Switching, Tiger, and the new Mini.

My story is I'm basically the IT department for a small business (among other duties) and I'm also the IT department for my extended family (and all of their friends apparently), and after having to clean the viruses and malware and whatnot off of everyones computers for the zillionth time (not at work, I keep that fairly well locked down) I talked the father of the main source of the problems (teenagers) into buying some old G3 iMacs for all his kids. I haven't really messed with Apples since I my old Lisa XL bit the dust quite a few years ago, but setting up all these "new" systems has certainly sparked my interest in them again.

I'm now recomending Macs to everyone (mostly in an effort to salvage my weekends and free time :bandage: ) I was going to pre-order a mini when they first started advertising but thought that an older iMac would be good enough to play with for now to get a feel for everything. I picked up an iMac G3-400 just for funsies for $100 off of eBay with OSX.3 allready installed.

It's been a real blast setting it up and exploring some of the features of Panther, but suffering from gadgetitis I want to pick up a newer system and pass on my G3 iMac to my neice and nephew. I'm putting it off right now, however, because from all I've been able to find on these forums, when Tiger comes out it will not be a free upgrade. Am I correct in this? I mean if I pick up a Mini for $500 (more likely $800+) am I then going to want to fork out another $129 so I can have to latest and greatest? I'd think that Apple would have a free or low cost upgrade path for people that have recently purchased a new system (like the free upgrade coupon dell provided when the Windows XP release was immentent), but I have yet to find anything that suggests Apple would do this.

So then, should I just wait for the release of Tiger or is there an upgrade path I'm unaware of or is it far enough away in the future that I should just go ahead and buy something now? I'm also considering a 17" iMac G5 instead of the Mini, but don't know if I want to fork out the $$$ for what would be my 3rd realitivly new system (I've got a 3.4 Ghz P4 PC and a 3 Ghz P4 laptop as it is, not to mention the G3-400 iMac, an iPaq 2215, and a Smartphone)

Also, the specs on the Mini seem a bit light...would I get it and then be unsatisfied with it's performance and want to upgrade to a G5 anyways?

I am in the same situation, but am leaning towards the iMac. It all depend what you are going to be doing on it. If you are going to be photo editing, and video editing, then go with the iMac. It will be worth the money and the system will probably last longer than the Mac Mini. but if you are just going to be chatting, cecking your mail, and surfing the web, the the Mac Mini might be a good solution. So what do you plan on using it for? Whats your maximum budget (if you don't mind me asking) ?Shaun.

Well, it kind of depends as whatever system I get will just be to play with at first. I mean I do photo editing and light web development for work, in addition to page layout/graphic design stuff. I'd like to mess with video editing but as of the present I don't have any video equipment that would make this a needed feature. Budget wise I could plunk down the money for dual 2.5 powermac if the whim took me, but as I said, I allready have a good amount of new hardware and am finding it hard to justify spending 3k on what is basically going to be just something to play with. So I guess thats the rub here-- how much $$$ to spend on a new toy? And would I be happy with the performance of the mini if I got one?

As a former ten-year PC user who loved them before, I'd say the Mac Mini should have great performance. I'm on my first Mac of my own, an iBook G4, and it outperforms any PC I've ever seen in Photoshop (This is partly due to my 1.25 GB of RAM), so I'm sure if you get the 1.42 GHz, and perhaps a RAM upgrade, you should have NO problem whatsoever with the mini. Personally, I'd say go with a single processor PowerMac if you have to dough and want to be able to do video editing later perhaps. That way you could upgrade pretty easily, and still be able to keep your old monitor and such like you can on the mini. The iMac, honestly, unless you really are in love with the design, I find to be somewhat lacking in comparison to the others. The Mac mini has the smallness factor covered, and the PowerMac has the G5 covered. The PowerMac is expensive, but easy to upgrade, and the Mac mini is inexpensive and difficult to upgrade. The iMac is both expensive AND difficult to upgrade.

Yes.... But the powermac would cost even more. If you later decide you want a bigger monitor, can't you jsut get a second one?

I guess I'm leaning towards the Mini now-- having caught some of the benchmarks in other threads on this board, it seems to be a decent performer.

I'm still curious as to whether Apple is going to offer an upgrade to 10.4 to people that have recently bought computers or if the upgrade would be at full price. If anyone knows anything or has comments on Apple's past behavior, I'd appriciate it.

I'm wanting to buy an iMac and in the same situation....will I qualify for a rebate for Tiger if I buy now.

dan828 said:

I'm still curious as to whether Apple is going to offer an upgrade to 10.4 to people that have recently bought computers or if the upgrade would be at full price. If anyone knows anything or has comments on Apple's past behavior, I'd appriciate it.

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Normally Apple give a discount upgrade on software that is purchased about a week or so, before the realease of the new software.

Apple stopped offerring upgrade pricing. It used to be that if you had a proof of purchase for say 10.1 that you could send it in to buy 10.2 for only $99. As of 10.3, everyone has to pay $129 for the new OS. (IIRC)

As rman said, if you buy a Mac just before they release a new version, you can upgrade for minimal cost to get it by mail, or sometimes free if you pop into the store. They usually call it like OS Up-to-date, or in the case of iLife ... iLife Up-to-date programs or something. Search the apple website to get a feel for their past programs.