[spiffothemouse]

A friend of mine who does video editing (uses FCP HD but not Shake, etc.) is in the market for a new Mac. The Mac Pro's are a little out of his range unless he get's a refurb one, so I suggested either a loaded out iMac or a pair of mini's that he link together. To clarify, is it a.) possible to link several minis together to act as one computer, essentially having a RAID array for HDs and using both processors to do rendering, etc. and b.) would this setup trump a loaded out iMac in terms of speed, power, etc. for the money?

Thanks for the replies.

[SSharon]

I'm not really sure if that is the best route to take, but here is a place to start reading about it.
Apple - Mac OS X - Xgrid

[mduell]

No, you can't make several minis act as one. You can use a network of them for batch-type jobs, but it's not going to help with anything interactive. And it's not like a RAID array for hard drives.

It sounds like he needs a Mac Pro and should buy a refurb. The iMac adds a lot over the mini in terms of graphics performance and disk performance, but I think he'd be frustrated editing HD on it.

[spiffothemouse]

thanks for the responses. i'll let him know refurb mac pro is the way to go.