[TonyC]

Ok, I have been a long time UNIX (mainly Sun for work) and Windows (home setup, along with a few linux boxes here).

I have been itching to try a Mac since they released OS X and last weekend the wife and I got away for the day without the little guy and drove down to St. Louis. While there at the Galleria, I spent about 45 minutes in the Apple store playing with a Mini and about every five minutes I fell in love even more. The power of UNIX with the beauty of Apple.

Sooo.... Now onto the difficult part...

I started looking at the Mac Mini 1.42 w/Super, 512MB RAM, Bluetooth and Wireless, along with an Apple Wireless Keyboard and Mouse. I looked at the price tag and then Apple released the updated iMac and said, well shoot for only a couple hundred more I can pick up a 17" G5 iMac with much fast bus specs, etc...

Low and behold, now I have come across and seen, just for a hundred or two more than that I can pick up a dual 2.0 box.

I can't make up my mind, what started out to be a $599 starting point, has now creeped up to almost $2k. This also all started when I got my iPod Mini, so anyone who says there is no iPod halo affect, is wrong, at least with me.

I guess I need just a little nudge from you Mac faithful. Here is how I plan on using the Mac, and I'm sure my needs will grow and I move more and more of my computing over to the platform.

Currently, I have a P4 3.06 HT, 2GB RAM, 74GB 10k Raptor, BFG 6800 GT (Not really into gaming, just got stupid one day on e-bay ), with a dual layer DVD-RW (16x).

My wife and I buy a lot of DVD movies and have a three year old, so I bring them up to the P4, rip them with DVD Decryptor (does something like this exist for the Mac?) and then use DVD Shrink (again, does this exist for the Mac) and burn a copy of the movie so when the little guy (three) gets his peanut butter jelly hands all over the DVD, we don't ruin the original and just burn another copy.

Currently to do this on the PC it takes a couple of hours between ripping (30+ minutes) and recoding to fit on a single layer (about 2 hours) and then burning (about 10 minutes).

What would the time frames be for say the iMac vs. a dual 2.0 PM? I have pretty much written off the Mac Mini at this point and a little time savings isn't that big of a deal, I just don't want to move down in performance.

Also, any other pluses or minuses between the two systems, I would love to hear.

Thanks for all the help and I'll be joining the good side soon.

[thereubster]

DVD ripping on the Mac Will be way slower than PC, period. Even the dual 2 Ghz G5 will be way slower. And there is no FREE equivalent to DVD shrink. Use Mac theripper for ripping DVD but you will need to buy a copy of DVD2oneX as its the only one that works. DVD backup is the one area where OSX falls behind Windows.

[sodamnregistered2]

Maybe get the mini.

I just moved from a dual 2GHz down to a mini, so I can comment on the two. The dual 2GHz was a nice computer. It is a fast computer, and OSX really does a sweet job with multi-processors. My mini is the 1.42 with 1GB ram. It is obviously slower than the dual 2GHz and it can't multitask nearly as hard as the dual G5 did, but it's a solid intro to OS X.

If you like OS X, then you will not lose your shirt when you go to sell the mini and get a dual G5 later this summer, or when the next updates come out.

The mini works, it's just not gonna blow you away with it's power. But you can use the terminal, you can install X11, you can def decide whether or not you jive with the OS.

[Link]

For the DVD stuff, I'd almost say get a dvd duplicator.. they'll be a LOT faster than any computer, though it might not work well with whatever the MPAA does to those things.

[bells0]

certainly doesnt take 2 hours to rip a dvd on my Dual 1.8! About 1hr 20 mins i reckon using mac the ripper and dvd2onex to a single dv-r

[TonyC]

Originally Posted by bells0

certainly doesnt take 2 hours to rip a dvd on my Dual 1.8! About 1hr 20 mins i reckon using mac the ripper and dvd2onex to a single dv-r

bells,
Thanks for the reply, have you monitored your CPU load to see if it's using both CPUs extensively? I'm trying to determine if a 2.0GHz iMac would be much slower than the dual PM. If it's mostly single threaded, then it probably isn't that big of a difference maybe 10-20%, but if it's a really well written multi-thread app, it could be close to twice as fast.

Thanks for the input!

[bells0]

Tony, haven't a single clue on cpu load!

I just like gadgets, bought an iBook 933 G4 when they were released as i loved my iPod, got a nice bonus last July so just splurged on the Dual 1.8, 2gig ram, 9600Xt and 2 160 gig hd's. I probably totally underuse its capability, but know i will have for a few years to come.

Have a pc under the desk that hasn't been touched since i bought the PM. The iMac looks great, no doubting that, but in 2 years time you won't like the fact that i'll have 2 x 400 gig hard drives and an decent grpahics card whereas you'll be buying another iMac as it struggles with new software requirements. [watch me get flamed by iMac luvers!]

[tsheley]

I use MacTheRipper and Popcorn from Roxio for DVD's. Works great.

[redoid]

Originally Posted by bells0

Tony, haven't a single clue on cpu load!

I just like gadgets, bought an iBook 933 G4 when they were released as i loved my iPod, got a nice bonus last July so just splurged on the Dual 1.8, 2gig ram, 9600Xt and 2 160 gig hd's. I probably totally underuse its capability, but know i will have for a few years to come.

Have a pc under the desk that hasn't been touched since i bought the PM. The iMac looks great, no doubting that, but in 2 years time you won't like the fact that i'll have 2 x 400 gig hard drives and an decent grpahics card whereas you'll be buying another iMac as it struggles with new software requirements. [watch me get flamed by iMac luvers!]

I am a iMac user and you talk NONSENSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe not. I am a 2.5 duallie user and i just love it!

[Randman]

Get the iMac. But whatever you get, don't forget the ram.

[nickw311]

I would also get the iMac, I just bought a Mini and a Dell LCD monitor but with the recent release and price drop, I would splurge a little bit to have a nicer matching form factor and a little more processor speed.

[TonyC]

Originally Posted by bells0

Tony, haven't a single clue on cpu load!

I just like gadgets, bought an iBook 933 G4 when they were released as i loved my iPod, got a nice bonus last July so just splurged on the Dual 1.8, 2gig ram, 9600Xt and 2 160 gig hd's. I probably totally underuse its capability, but know i will have for a few years to come.

Have a pc under the desk that hasn't been touched since i bought the PM. The iMac looks great, no doubting that, but in 2 years time you won't like the fact that i'll have 2 x 400 gig hard drives and an decent grpahics card whereas you'll be buying another iMac as it struggles with new software requirements. [watch me get flamed by iMac luvers!]

bells,
Well, I'm a bit of the kind of guy that likes gadgets too. If you really knew everything I had here, you would say that I am sick. As far as disk space goes, it's a non-issue, I have a Linux fileserver with over a TB of RAID usable in it right now.

I also have 802.11g with external antenna's that I re *cough* sell my broadband to my neighbors, along with Gigabit ethernet ran through the house. 4 laptops (PC based), 5 Desktops (PC, combination of Linux & Windows), and 2 Sun systems.

Yes I know it's a disease. hehe, so I'm wanting to start migrating away from the Windows boxes and move over to the Mac, it fits in better with the rest of my architecture at home, between Linux and Solaris, plus I get the type of applications that "normal" people use. Linux people, now it's your turn to flame me. Sorry, but my son and wife just aren't going to use it. Plus I wouldn't use *NIX for my basic camcorder video editing and DVD burning anyways.

I think I'm leaning a little towards the 20" iMac and if I really like it, I might get another small Mac Mini 1.42 for my wife. Seeing as all of my main systems have 1 or 2 GB of RAM, I would probably put 1GB in each of the Macs.

It will be a new brave world for me, hopefully you guys won't mind me asking those questions a newb asks, especially when trying to track down software that I have come accustomed to in the PC/*NIX realm.

Thanks to whomever gave me the MacTheRipper and Popcorn.

Here is the software that I think I'm going to be getting too, any additional thoughts? As I stated before, I do DVD copying for the little guy and my wife does a lot of Photo work, just bought her a new Canon Rebel 350 8mpixel camera.

Tiger (Comes w/System)
iLife (Comes w/System)
Photoshop Elements 3
Popcorn (Is the the best?)
MS Office 2004
Quicktime Pro
iWork (Maybe, I will try the trial and see if it's too much overlap with MS Office)

Any other "must have's?"

Also one last question, can you use "Homepage" from the .Mac package to publish to other websites? I have my own co-located server on an OC12 (remember, I have a disease) running Redhat v9 that I would like to point that to. My wife couldn't figure out to do any real home pages from scratch, but if the .Mac Homepage allowed her easy development and publish to our personal webpage, it might be worth it.

Thanks!

[scottiB]

Originally Posted by TonyC

bells,
I think I'm leaning a little towards the 20" iMac and if I really like it, I might get another small Mac Mini 1.42 for my wife. Seeing as all of my main systems have 1 or 2 GB of RAM, I would probably put 1GB in each of the Macs.

I'd pass on the mini and get your wife an iBook--adding 1 GB stick. With USB 2.0 on the camera and the iBook, she could download the pix directly.

Randman wrote:
Get the iMac. But whatever you get, don't forget the ram.

Yep.

[Randman]

Yes on the .Mac, but you might consider a PB or iBook for your wife. Portability's a thing not to missed.

[AssassyN]

In all seriousness, keep your PC.

The stuff you just said is EXACTLY why I own a nice PC. I use my 12" PB because I greatly prefer Apple notebooks over PC notebooks, but I've found I greatly prefer Windows desktops over Apple desktops because the amount of things I do on a desktop is huge, and the Windows side just has more to offer, and at a lower price.

I use DVD Decrypter/DVD Shrink almost daily, and there is NO ALTERNATIVE on the Mac. Any "gimmicky alternatives" are slow and incomplete, and just flat out don't work as well. If you get a Mac at all, get the mini, as you'll still be using your PC for the horsepower work of ripping/burning. That stuff takes a long time regardless...that's a LOT of numbers it's compressing onto a disc.

[gperks]

> can you use "Homepage" from the .Mac package to publish to other websites?

.Mac only goes to .Mac, but there's a very good free program called "Galarie" which I've used to publish to my own site. The sites end up looking very nice.

My wife uses our Mac to do all her photo editing (iPhoto and Photoshop) and printing; after her PC broke and I spent a long time getting around to fixing it, she started using my Mac. Now she prefers the Mac anyway (she uses Expose all the time)... and the PC still hasn't been fixed :-)

I haven't done any DVD ripping myself, but a co-worker uses Popcorn for DVDs to use by his kids just like you want; he also uses it to remove all the tiresome can't-be-skipped advertising from the start.

[power142]

I'm not qualified to comment on the PC side of the software, but I wouldn't advise anyone with a high-end PC to dump their PC completely. I have a PC too, but only now use it for gaming.

TonyC, if want overrules money, then the 20" iMac is a nice computer. As others have mentioned, it lacks the expandability of the PowerMacs that are a little higher in price, but it has the nice 20" screen. It's hard to say whether you'll feel like there's a significant lack of horsepower with the iMac, but a 2.0GHz G5 is still a reasonably powerful chip.
The software you have mentioned will run well on the iMac though. It goes without saying that multi-threaded apps will run better on the dual processor PowerMacs, but the difference in general computing isn't likely to be very noticeable unless you frequently run more than one processor intensive task at once.
As for the DVD stuff, I make backups for similar reasons. Mac the ripper and DVD Backup do the job of copying the data to your hard disk, and you could use Popcorn or DVD Backup to shrink and write back out to DVD-R. I've never had a DVD9 take longer than 30-40 minutes to copy to the hard disk (PowerMac G5), while shrinking is variable depending on the source and destination sizes.

[cmoney]

I'm using Mac the Ripper and Popcorn myself as well. For DVD backup, I find it just fine. And comparing my dual 2GHz G5 to my 2.4GHz P4, the Mac is consistently faster from ripping to writing. I find Popcorn flexible enough to take out extras and reencode the movie if needed. But most of the time taking out the extras is enough to let the movie fit on a standard DVD-R.

I rarely find I need to power up my PC unless it's for working from home (no VPN support for my Mac ).

Just watch out, after using things like Spotlight and Dashboard on my Macs, I find it hard to work on my PC. Spotlight alone has changed how I work on projects that I've forgotten the old PC way and can't get as much done on my PC anymore.

[zwiebel_]

Originally Posted by AssassyN

I use DVD Decrypter/DVD Shrink almost daily, and there is NO ALTERNATIVE on the Mac.

I honestly do not know what you are talking about. MacTheRipper + Popcorn work perfectly for me. Had one coaster becuase my DVR drive died on me.

[TonyC]

Anyone have rough time estimates with using MacThrRipper + Popcorn on a 1.8 or 2.0GHz iMac yet?

BTW, Thanks for all the input, you are a great bunch of guys (and gals if any are around here!)

[powertrippin]

I'd get the imac, simply because mini's are going to be worth nothing, and the g5 imac will probably hold it's value for quite sometime.

[action]

tony,

don't get a mini. if you have a monitor, i would get a revision a dual 2ghz. refurb for $1500. spend $200 to get 2gb of ram.

maxripper takes 12minutes to rip. popcorn, if you are only copying the main movie will take 20 minutes to extract and compress and then however long it takes to burn and veryfy (8x 6:30 minutes + 6:30 minutes).

the tower will last you a long time and give you similar performance with your current pc and you will upgrade the video card as needed.

the achilles heal of the imac is video card. even with the recent bumps it's still underpowered. multitasking while you are burning dvd's is simple and painless on the tower.

chung lee

[Cadaver]

DVD ripping on the Mac Will be way slower than PC, period. Even the dual 2 Ghz G5 will be way slower. And there is no FREE equivalent to DVD shrink. Use Mac theripper for ripping DVD but you will need to buy a copy of DVD2oneX as its the only one that works. DVD backup is the one area where OSX falls behind Windows.

Wait a sec...

On a DP2.5GHz and Pioneer DVR-108 with MacTheRipper and Popcorn 1.02:

It takes me about 10 minutes to rip, about 20-30 minutes at most to recompress (depending on the material) and however long it takes to burn a near-full DVD-R at 16x (what, 5 minutes?).

While I've never tried ripping & burning a DVD on my PC, it works pretty damned well on my Mac. Well under an hour for everything. And burning to a dual-layer DVD+R takes no time at all (since of course no recoding is necessary).

[Cadaver]

Originally Posted by action

the achilles heal of the imac is video card. even with the recent bumps it's still underpowered. multitasking while you are burning dvd's is simple and painless on the tower.

chung lee

The GPU of the iMac has nothing to do with multitasking or DVD burning speed.
The "downfall" of the iMac (if you can call it that) is one processor vs. two in the towers. That's all. Multitasking will obviously be better on a two-processor machine.

[chadseld]

MacTheRipper + Handbreak will let you compress any DVD to what you want.. even to H.264. If you are getting a desktop Mac, get one with a G5 processor and at least a 17" screen. Then, upgrade the RAM to 1GB.

[Superchicken]

Honestly... I would say if you have a 3ghz PC you're probably the type that likes to tinker, have fun, and grow... the iMac aside from RAM and HD is not designed to grow. Even just being a kid and having my iMac (a much older model) I always wished I had a power mac so I could upgrade this, and tinker with that.
Seeing as how you have over a TB of storage you sound like the type that likes to get personal with their computer. For that reason I'd say go with the dual 2ghz machine, you can use your existing monitor with a KVM switch, or get a new one. Whatever you want... but I'd poke you toward the dual 2

[TonyC]

I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to reply. It has really helped.

I am kind of a geek when it comes to my gear and it's really more than I wanted to spend, but I think I have decided to go with the DP 2.0 PM. Plus I have noticed Apple has revamped their pricing on their memory upgrades to a much more respectible amounts. ie: The Mac Mini is only $50 to go to 512MB and the PM is now only $100 to upgrade to 1GB. Amounts that I will spend so I don't have to hassle with it.

Just for curiousity's sake, what are the chances that down the line I would be able to upgrade the processors? Everyone talks about the upgradeability of the PM's and I'm used to in the PC world being able to ugprade to procs, at least within the same PIN grid sockets. Just curious if the same holds true for the PMs.

Thanks again to all!

[Link]

Generally yes, but it's anyone's guess as to when G5 upgrades will start to hit the market. -- it's also going to be a little trickier than the g4 upgrades were but I'm positive they'll happen.

[Zimphire]

Originally Posted by thereubster

DVD ripping on the Mac Will be way slower than PC, period. Even the dual 2 Ghz G5 will be way slower. And there is no FREE equivalent to DVD shrink. Use Mac theripper for ripping DVD but you will need to buy a copy of DVD2oneX as its the only one that works. DVD backup is the one area where OSX falls behind Windows.

Way slower? Got any numbers to back that up? (AKA you are spewing BS)

And ever heard of Popcorn?

Idiot... Slow down...

[TonyC]

Well all, I did it, and boy did I do it big.... At least for me... Keep in mind, I'm a PC Power user converting on blind faith here, have never used a Mac for more than the 30 minute Apple store "Drive by's"

I ordered my new model PM 2.0DP with Bluetooth and Wireless Keyboard/Mouse combo and the 9650 video card. A quick order went to zipzoomfly for 2 x 1GB Corsair PC3200 CAS3 memory chips, so I will have 2.5GB populated.

I also ordered the wife a Mac Mini 1.25GHz w/512MB RAM (I paid the Apple $50 for that one) and a Canon IP6000d printer, since it had a $100 rebate going on for it. I also ordered her Photoshop elements 3.0. She had been a previous Mac user in her college days (OS 8 or 9 days) and has always told me she would rather have a Mac, so I don't think she will mind moving from her old P3 700 PC to the Mac mini.

This may not sound much to you old faithful's, but for someone who has 9+ PC based systems (Linux too), and 2 Sun's, it's a lot of blind faith to drop $3k.

Thanks to all for your help and I will be seeing plenty more of you on the boards.

Any recommendations for "must have" software?

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

It take my dual 2ghz G5 about 15 min to re-encode a DVD.

At any rate the $200 difference for the mini to the iMac is totally worth it. The mini is really only worth it if you already have a monitor/keyboard etc and don't need to add all the wireless options and ram as it gets really expensive.

[TonyC]

Originally Posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker

It take my dual 2ghz G5 about 15 min to re-encode a DVD.

At any rate the $200 difference for the mini to the iMac is totally worth it. The mini is really only worth it if you already have a monitor/keyboard etc and don't need to add all the wireless options and ram as it gets really expensive.

I would agree that if the iMac was only $200 more expensive it would be a no brainer, but I got the Mac Mini w/512MB (Apple RAM) for only $549.00. If you know where I can get an iMac for $749, I'm all over it.

Anyways, yeah, I have monitors and keyboard galore around here. I have two Dell 2005FPW's, one of which is in the bedroom as a monitor hooked up to the DVD player for late night movies, I might see if I can't steal that from the room without too much objection from the wife.

[scottiB]

Congrats! and Welcome to Macintosh!