10-17-2006, 12:40 PM

hey, I've been looking into a mac for a whle now, and I have a few questions that have been buzzing around in my head for abit that I thought I could get a definitive answer here for.

Ok so I was originally considering a budget of MAX £300 (abut $600) and looking at powerbook G3s, and iBook G4s and mac mini's. I was talking to a friend who mainly builds/fixes PCs but has started dabbling in repairing powerbooks etc. who said he had a loaded (Photoshop CS2 [and possibly the whole CS2 package], Quark, Office for mac [i think]) mac mini that they'd done for a client, who then decided he didn't want it and so offered it to me for £300. Anyway, he sent me the details:

1.42ghz/1gb/80gb/DVDROM-CDRW/Radeon9200 (product code M9687B/A) - same spec as this one: http://www.dealtime.co.uk/xPF-Apple_...ombo_DVD_CD_RW but with 1gb RAM

when i'd asked him previously if it had an airport card, he'd said it hadn't but information on the apple website and otherwise suggests that that model is built in airport and bluetooth. Is there anyway to remove the airport card or is it pretty solidly installed? I don't really want to fork out another £60 for one, but then it's not too high on my specs list - running an ethernet cable would be acceptible too! Is this a good deal?

Cheers for your help!

10-18-2006, 10:51 AM

sorry about the abrupt ending, I had to leave before so I rushed the end of that post! What I wanted to mainly ask is:

is there any way that he could have removed the airport card to keep costs down, or has he just not realised it has one installed?

How much would should I expect to be paying off ebay etc. for a mac like this? If I click the compare prices button there it just gives me a link to the new £400 intel macs off the apple site.

Will I need to get a decent LCD monitor, or will any old CRT do? I have one lying about, and for the minute, will I end up with a big loss of definition using that? Does it need to have a minumim resolution or anything? Also, when I do fork out on an LCD, should I get a digital mac style one, or is RGB fine?

is there anything else I should know about the mini before I switch? I'm fairly familiar with OS X etc, it's just the hardware that I'm thinking about?