Upgrade from mini to iMac

Hi. Around 18 months ago I bought a 1.25 40gb mini to try out the Mac. Having been well and truely hooked, when Leopard's launched (or a little while after, when some of the bugs have been ironed out) I'm intending to upgrade.

I was just wondering if anyone has traded up from a mini to an iMac. If so, how different - if at all - do you find it?

I do have the option to buy a high-spec mini as I did buy a 20-inch Cinema Display, but the iMacs have 7200rpm hdd, while the minis have 5400 units.

I could sell the ACD when I buy an iMac anyway. Or use it somewhere else.

Thoughts/opinions appreciated.

Cheers.

Martin

Thats a tough one. If you already have a 20" Cinema display, you would essentially be paying again for a display if you bought an iMac, so it would seem that the high end mini would be a better choice. However, I would wait until the next mini upgrade occurs - alone among the Mac line now, the mini still has Core Duo chips vs. Core 2 Duo chips (about 40% faster, clock for clock). I expect to see an upgrade of the Mini any day now, for this very reason. Then I would get the fastest mini available at the time and "trick it out" (biggest fastest hard drive and at least 1 GB of RAM).

As it is, I am impressed all to heck with the Core Duo minis I have test driven at my local Apple Store. They are amazingly responsive. The mini is a wonderful little box. I wish I could find a reason to justify buying one myself!

You could always use dual displays. If you do a lot of work on the computer they are quite useful.

That's not a bad idea, actually. As I type I have open two large Word documents, a text file, two browsers, Mail and Excel! And they're all stacked up one behind the other!

I have an iMac G5 and a Mac mini. I use the mini in the garage during the warm months and the iMac in the house in the winter. I set them up side by side. Sometimes I'm on the iMac doing a backup or some some large file download or something. I use the mini in the meantime. Maybe you could find an alternative use for what you already have. The iMac is a bit faster and the display is wonderful.

I recommend you buy the iMac and keep the mini.

Adapt the Mac mini into an old radio case or VCR housing. Check the web and search for other possibilities for that fine machine.