New iMac or Mac Mini?

[dyn]

@dyn,
That was a great real life situation you posted. I enjoyed reading it as it was specific and detailed to a real life situation.

Thanks!

Only web surfing, itunes music and movies, using handbrake, doing homework, chatting etc..the basics in ilife and iwork/office 2008 and of course, mail.

That's what I do mostly as well as some virtualisation (which is great with a ssd in the mini, I can really tell the difference in performance between ssd and hdd) and the mini does this just fine. If I take a look at the new mini models I like the new higher end model, the one that goes for something like 749 euro. It has a great cpu, the max amount of mem and the hdd is good enough. It saves you the hassle of opening the mini and do the upgrades yourself. Bit jealous about the 2,53 GHz cpu on the newer model as mine has only 2.0 GHz

I keep getting into this dillemma...especially since the new macs came out.

Unfortunately both machines are really great machines. That new 27" iMac really is a tempting machine as it's the cheaper Mac Pro model shoved into a display. Mac mini's are just really great little monsters. Good luck with that dilemma!

You could put all of your data on a networkshare on a Time Capsule/Airport Extreme (with external disk) or some other NAS. Non-Apple NAS devices don't work particularly well with Time Machine, the TC/AE is better for that. In my case I'm using an external hdd for Time Machine backups (it's the only thing that hdd is used for). To sync stuff to my laptop whenever I need it I use different stuff like rsync or good old copy/paste from a networkshare or usb stick.

I just read the other thread where you were celebrating that you bought the new Mac mini. Congrats and enjoy the new toys