Paging mac users
Help me. Please.
Wife's computer is dying. Quickly.
She's a mac person, an artist and I've decided that my attempts to divert her to the PC world would be problematic for both of us and likely result in arguements, long sessions of explaining things, etc.
Thus I've been looking into the mac world for deals. Have been looking at the Mac Mini. Average price found for base model which would supersede her current setup by about a trillion times is around $599.
However, Apple appears to have done something incredibly stupid in my PC world type opinion. The thing comes with 2Gb ram, 500Gb HD, NO CD/DVD drive! No ability to expand ram from what I can see (ok, after doing some surfing I can see that this is actually possible), you can purchase an external HD and external DVD drive.
The next model up at $799 looks like the only difference is that it comes with 4Gb ram.
My understanding is that I could set her up with my old 21" monitor via DVI port.
Any opinions on these little gaffers?
Wife's computer is dying. Quickly.
She's a mac person, an artist and I've decided that my attempts to divert her to the PC world would be problematic for both of us and likely result in arguements, long sessions of explaining things, etc.
Thus I've been looking into the mac world for deals. Have been looking at the Mac Mini. Average price found for base model which would supersede her current setup by about a trillion times is around $599.
However, Apple appears to have done something incredibly stupid in my PC world type opinion. The thing comes with 2Gb ram, 500Gb HD, NO CD/DVD drive! No ability to expand ram from what I can see (ok, after doing some surfing I can see that this is actually possible), you can purchase an external HD and external DVD drive.
The next model up at $799 looks like the only difference is that it comes with 4Gb ram.
My understanding is that I could set her up with my old 21" monitor via DVI port.
Any opinions on these little gaffers?
Comments
2 choices at the mac store or get from a 3rd party
Search Results - Apple Store (Canada)
As for the cd drive the external is the best option unless you have another bluetooth enabled mac in which case you can co-opt it's drive via wireless connection. CDROM's it seems will soon go the way of the 5 1/4 drive if you believe the steve jobs successors. I think it's just stupid personally.
We use a tonne of macs and have an old mac mini from 2006 that is still going strong. When new it was used as a photoshop CS2 machine so if it could run that pig of a program there is very little that will give it trouble.
This new one is pretty strong with the i5 chip. I'd spend the 110 on the ram upgrade to 4gig though. It can be done yourself if you are very good with computers as they pack everything in there phenomenally tight. If you break anything you void the warranty though so tread lightly.
net diff to a pc, 2GB upgrade on a pc is like $40. and is real simple to do, lots of room to install. Mac... blech!
it's a mini. takes up no space. going to have it's challenges.
Get a mac pro and you can install ram all day long in about 30 seconds. (8 Slots, up to 8GB per slot) while your at it, install another drive into any one of 4 internal bays will cost you another 30 seconds.
once done your mac will be faster than any win-crap box on the planet barring 10k in upgrades, won't be subject to a billion viruses (viri?) won't crash every 2 hours, and if you do anything remotely CPU intensive you'll be done before a win box is even finished booting. you'll have paid more for sure but you will have gotten quality that will last 10 years (mine from 04 still going strong in a backup role while I've been through a half dozen dead win boxes in that time).
remember, you started it
Windows 7, it was my "Mac's" idea.
So, the question really comes down to, "what is she going to be doing on this computer?" That's really the question that matters. Also, "how is that usage going to change in the next 3, 5, 10 years?"
My opinion (backed up by no actual data) is that most users will NEVER use the full potential of their computer. Based on that hypothesis, the Mini looks solid enough to me, but if you tell us what she'll be doing with it that may change.
This is what I imagine the majority of computers to be
Fake edit: the Mini comes with an HDMI > DVI adapter
Cheap ass pc hardware.
Nice OS X.
I built this just to run the Aperture program.
$553.46
CPU: Intel Core i3-2100
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H67M-D2
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6670 -
RAM: Corsair XMS3 4 GB 1333mhz DDR3 (4GB)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 341
Power Supply: Corsair CX430
Optical Drive: Sony Optiarc
Hard Drive: Seagate 1 TB 7200RPM
Installation DVD: Mac OS X Snow Leopard
More sample builds
http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/search/label/CustoMac
Thanks guys.
this made me laugh so hard it was great for the comic relief. thanks Comp. When it comes to a PC that's broken I will defer to you every time but you obviously have no experience with macs and their power. I know there is a lot of fluff out there like the apple fanatics who like the products because they are pretty etc and the followers who were brainwashed with ipods-to-iphones-to-ipads etc but man, if you need a computer to do heavy lifting it is either a server or a mac. And the server is probably Unix based instead of win-clone. (don't bring up gaming, as that is a subculture all it's own that has ignored the mac world)
A desktop win box can never, and has never , ever been comparable to the mac desk top (G4, G5, MAC-Pro). (not talking about Mini's or iMacs). Not in the IBM Power PC chip stage nor in the intel new world order. Mac moved to Intel chips because IBM got out of hardware that wasn't devoted to enterprise level servers and into software and consulting. Plain and simple. Not because Intel chips are better. I know you know this because of your background with IBM hardware. (I think I remember you saying you both installed and decommissioned AS/400's) now there are no more desk tops, laptops, cash registers, monitors etc. with the IBM name on them. Just hyper high end servers.
At the time (2002-2005) a dual 1.8 mHz G5 (ibm PowerPC) with 2gigs of ram was beating any win box over 2mHz with any amount of ram in crunching a video from 30 Gig to 4.2 gigs to fit on a DVD. You needed to have a server with 4 or more chips to match the performance. I was in small budget film development at the time so trust me, I checked. If I could have gotten our set up cheaper with win boxes I would have done it.
now, with an 8-12 core Mac Pro with 64 Gigs of ram there is nothing in the windows world that can compare. Windows 7 can't even handle >24 gigs of ram. but yeah, you can have your win box and I'll consult you when mine breaks as it certainly will. Of course I'll be writing to you on a mac.
Bill, sorry for the sidebar. Your wife will be very happy with the mini. It's OS is as intuitive as you can get and will allow her to get the most out of the computer (and it won't take up a tonne of desk space.)
Comp, I hope you take all this in the spirit of friendly COMPetition. it's good to joust to keep the spirits up
This really peaked my interest though.
do you see the extension of open source OS for computers or more in the rhelm of the the tablets/phones etc.?
Now, where is Kristy with standard TL/DNR tag
Wasted an hour online today googling things trying to figure out how to edit a simple txt file in a system directory, just because microsoft decided it would be better if I wasn't allowed to do that. I can take one-outers pretty calmly but I was ready to smash my mouse through my screen today.
I'm have very strong clear views on the Mac vs PC vs UNIX debate.
All of them have a place.
For some art things, Macs are by far the best tools.
For back end servers UNIX is the best for infrastructure.
For gaming and poker, PC's are my tool of choice.
To be clear, I built a Mac out of cheap PC hardware so I could run the photography program Aperture which is not available on the PC.
It runs the Mac OS X Snow Leopard just fine... I should probably upgrade it to the new MAC OS X ... Lion ...
But the idea that I was trying to convey is that you can build a better Mac for less money than buying a non-expandable mini.
So unless you need the small size of the mini, you're better off building a Hackentosh.
Also, When you choose your hardware for your PC. It doesn't hurt to leave yourself the option of running OS X.
This certainly used to be the case. They have come a long way.
I used to sell computers back in the late 80's. We mainly sold the PC platform, but our franchise made us carry macs as well. When customers would come into the store we'd place bets on whether or not they would go to the MAC area.
Looked grungy, artsy, kind of like a hippy.... The dialogue would go like this. "$10 mac user....? Can't take the bet. It's a for sure thing..... Damn."
The software area consisted of Pagemaker, Corel Draw, Wordperfect and a few others. The art folks kids would come up to me and ask "Where's the games for the Mac?" It was fun crushing their spirits "There are none." Parents would desperately come up and tell us there should be more available for the mac. "They are better computers you know!" Me: "Yes, but they hold <1% of the market."
Inately, they were more efficient computers as they used RISC based computing as opposed to CISC. Less requirement for RAM at the time. When PC's could produce 256 colours on the screen at once, mac's could display 16.7 million.
Back then, desktop publishers were their major market.
They have changed significantly over time and now hold a much larger piece of the market and have drawn more developers into the throng. Apple of late have become marketing geniuses.
The fun part used to be when a mac user switched over to the DOS based PC world:
"How do I copy my wordperfect document files on my new PC from my Wordperfect directory to my art directory?"
"It's easy. Just type xcopy C:\programs\wordperfect\documents\*.* /i /e /s C:\art\"
"You're kidding...."
"Nope"
Will be ordering new mac today. Just have to find out which type of display port these things have so she can use my old monitor on her computer.
Evil Bill bought the whole company.
3.5 years later Halo came out as the killer app on the Xbox.
Apple Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter (MB572Z/A) : Apple Computer Accessories - Future Shop
There are two basic types of Display port adapters, Active and passive...
The active ones are able to transfer full bandwidth and need a power source. The passive ones connect the pins.
Try an active one before you buy the passive one.
ps future shop = scum
You're right about Future Shop being scum though. They were the only ones I found that sold this damn thing though.
Future Shop is the only retail store I've ever been in where I was escorted to the door and asked to leave. They recognized me from the computer store I worked at. I was about to spend a few thousand bucks on stereo equipment. They thought I was documenting their pricing structure on computers? I was in the stereo department!
I pulled out a handful of hundreds and told the manager I'd be buying my amp elsewhere. Got a nice card in the mail from him a week later apologizing.
Of course, it probably helped that I at least sounded like I had a clue . . .