[macmike]

Don't laugh - I'm on a B&W G3 450MHz with 1G of RAM and 3 hard drives totalling 169G and a lot of cables and wires.

I know... O-L-D.

Which is why I'm coming to you guys with yet another eternal 'what should I buy' question :-)

Current use:

- surfing
- downloading stuff
- every now and then I use PhotoShop or something to make CD covers and pretty letters
- Office Suite stuff

- no video editing or sound editing or gaming

Phobias:

- 54000 RPM hard drives
- not being able to get into a machine to easily upgrade things (after living through the nightmare of an iMac 333MHz tray-loader that required 18 screws, 4 quaaludes, 189 pulled hairs and 1 year of life expectancy out the window because of the stress [extrapolate from previous description])
- I'll get something and almost immediately have to toss *more* $$ to upgrade it to the new 'standard'
- 'all in one' set-ups (see above for iMac 333MHz tale of woe)

Future uses:

- multimedia centre that will be able to last beyond the 'computer' use phase of the... ah... computer (?). I'm already using the present system to listen to radio and CDs. The only reason I still have my stereo in the back room is because I haven't quite gotten around to convert my old punk LPs to CDs and I don't even have clock radios since I don't particularly like any local radio station.

I figure that leaves me with the Mac Minis (that still have those 54000 RPM hard drives and are a bugger to get into to upgrade?) or a used G4 tower that'll get left in the dust in two or three years, what with the Intel stuff (eventually) coming down the line even though current 2nd-hand prices for G4s 800MHz the same price or within about 80% of the cost of a new single coare MacIntel... .

Perhaps an Intel tower (or at least something with the bigger hard drives and easier upgrade options) is coming down the line soon? Someting, say, the same price or slightly more than the Mac Minis?

I'm truly flummoxed and await some words of wisdom :-)

B.

[Mrjinglesusa]

Get a MacMini. The HD speed won't matter for what you will use it for.

[applesnapple]

I think for your needs an intel mac mini 1.5ghz single core would be fine. I would, however, reccomend putting down the extra cash for the core duo version because as more software is released to take advantage of the intel processor, you will notice a huge speed boost.

another more expensive option is the intel imac, which are very nice, but they are really expensive so it really depends on how much you want to spend.

I would suggest going to an apple store and playing around with the mac minis and imacs to get a feel of what you would want.

[Maflynn]

I think the mini will be more then adequate but the iMac may be a better fit.

I didn't notice if you need to purchase a new monitor, if that is indeed the case, then the iMac with the superior GPU and hard drive speed would be a better bang for your buck.

[macmike]

I have the original monitor from the B&W and figure I could pick up an LCD monitor 2nd hand cheaply enough.

As for the iMacs... you know, the 333MHz iMac was great... right until it became necessary to upgrade the thing (i.e. put more than the 32MB of original RAM and then it became a major pain each subsequent RAM upgrade and when the CD-ROM tray spit out burned CDs and it never could play DVDs and could only have firewire capabilities is you got a $300US CPU upgrade kit and I finally killed it dead when, for the nth time I tried to swap out the RAM so it would run OS X). I kinda fell for the Mac towers since I couldn't think of anything easier than dropping down a side and swapping out hard drives, RAM and a DVD burner.

But I could do worse than a dual core, I guess :-) I suppose I could always shove my 80G hard drive into an enclosure if I really need the space.

And just keep adding on enclosed upgrades when the time comes?

If I hold out until the fall, what do you think the chances of a tower coming out and would it be more than, say, 20% more in price than a dual core Mini or would there be so many hardware upgrades that it would be a 'premium' price Mac?

Thanks for the opinions everyone.

B.

[mavherzog]

Originally Posted by Betty Woo

If I hold out until the fall, what do you think the chances of a tower coming out and would it be more than, say, 20% more in price than a dual core Mini or would there be so many hardware upgrades that it would be a 'premium' price Mac?

The new Intel powermac replacements are DEFINITELY going to be more than 20% more expensive than the current Mini's.

Sounds like the Mac Mini is a good fit for you. And, you know, you CAN upgrade that internal drive to a 7200rpm model if you so desire.