OK, after way too many years in the Microsoft ecosystem, and watching the Windows 8 train wreck unfolding, I'm ready to give a Mac a try. As a point of reference, the last Mac I used had a single 3.5" floppy drive and no hard disk, and the OS didn't have a cool predator name.
Anyway, I'm expecting the usage to be relatively light - the kids will be doing their homework on it and web browsing/web games, the wife will be doing email and web browsing, I'll screw around with it. I'll still have the quad-core Windows machine that I'll do media transcoding, etc on, at least initially. If it works out and does what we need, I expect to replace the other PC's in the house over the next several years (what? Doesn't everyone have a home file server and multiple computers running all the time? Can't replace then all simultaneously).
I'm looking at a used i5 mini as an inexpensive way to get started. I've read the rumors about the new ones coming out this week, but frankly I've been underwhelmed by the perceived performance improvements in the PC world over the last several years, so it's just not clear to me that an Ivy Bridge processor is worth too much of a premium over an i5 based system. What would you pay for a used $599 / $799 list mini today? Is discrete graphics worth the price premium?
Based on my experiences with PCs, I'd expect that the first thing I'd do is bump the RAM on anything I'd purchase up to 8 GB/16 GB (based on current pricing). In the PC world, this solves a lot of performance woes, even helping with slow disks. Is this experience applicable in the Mini world?
Thanks for any help you can provide,
/frank
Anyway, I'm expecting the usage to be relatively light - the kids will be doing their homework on it and web browsing/web games, the wife will be doing email and web browsing, I'll screw around with it. I'll still have the quad-core Windows machine that I'll do media transcoding, etc on, at least initially. If it works out and does what we need, I expect to replace the other PC's in the house over the next several years (what? Doesn't everyone have a home file server and multiple computers running all the time? Can't replace then all simultaneously).
I'm looking at a used i5 mini as an inexpensive way to get started. I've read the rumors about the new ones coming out this week, but frankly I've been underwhelmed by the perceived performance improvements in the PC world over the last several years, so it's just not clear to me that an Ivy Bridge processor is worth too much of a premium over an i5 based system. What would you pay for a used $599 / $799 list mini today? Is discrete graphics worth the price premium?
Based on my experiences with PCs, I'd expect that the first thing I'd do is bump the RAM on anything I'd purchase up to 8 GB/16 GB (based on current pricing). In the PC world, this solves a lot of performance woes, even helping with slow disks. Is this experience applicable in the Mini world?
Thanks for any help you can provide,
/frank
.