New to Mac Forums, but needing help with decision of iMac or Mac Mini?

I'm in the market currently for a new Mac, but I'm undecided between a iMac or a Mac Mini. This would mostly be used for music, photos, email, Facebook, etc. Nothing too extensive. I do have a 27" Dell monitor w/ HDMI at a 2048X1152 resolution currently. I will not be doing any gaming, and very minimal photo editing. Should I go with the Mac Mini for my needs, or should I just suck it up and spend the money on a new iMac?

I currently run Windows 8.1 on my HP desktop, but it just seems to be slow, even after doing a complete system restore, and removing all HP bloatware. I would probably run Windows 7 with bootcamp. Just looking for suggestions here.

Thanks all.

Seems to me that the performance of a new Mac-Mini would be fine with the computing tasks you mentioned. And since you already have a nice large 27" display…that would work fine with the Mini as well.

- Nick

Should you go the Mac Mini route, be aware memory is not upgradeable after purchase. Memory is available in 4, 8 and 16GB formats. As the graphics memory, up to 1,5GB, is taken from the standard memory, it may well be worth spending a little more and getting the 16GB at the time of order.

I'm using a 2014 Mac Mini now and for what you describe it's perfectly fine. Others have said about the memory upgrade and that's a good idea, otherwise, the machine will be more than perfect (and frankly, I DIDN'T get the memory upgrade for mine, so I'm still at 4GB, and I haven't had single slowdown or anything). Similar situation as yours - I had a nice juicy monitor already and keyboard I liked; why toss 'em?

I should note I DO game and it's fine for that too. Again, I got no issue and, at least for the gaming I do (I've never been a FPS fan) my system lets me run most things at high or top setting.

I had the same decision a few months ago. I got the middle model of the Mac Mini (late 2014 version with 8GB memory) and found it more than adequate for my modest needs, with plenty to spare.