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Mac Mini or not to Mac Mini ? Help

T

tonyr190

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 8, 2011
22
0
UK
Hi all,

Was thinking of buying a Mac Mini :apple: 2.5GHZ i5 spec. however im not 100% sure about purchasing?

There are certain apps that i need to know that i can download on the mac i.e. Windows remote desktop? Windows Media Player? Divx? maybe ac3 codec? i want to try an avoid using VLC is possible.

thanks in advance.
 
are there mac alternatives to these programs ive listed? i know you can download a mac version of divx? not too sure about the rest?

ive used paralells on a mac a few times but find its very slow, is this the best windows vitual machine app for the mac?
 
tonyr190 said:
are there mac alternatives to these programs ive listed? i know you can download a mac version of divx? not too sure about the rest?

ive used paralells on a mac a few times but find its very slow, is this the best windows vitual machine app for the mac?
Click to expand...

For remote desktop, I use TeamViewer, which works with Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Ubuntu, iPhone, iPad, etc. It's very secure and quite simple to set up and use.... and it's free for personal use.

I used to use WMP when I was on Windows, but I find iTunes to be much better. iTunes comes with all new Macs.

And why do you want to avoid VLC Player? It works very well on Mac OS X.
 
i run vmfusion on my 2011 server it is really fast, but you need decent ram I have 16gb ram the max for 2011 minis. I gave 8gb ram to the windows side and it is very quick
 
If you want to have windows running on mac, you should consider also Oracle VirtualBox. ;)
Alas, I'd consider VLC for mac without installing a windows machine over it... :cool:
 
Microsoft does make a Remote Desktop app for OSX. I will also agree with others here that VLC is a nice media player. I run VMWare Fusion with an XP virtual machine on my 2009 Mini with only 4GB of RAM (about to be 8GB once I find time to crack open the case) and it still runs fine. I think the VM has 1GB of memory allocated to it. Virtual Box works well for running VMs as well.
 
tonyr190 said:
are there mac alternatives to these programs ive listed? i know you can download a mac version of divx? not too sure about the rest?

ive used paralells on a mac a few times but find its very slow, is this the best windows vitual machine app for the mac?
Click to expand...

What's your beef with VLC? It's infinitely better than any multiformat media player currently out.
 
but if you really don't want to use it, no problem.
install perian, thats a codec pack so you can view "everything" in quicktime.

of for music there's iTunes, nothing better in my opinion. I used only windows media player before cause i liked it! now never going back.
 
brilliant! thanks. Perian free to download? that will play avi's in Quicktime?
 
I also agree with the advice to use Perian. When I made the final switch to using the Mac exclusively full time (without even a windows partition), Perian made it simple for me to view all of my old media that I had hanging around.
 
I also use Perian and have found that it is very good. I can play nearly any medium on my Macs by double clicking it.
 
Honestly friend, any/every program for windows has a better alternative on the mac.

Having said that, there are a few exceptions. The Divx player and the Real player on the mac are not as good as in Windows. On the other hand, Quicktime player on the Mac is insanelly better than the Windows version. VLC too, is amazin on the mac!

And the good news is that Quicktime player plays ALL divx and WMP and Real videos, so all you need is something that already comes with your Mac. You will need to install perian/flip4mac/divx codecs and you will have quicktime as your default player.

Some very rare formats like .TS only plays on VLC, so you should install it anyway, just to be safe. And trust me, you will forget WMP ever existed
 
I know this may sound weird, but I have been buying iMac's for the last 5 years and this year i decided on a Mac Mini. I can literally pick my Mac Mini up and take it into my living room, take it with me to a friends house and any monitor with my adapter have an up and running desktop experience so easily.
 
Ayemerica said:
I know this may sound weird, but I have been buying iMac's for the last 5 years and this year i decided on a Mac Mini. I can literally pick my Mac Mini up and take it into my living room, take it with me to a friends house and any monitor with my adapter have an up and running desktop experience so easily.
Click to expand...

Thats one of the reasons I went with a mac mini, 1st off my needs are not great, and going the mini route was about 450+ less than an iMac, which is a very cool machine.

But if something happens to it or you want to take it somewhere it is a snap.
Portable, small, easy to ship if need be and less money, sold me, pronto.
 
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