A Mac Mini for a PC User?

mynameis · Jan 23, 2005

witeshark said:
When W32.Mirsa.A@mm is executed

Then don't execute it

witeshark · Jan 23, 2005

Most if not all are set up to be accidentally executed. Do you live under a stone bridge?

shaun89 · Jan 23, 2005

JohnVbs said:
I've been looking at the Mac Mini and think about whether it would be woth getting. Keep in mind I'm currently a PC user and currently only use macs at School.

I'm looking for reviews from people who already have them.
A few specific questions:
How well does it handle Adobe Photoshop and Carrara Studio?
How well does linux run on it. (Yello Dog, Ubuntu, etc.)

Maybe an iMac would be a better choice with photoshop?

mynameis · Jan 23, 2005

witeshark said:
Most if not all are set up to be accidentally executed.

Yes, but it still requires user action, which means it can be avoided, easily. There are plenty of people out there that don't have virus and spyware problems.

JohnVbs, you still here?

witeshark · Jan 23, 2005

shaun89 said:
Maybe an iMac would be a better choice with photoshop?

Depending on the amount of work (photo size etc) yeah, the G5 would be faster. Key notes: the Mac Mini is really small but can easily run Photoshop with enough RAM (up to 1G) but must use a notebook hard drive obviously (4200 RPM) That said, Mac mini is clearly a personal computing revolution to those that are awake. It's all about OS X yo!

mynameis · Jan 23, 2005

If I had the money I would go 17in iMac over mini mac, I love the 17in display and it comes with a keyboard and mouse, plus 2 memory slots makes upgrading easier.

VakeJ · Jan 23, 2005

Since this thread has taken a little detour, I've got a quick question regarding cpu speeds...

The mac mini can be purchased with a 1.42 ghz processor, which is faster than the emacs (1.25ghz). What would the 1.42 be equal to relative to an intel chip? I know these comparisions are difficult to make, but I'm just curious to see what others think...

VJ

mynameis · Jan 23, 2005

VakeJ said:
The mac mini can be purchased with a 1.42 ghz processor, which is faster than the emacs (1.25ghz). What would the 1.42 be equal to relative to an intel chip? I know these comparisions are difficult to make, but I'm just curious to see what others think...

Read the first page of this thread, you'll get a couple people's opinions on that. I say, if I can do what you need to do efficiently, then don't worry about comparing it.

witeshark · Jan 23, 2005

VakeJ said:
1.42 ghz processor, which is faster than the emacs (1.25ghz). What would the 1.42 be equal to relative to an intel chip? I know these comparisions are difficult to make, but I'm just curious to see what others think...

VJ

What is the point of splitting hairs?? Any Athlon/Intel edge is sheared away by running windows defense apps Mac will never need!! HELLO!

schweb · Jan 23, 2005

VJ, there's no accurate way to compare the speeds of an Intel chip and a PowerPC chip. Trust me, a much slower PowerPC chip though is just as good as a much faster Intel chip simply because of the architecture of the systems and the overlying OS.

Aptmunich · Jan 23, 2005

witeshark said:
What is the point of splitting hairs?? Any Athlon/Intel edge is sheared away by running windows defense apps Mac will never need!! HELLO!

Whiteshark, there's no need to jump down the throat of VakeJ just for asking a perfectly legit question..

VakeJ:

There are quite a few threads on the topic of intel vs. powerpc processor speeds, fact is that it's difficult to measure system performance fairly since most benchmarks are optimized for one or the other system and don't take user interface issues into account.

I can do stuff faster on a slower mac than a PC user can on a much faster PC...

Amen-Moses · Jan 23, 2005

mynameis said:
Where are you getting this information? Intel's Pentium-M has been around for years now, I have one. Clock for clock they are faster than Pentium 4s. As far as I have heard they are in no way based on a Pentium 3.

A PC magazine, IIRC it's called PC Extreme and it is dedicated to overclockers and modders (doesn't even have a CD on the cover!), there was a huge article comparing processors and explaining the differences between the various designs. I left the ruddy thing at work though, If I'd known I was going to be having this discussion I would have brought it home with me.

If the Pentium M is faster than the 4, cheaper than the 4 and cooler than the 4 why in heck would they bother making the 4!

Amen-Moses

Amen-Moses · Jan 23, 2005

mynameis said:
Click this link

Select 3Ghz Pentium 4
Select 512mb of ram

You'll get a complete system with Pentium 4 at 3.0 Ghz, 512mb or DDR2 ram, 40gb HD, and keyboard/mouse, for $669 or $569 if you bother to send in the rebate. A mac mini 1.25ghz with 512mb of ram and a keyboard/mouse is $632.

edit: almost forgot, that P4 system comes with a 17in LCD.

If you want to play link wars:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?IL-PP73680

(novatech is one of the cheapest component suppliers around here that are selling genuine stuff and not grey imports)

Pentium 4 3.6Ghz @ 274 UKP (and change). That's not far off the Mini price of 339!

I can buy a complete PC from novatech for peanuts as well but:

1) It will be full of rubbish components which I will have to replace.
2) The cooling will be the absolute minimum needed to run the thing, the extended use I put them to will require at least another 50UKP spent on a decent CPU cooler and extra case fan.
3) The PSU will be again just-enough-for-the-job.
4) I have yet to buy a PC that I didn't replace the keyboard and mouse on.
5) Have you actually seen th rubbish displays the give these things away with?

PC's look cheap but I'll give you an example of how you can be fooled:

My father wanted a PC for his business so my brother (who is not technically savvy) did the obvious and went to Dell, he bought the then base system consisting of a 2.4Ghz Pentium 4 with flat panel display and included the at-home warranty. The price looked good to both of them at the time and it duly arrived and he set it up for my father and all seemed well .... for a week.

My father phoned to tell me that the system had crashed so I got him to phone Dell and they tried to walk him through the repair but failed miserably so I went over there.

I found out that he had tried to play Wolfenstein (the original!) and had got a message tellig him to upgrade his display drivers, this he duly did and that brought the whole system down. I discovered that the on-board graphics was absolute pants, basically a low end SiS Savage 128 chip based system using shared system memory, the system RAM was only 64Mb! (I didn't even know that XP would run with so little)

The OS had been pre-installed with the "standard SVGA" i.e VESA so he had no hardware acceleration at all. No DVD Rom drive installed only a pretty crappy 12x CDR writer which again had the wrong driver installed.

To cap it all off the on-board sound wouldn't work with the correct display driver installed (probably why they went with the VESA one) and the BIOS was several versions out of date.

To fix it all and give him a system that would play games ("business computer" my a*se) I installed a SoundBlaster 5.1 card (dirt cheap and still the best all rounder out there) a 4Mx AGP graphics card, 256Mb RAM (throwing away the old un-branded rubbish that was in there), re-installed Windross XP Home (why do Dell sell PCs for "business use" with the Home version?) after upgrading the BIOS I upgraded all system drivers and bought him a nice set of aluminium flatpanel speakers to match the monitor. All the components apart from the speakers and sound card were my hand-me-downs, i.e they were all cast offs from my systems that I had replaced with better stuff.

At a later visit I sneakily replaced his CD writer with a DVD combo drive and installed SP2 but apart from that it has done everything he wanted for the last couple of years now.

I could have bought him an iMac at the time for around 50% more than the Dell cost (without the warranty of course) and never have heard a peep out of him and saved myself a couple of trips and a boat load of work on his machine.

Amen-Moses

mynameis · Jan 23, 2005

Amen-Moses said:
(novatech is one of the cheapest component suppliers around here that are selling genuine stuff and not grey imports)

Pentium 4 3.6Ghz @ 274 UKP (and change). That's not far off the Mini price of 339!

No one is going to buy it from the most expensive place when you can get an entire system from Dell for that price.

mynameis · Jan 23, 2005

Amen-Moses said:
A PC magazine, IIRC it's called PC Extreme and it is dedicated to overclockers and modders (doesn't even have a CD on the cover!), there was a huge article comparing processors and explaining the differences between the various designs. I left the ruddy thing at work though, If I'd known I was going to be having this discussion I would have brought it home with me.

If the Pentium M is faster than the 4, cheaper than the 4 and cooler than the 4 why in heck would they bother making the 4!

Link?

The Pentium-M isn't cheaper, it is cooler, and it is faster at the same clock speed, but the highest Pentium-M they sell is right around a 2.0ghz.

James · Jan 23, 2005

JohnVbs said:
How well does linux run on it. (Yello Dog, Ubuntu, etc.)

Do you enjoy banging your thumb with a hammer?

Unless you are just a linux/guru/nerd why do you want to make things harder on yourself. I have run enough versions of linux to know a bit about it and simply put it is a very good system that is darn hard to use. OS X gives you basicly the same powers that linux has, but is VERY user friendly. If you insist on command line, it is there in OS X. Installing programs in OS X is simple and painless, where as installing most programs in linux is a time consuming thumb banger. Who wants to spend more time looking up required files, configuring, making, compiling than you do actually working...

mynameis · Jan 23, 2005

Amen-Moses said:
My father wanted a PC for his business

It doesn't suprised me at all that a machine built for business doesn't come with a decent video card, most businesses wouldn't want you playing games.

That Dell I linked to didn't have the best video card, but that is the only thing in the system that would need to be upgraded in order to play games. Dell also very conservatively rates their PSUs. I haven't ever heard of novatech.

You don't need to like to make Apple's hardware look good, they build awesome machines, they have form as well as function. They have plenty of speed to do all the things you would require them to do.

Avalon · Jan 23, 2005

I think you people forgot a little the market aim if the Mac mini...

The Mac mini is a perfect system for the normal, average computer user (with display, keyboard and mouse, and some RAM added, of course

).

You buy it (with the extra stuff, if you don't have that already), bring it home, connect everything together, and it does everything the average home computer user needs: Word processing, Internet, some basic photo and video editing, even some basic music editing.

And it does all this very easily, fast enough, stable, without worrying of any spyware/malware/viruses...which the average user (who most of the time isn't a computer geek and isn't aware that behind a simple mail attachment can be a malicious virus) doesn't want to be disturbed with.

Concerning it's price, it's a cheap Mac, but not a cheap computer. Of course you can get a cheaper PC, but with a lot more hassle afterwards than with the Mac mini. Those who do Windows support for their friends and relatives know what I'm talking about...

And forget about all those PowerPC vs. Intel/AMD battles...every actual CPU (this includes the G4) will do average usage more than fast enough...Powerusers don't buy a 500,- PC, and surely won't buy a Mac mini either.

mynameis · Jan 23, 2005

Avalon said:
Concerning it's price, it's a cheap Mac, but not a cheap computer. Of course you can get a cheaper PC, but with a lot more hassle afterwards than with the Mac mini. Those who do Windows support for their friends and relatives know what I'm talking about...

And forget about all those PowerPC vs. Intel/AMD battles...every actual CPU (this includes the G4) will do average usage more than fast enough...Powerusers don't buy a 500,- PC, and surely won't buy a Mac mini either.

I don't agree that a cheap PC is going to cause problems, I think the same user that has problems with at $500 PC is going to have problems with one that costs 3 times as much.

I agree with you saying that a powerusers don't buy a $500 computer.

If a computer is fast enough to do what you want it to do, buy it, if not get something better, comparing x86 and PPC is worthless, there are so many threads on it.

Amen-Moses · Jan 23, 2005

mynameis said:
No one is going to buy it from the most expensive place when you can get an entire system from Dell for that price.

That isn't the most expesive it is one of the cheapest, if you want expensive try PC World!

The "Pentium 4" that you get in budget systems is an entirely different beast to the one you buy from a component shop there are so many different versions now that you can't really be sure what you are getting.

Intel (do-do diddly dum) are the absolute masters of hype.

Amen-Moses