Mini for my family?

Dear All,

3 years ago I bought a laptop for my wife. It was her first experience of owning a computer and I became her 24 hour tech support line. (she even gets my secretary to hunt me down at work)

The laptop is on its last legs am I am now looking at getting MAC to replace the laptop.

She uses the laptop for web surfing (GENERALLY SHOPPING!) and loading music onto her ipod. As the children get older I want them to be comfortable with computers and my 8yr old is showing an interest in photography. Elements is installedon the laptop.

The specs of the laptop are:-
AMD Turion 64 ML-37 processor: 2GHz, 64KB L1 Cache, 1MB L2 Cache
- ATI Radeon Xpress 200P chipset with Mobility Radeon X700 GPU and 128MB video memory
- 1GB DDR333 SO-DIMM (2x 512MB),
- 15.4" WSXGA+ TFT LCD display (1680 x 1050 resolution)
- Broadcom (802.11b+g) wifi, Gigabit wired Ethernet LAN, Bluetooth
- 2.5" Ultra DMA 66/100, 100GB (5400rpm) hard drive
- 8x DVD-RW/CD-RW slot loading combo drive (Panasonic Model: UJ-845-C)
- Audio AC'97 2.2, built-in dual speakers and microphone, speaker/headphone

So here are my questions:-

1. Would you recommend a mini plus a £200 screen or the cheapest IMAC?
2. Will the best mini be faster or slower than the laptop we have now?
3. Her itunes music folder is 13GB. Can I just copy it onto a external drive and then connect that drive to the mini and do the same in reverse?

Thanks for any help

Josh

Get her an iMac Josh and keep the little woman happy. A happy wife is a nice wife - need I say more?

Regards.

I really think the current minis are too "long in the tooth" to recommend buying them now. They are really outdated and in my opinion the iMac is a much better value.

If you have Wifi at home, get a MacBook. That is much more practical than a Mini, in particular if she has had a laptop before.

I got an old powermac. Its cheap and if you get one of the later ones, it might be a good deal, so longas you don't need to run heavy pc programs (you can use virtual pc for light ones) and you either are prepared to upgrade or don't need to run heavy programs. Other than ha, though, I'd recommend any iMac.

I have a mini and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone. It's a great little computer for the price. But if someone would've paid the difference for the iMac I wouldn't have complained either.

Another vote for an imac. Your wife will love the lack of cables and wires, and the mini is WAY overdue for an overhaul. Just remember to order a little extra memory, and not from Apple

I would recommend you get an iMac. Especially for your kids, it's VERY important that they become knowledgeable in computers, especially in today's society. I would suggest getting computer lessons as well for your kids. I would encourage them to play computer games as well.

The iMac is perfect. It has a really nice big screen, and there isn't a separate CPU part, it's all combined together in a neat little package, and will definately reduce clutter around the computer desk.