I know that even the basic Mac Mini would blow what I'm using out of the park. I get that. But as you can see, if I have held onto my piece of junk XP machine for this long, I want a machine that I can keep a long time breathe new life into after a while. I would love to be able to hit it with 4 or 6 extra gigs of ram in about four or five years and breathe new life into it. Or be able to bump it up to the 8 core from the Quad -- Would a move like that cost less than buying a brand new computer?
I haven't heard ANYTHING in this thread so far that suggests the OP would need anything more than a Mac mini or iMac.
Must be nice to be that rich ...
I hear ya chas_m...OP mentioned just that back in post #6. Of course some folks like having a Ferrari when a Ford Focus will do!
@iamtherealandy:
Building on what "chas_m" mentioned. If you really only need a Mac-Mini or an iMac (versus getting a Mac Pro). A Mac Pro (depending on the model) can cost you around $2500-$3000 (and can cost a lot more depending on upgrades). A Mac-mini will cost you $599, and a low-end iMac will cost $1199.
I know that one of your concerns is "longevity". If you were to spend $2500-$3000 on a Mac Pro...for the same money...you could buy 4-5 Mac-Mini's...that's
4-5 Mac-mini's...or 3 low-end iMac's. You could buy a new Mac-Mini every 3-4 years for the next
20 years before you would exceed the cost of one Mac Pro.
That's a lot of longevity!!!
Of course Apple will come out with lots of new stuff in the next 20 years...so you would probably be buying something else other than 4-5 Mac-mini's over the next 20 years.
Just trying to give you some perspective on the cost/longevity relationship if a Mac-mini (or iMac) would be fine for your current computing needs.
- Nick