mac mini

I am thinking about replacing my 13 mac laptop with a mac mini, I already have an apple magic mouse and apple wireless keyboard and an acer 21" monitor...Does anyone have one of these and do you like it? I understand this is the same thing as a cpu? Also now I have 4
gb ram and want at least 8 so it would be faster..would it be useless or wasteful to get 16? I will get either the 500gb drive or 1 T. I use photoshop elements 11 for pictures and just basic computer serfing watch some online movies, but don't play games
Thanks for the advice:Blushing:

If you up the RAM (always a good move) then do it after purchase, it is cheaper. As with ANY computer, buy the BEST you can afford.

I use mine as a media center via iTunes. It is hooked up to my 65" HDTV and I use other devices to connect (Apple TV in the bedroom, iPad and iPhone) It should have no problem with running Elements and basic surfing. Your KB and Mouse will work fine.

Depending on what you really want to do, opt for the faster (though smaller) HDD, use an external for storage. I have a 4TB drive for media and a 1 TB drive for Time Machine. Works great and is very quick. I have no issues with streaming to multiple devices at the same time.

thanks for the reply, I am not real computer savy..what is hdd? are you saying to use external drives for storage and not use the internal drive on the mac mini? I have a 1tb right now for time machine and a very small ehd for some of my files..is this what you are recommending? just curious and thanks for your help

HDD: Hard Disk Drive

Use the internal drive for apps, external drives for storage of files and data.

I have an external HDD for Time Machine that is 2x larger than the internal one. Gives room for TM growth.

I have another external HDD for iTunes to use only. It happens to be 4 TB. It happens to be 45% full.

well I'm glad I talked to you first because I was going to get the bigger hd thinking that was better...I just finished moving photos into iPhoto, now I am supposing that I should actually put the photos onto a ehd and
access them from my internal drive i never thought about putting itunes on an ehd that sure would free up alot of space. I will have to google that one. I am writing down the info about your mac mini for future reference..this is what I have now
2.26ghz intel core 2 duo, 4gb memory(is this ram?) 10.7.5 Lion,I am thinking I don't need to get 16gb ram that 8 would be enough? thank you I hope I am not bothering you

apple store has 2 mac mini. which one would you buy?
1) 2.5ghz dual core intel core i5 with 500gb hd or
2) 2.3ghz quad core intel core i7 with 1 TB hd both have 4gb memory..I would have to upgrade to 8gb memory, right?

Pretty obviously a quad-core i7 is superior to a dual-core i5, not sure why you would even need to ask.

Having 8GB of RAM would be recommended, but isn't mandatory ...

You can upgrade RAM after the initial purchase a lot cheaper. however, that really depends on if you feel comfortable doing the upgrade yourself. If not, then getting more RAM at the time of purchase will make more sense to you.

I would get the Quad Core i7. When I got my mini (listed in my sig) there was not a Quad Core i7, only a dual.

about ram upgrade it is the easiest thing, you can do, one is here,
Mac Mini Ram Upgrade - YouTube

thank you Deckyon and ycl1688 I will certainly check into it and I obviously asked because I didn't know. I'm not a computer genius like some of you guys.