I like that 'any' key

First post so let's see how deep I can step in it: I really like Mac hardware, particularly the first unibody mini with the disc drive and any of the pro's, but I might be committing the greatest sacrilege to all by asking... Does anybody only run windows? I mean, not even having any kind apple OS on the machine. Wipe the hard drive and start with a fresh win7 install.

I tried the i7 mini and found Mtn. Lion lacking having it hooked up to a 1080HD 50" plasma in that I couldn't keep the resolution to increase font size in the display. Simple enough in windows, and easier if you don't have to get up to read the screen, and the local magnifier wasn't an option, or bootcamp. It went back to the store and I replaced it with a ZBOX with blueray for 6 "C" notes less. I'm kind of shopping around for another PC and don't see anything with any 'style' that's doing it for me.

Welcome to Mac-Forums

Your money, if you want to buy a Mac Mini just to run Win 7, that's perfectly fine. It'll work great. But if that IS your intention, you can probably find just the hardware (which is what the Mac Mini is for you) for way cheaper..

Thanks, that's what I figured with the Intel based units. Too bad the G's don't want to play, the aluminum power macs are dirt cheap and look cool too for a tower type on the cheap.

Back to Clist and fleabay.

The Power Macs use the PowerPC chipset which is not compatible with Windows. So you'll want Macs built after 2006, or better yet just buy a PC that is within your budget and I imagine that you'd probably get more hardware than buying a Mac..

One of the advantages of the Mac is that it "might" seem like the hardware is deficient when compared to a standard PC, but OS X is what makes that a non-issue. If you just run Windows on there, then you are taking a hit unnecessarily..

XB12R said:

Too bad the G's don't want to play, the aluminum power macs are dirt cheap and look cool too for a tower type on the cheap.

Click to expand...

A couple reasons why the Powermac G5's are less expensive are:

- they are 6-9 years old
- they do not contain an Intel cpu

If they had an Intel cpu...then they would be worth more.

- Nick

XB12R said:

I tried the i7 mini and found Mtn. Lion lacking having it hooked up to a 1080HD 50" plasma in that I couldn't keep the resolution to increase font size in the display. e.

Click to expand...

What do you mean? My interpretation: you changed the screen resolutions to increase the System font size, but the resolutions reverted back to some other setting. That sounds like a hardware problem.

So, what is it really?

At the native resolution of 2560 x 1440 the default fonts size on my 27" iMac is just too small for my aging eyes. So when I bought the mac, the first thing I looked for was to increase it.... got very frustrated when I found out it couldn't be done other then by setting another screen res. If ever someone at Apple reads this... please bring it up at the next meeting!

Before Mountain Lion, setting the screen resolution to 1920 x 1080 would give rather jagged edges on the screen fonts. But with Mountain Lion, it appears to have improved. Guess had something to do with Retina display support, perhaps they had to re-write some font display related parts of the OS.

So now I am on 1920 x 1080 by default, and quite happy with the quality.. and screen fonts are easier to read!

Thymen