thing heats the room.
I'll gladly pay that little extra to get OS X. And running Vista on Mini specced PC is nightmare!
How do you find your min is when it comes to the speed of opening apps? I played with one in an Apple store and found it took quite a while to open different apps, much faster than my 3 year old PC. The unit I played with onyl had 2 gig of ram, but I imagine the speed diff was down the to slower HDD and CPU. Or was it just a weird machine?
For the most part it runs everything pretty decent. At this point I mainly use it for internet, itunes, iphoto, watched a few videos using vlc, and I have no complaint. I'm sure I will dig deeper into different applications the longer I have it but its only been a few weeks. Its quicker since I upgraded the ram and hard drive in comparison to being stock. I can't provide any benchmarks but I have not felt the need to go into windows to surf the internet, etc which tells me alot. I think its the perfect computer for me and my situation. Unlike many on here I really have no problems with windows, never had any meltdowns, and I really know the operating system like the back of my hand. Maybe its because I build my own machines. As a result the mini is the perfect second (quickly becoming first) computer that I run right along side my pc. As Hannah Montana would say "its the best of both worlds". Sorry I have two young daughters in the house.
No, its really is not. On a Core 2 Duo, you're fine. I ran it on my Core Duo Mini, and I was happy with it. And I only had 1.25GB of RAM. Mini w/ 4GB upgrade is more then enough.
My turn to pretty much fully agree with your statements.
The most power hungry app I use is Adobe Lightroom and the Mini runs it perfectly fine.
I think it's unfortunate that Apple takes a perfectly good machine and hobbles it with 1 gig of ram and the slowest hard drive on the face of the Earth. 4 gigs and a decent hard drive and the thing's a champ.
I'm actually thinking about getting a PS3 for my gaming "needs" and bagging PC gaming (except for flight sim). I'm THAT happy with the Mini.
John
I could see going that route except I'm too ingrained with a mouse and keyboard when it comes to first person shooters. I've tried them on my 360 and well the results are not pretty. I agree on the mini part though!
Back to the OP, sorry to slightly hijack the thread, as I mentioned in an earlier post I think a mac mini would serve you well based on your described usage. As others have mentioned I would not look at it being your only computer between now and 2014. Thats the great thing about the mini as its cost in comparison to the mac pro allows you to "upgrade" with a new computer every few years if you want to. To be honest with you I don't think I would want a current mac pro five years from now. Technology changes too fast and things that we could only ponder now will be an after thought on computers in a few years. Besides, I enjoy the process of buying and setting up a new computer to much not to do it every other year.
Hi John!
Can I ask how many pictures (RAW or JPG?) you have in your lightroom catalogue, and if Lightroom.app, catalogue and pictures are all on the internal HD?
How is the speed feeling when
- doing heavy adjustment (with brush in the develop module)
- browsing in the catalogue, jumping here and there?
(I could order soon a mini with 4Gb and 320 or 500 HD).
Thanks!