S
snowfocus8
Guest
Looking for advice: Should I get a mini or an iMac as my living room system?
When I get home from work, I want to watch DVDs, check my email, and surf a bit...without dealing with Windows cr@p that I put up with at work all day.
I'm not a gamer, and don't do DVR so it's really going to just be a DVD, iTunes, and basic internet machine. That's all I do at home. Currently, I just boot up my laptop for email and the like when at home.
I thought all this was pointing me at a nice mac mini as my first mac. Looks cute next to a tv, digital audio out to a stereo. But, after reading so many reviews that say for good DVD playback, I should really upgrade the RAM to 1GB or even 2 to compensate for the shared video RAM, and then getting a bit larger hard disk, it really pushes the price up into the iMac range. Especially with some of the refurbished iMac deals. And since you can get dedicated video RAM, bigger and faster harddrives, and the core 2 duo in the iMac, I'm really wondering if it's not the better solution as my main computer, even if it's really just for entertainment purposes?
What's the downside to using an iMac as my home theatre/LR computer? besides the possible asthetics of having a 17" screen somewhere near my already big LCD (something that won't be a problem later with iTV i guess), I don't see much of a downside. Unless I'm missing something and using the Dual-Monitor support would be be bad with an LCD-TV running DVDs?
Thanks for all your experienced advice! I'm really looking forward to having a mac at home.
When I get home from work, I want to watch DVDs, check my email, and surf a bit...without dealing with Windows cr@p that I put up with at work all day.
I'm not a gamer, and don't do DVR so it's really going to just be a DVD, iTunes, and basic internet machine. That's all I do at home. Currently, I just boot up my laptop for email and the like when at home.
I thought all this was pointing me at a nice mac mini as my first mac. Looks cute next to a tv, digital audio out to a stereo. But, after reading so many reviews that say for good DVD playback, I should really upgrade the RAM to 1GB or even 2 to compensate for the shared video RAM, and then getting a bit larger hard disk, it really pushes the price up into the iMac range. Especially with some of the refurbished iMac deals. And since you can get dedicated video RAM, bigger and faster harddrives, and the core 2 duo in the iMac, I'm really wondering if it's not the better solution as my main computer, even if it's really just for entertainment purposes?
What's the downside to using an iMac as my home theatre/LR computer? besides the possible asthetics of having a 17" screen somewhere near my already big LCD (something that won't be a problem later with iTV i guess), I don't see much of a downside. Unless I'm missing something and using the Dual-Monitor support would be be bad with an LCD-TV running DVDs?
Thanks for all your experienced advice! I'm really looking forward to having a mac at home.