[incognitto]

hello everyone, I am new to this forum and a new mac user. I was wondering if ya'll could help me out with a few questions I have. I just recently purchased a Mac Mini. Standard stuff installed like 256 ram. Does anybody know what the highest level of upgrade I can do on my mac mini. I want it to blow my PC away but from what I have so far on my Mac Mini it isn't really swaying my position between Mac's and PC. My PC has a lot of things installed. If anybody could tell me the highest level of everything essential that I couuld get or is going to come out soon that would be great. I want to switch over to Mac's but I need to make sure it's a solid investment over my PC. I plan on purchasing the highest level Mac that I can afford but right now i'm starting out with the low end. So anyways if ya'll could help me i'd greatly appreciate it. Thank you

[Footy]

The very best thing you could do is max out the memory to 1 gig. Bought one for my wife a while back and love it. It's every bit as good as my dual G4 1.3 but it lacks a lot in the video card department for gaming. Still I'll probably replace my aging dual G4 very soon with one till the Intels ship.

[turtle777]

A fast external Firewire HD (7200 rpm) will boost performance considerably.

Look here: http://forums.macnn.com/65/mac-desktops/260338/mac-mini-speed-gain-external-fw/

-t

[ghporter]

Yeah, max out the RAM (1GB is it) and put any disk-intensive stuff on an external drive.

For a "PC killer" I think you chose the wrong Mac. It's a starter machine (and I'm getting one as soon as certain funds become available), not a speed demon. Think of it as a lower-end Mac laptop in a funny case without a screen. The biggest issue is the hard drive, since it is indeed a laptop drive, and they tend to run slower (4200 RPM is the standard instead of 5400 or 7200 in desktops). An external firewire drive could certainly boost your performance.