Need Advice! Wish To Purchase Mac Mini And 24 Inch Cinema Display Moniter

[beeinformed]

Hi!

I am thinking of purchasing the mac mini and the apple 24 inch cinema display moniter.

I would like the mac mini to last at least four or five years, so I thought I would purchase later on additional ram as well as getting a solid state drive.

How much ram should I consider purchasing and what size solid state drive should I consider getting to "future proof" my mac mini?

Also, does anyone have any suggestions on where to purchase the additional ram and solid state drive?

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[Ice Dragon]

You are on the same road that I wish to take. You can get both a solid state drive and 8 GB of RAM from MacSales.com

Depending on the size of the SSD you get will determine your final cost 40 GB (on sale for $100, though normally $140), 60 GB ($170), 120 GB ($320), 240 GB ($630), and 480 GB ($1,600.00).

I would personally recommend a 120 GB drive unless you won't be having a lot of applications, in which a 60 or 40 GB is enough.

You're looking at about $400-$500 there between the RAM and SSD.

As for the 24" Cinema Display I would suggest looking for less expensive monitor unless money is no problem for you.

 

[DesmoPilot]

Considering the price, the 24" Apple Display isn't worth it.

 

[Eidorian]

You can get two Dell e-IPS displays for less than the Apple display.

 

[Baby Mac]

I just went down this road a month ago. It's taken me that long to get things just (about) right. Get at least 4GB RAM. From what others have said, you could get a 4GB stick and use a stock 1GB for now for a total of 5GB.

"Future Proof" ha-ha-ha. They'll tweak something in a year or two and a year or two after that you'll be moving on. That's how it goes. Seize the day!

 

[animatedude]

go for it.

 

[mangrove]

You are on the same road that I wish to take. You can get both a solid state drive and 8 GB of RAM from MacSales.com

Depending on the size of the SSD you get will determine your final cost 40 GB (on sale for $100, though normally $140), 60 GB ($170), 120 GB ($320), 240 GB ($630), and 480 GB ($1,600.00).

I would personally recommend a 120 GB drive unless you won't be having a lot of applications, in which a 60 or 40 GB is enough.

You're looking at about $400-$500 there between the RAM and SSD.

As for the 24" Cinema Display I would suggest looking for less expensive monitor unless money is no problem for you.

Really depends on how you will use it. Basically Ice has it nailed. Do you own an external drive? IF so and it is, FW800, then chances are you can get away with a 40 or 60GB drive.

My boot SSD is 40GB with all applications, home and OSX of course and takes up only 27GB-13 G available.

For my needs I keep iTunes (117GB) and iPhoto (6GB) on a second drive which can be a pretty fast hybrid platter drive if you want.

Did you see they have refurb'd minis for as low as $599 at the online Apple store?

 

[Ice Dragon]

"Future Proof" ha-ha-ha. They'll tweak something in a year or two and a year or two after that you'll be moving on. That's how it goes. Seize the day!

You don't think 8 GB of RAM and a 120 GB SSD is good for more than two years?

 

[emptyCup]

You don't think 8 GB of RAM and a 120 GB SSD is good for more than two years?

Depends on what you do with it. I'm fine with 2 GB on a 6 year old G5 iMac. If you look back at what Apple was selling 5 years ago you will see that there is no such thing as future proofing. Buy what you need now with the confidence that anything it does now it will continue to do in the future.

 

[Ice Dragon]

Depends on what you do with it. I'm fine with 2 GB on a 6 year old G5 iMac. If you look back at what Apple was selling 5 years ago you will see that there is no such thing as future proofing. Buy what you need now with the confidence that anything it does now it will continue to do in the future.

You raise a good point. I guess in my case though, I do not want to have issues running applications and watch as my hardware becomes horrifically obsolete (different from being slightly obsolete).

Two Gateway PCs I owned in my lifetime did not have enough simply because of two factors. 1. I didn't upgrade them and 2. I didn't choose my options better for the future.

Now... with my first Mac I want things to be a bit different if that makes sense.

I also want to give similar advice to the original poster.

 

[MacForScience]

Hi!

I am thinking of purchasing the mac mini and the apple 24 inch cinema display moniter.

I would like the mac mini to last at least four or five years, so I thought I would purchase later on additional ram as well as getting a solid state drive.

How much ram should I consider purchasing and what size solid state drive should I consider getting to "future proof" my mac mini?

Also, does anyone have any suggestions on where to purchase the additional ram and solid state drive?

Thanks in advance for your help!

So here is the secret to Mac Mini buying get the server version and wipe the drive put a standard version of OS 10.6 on it and get an external DVD drive. So the beauty of the solution is that you get 2 500GB HDs 4GB of Ram 2.66 Ghz proc and if you pay $100 for the apple super drive you have all the functionality of the standard model + a hard drive and it only runs $1100 (this is just the computer no monitor or keyboard). If you try to get the same deal with the standard mini you pay $1050 and don't get the extra 500GB HD.

Hope this helps...

Cheers

 

[DesmoPilot]

So here is the secret to Mac Mini buying get the server version and wipe the drive put a standard version of OS 10.6 on it and get an external DVD drive. So the beauty of the solution is that you get 2 500GB HDs 4GB of Ram 2.66 Ghz proc and if you pay $100 for the apple super drive you have all the functionality of the standard model + a hard drive and it only runs $1100 (this is just the computer no monitor or keyboard). If you try to get the same deal with the standard mini you pay $1050 and don't get the extra 500GB HD.

Hope this helps...

Cheers

Why wipe the server version? It has the same functionality.

 

[MacForScience]

Why wipe the server version? It has the same functionality.

Server has all sorts of extra stuff running in it to make it act as a server so for the average user getting rid of the functionality simplifies usage.

I don't think its a usage requirement its an option.

Cheers

 

[Baby Mac]

You don't think 8 GB of RAM and a 120 GB SSD is good for more than two years?

4GB RAM is enough for anything I would do for the foreseeable future. However, the 120GB SSD is small, and most folks would want more storage f they have alot of audio, video or pictures on their computer. Plus their is the issue of how many times you can overwrite the SSD memory before it is unusable. You don't see anyone buying 120GB HDDs, do ya? Bigger drives than that had exponential price increases 2-years ago, just like the SSDs of today.