Re: Pro & Cons Of Mac Mini?

David Empson a écrit :
Mac the Eclectic Knife <theknife@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

David Empson wrote :

The hard drive is a little on the small side for significantly delayed
TV watching, but it is fine as long as I don't build up too much of a
backlog. I could use an external drive if I needed more space.
David, you must understand that hard drives are pretty expensive nowadays. A
Barracuda 750 GB is pretty close to $140, you know. So there's absolutely no
way you can get such a precious gem in a Mini.

I don't particularly want to connect an external hard drive to the Mini,
because that would take up more space, increase power consumption
unnecessarily, and probably generate more heat and noise.

Indeed, good reason to have one drive inside your casing. If noise is important to you, you might opt for a liquid bearings HD. The nice thing when you have a PC built, is you have it built to *your* specifications, not Apple's.

I don't particularly need a larger hard drive inside the Mac Mini - 160
GB is big enough for my needs. If I decide I need more space in future,
I'll either buy a newer computer (and sell this one or use it for
something else), or open it up and install a bigger hard drive.

Absolutely! Why bother to buy a computer with components the size you need? When your HD fills up, you just sell the damned thing. You can get real good prices at Some Unknown Place. OTOH, when you want to buy one, you get it for next to nothing at eBay's.

Anyways, if artists in general are far from being rich, those who spend 80 hours a week on this newsgroup don't care about money. They earn $200 an hour, you know.

As everybody suggests, you buy a Mini, then an external HD, then more
memory at a decent price -- I'm afraid you paid a little bit too much for
yours from Apple --, then for a decent processor and video card and sound
card.

Agreed, Apple's memory is unreasonably expensive. Life is tough.

Oh, yeah. Mainly when you own a Mac. Otherwise, for somebody like me who's seen the days when a 20 MB HD was worth $1,000, $139 for a 750 GB HD doesn't seem that expensive. How much does Apple sell those for? $750?

There isn't any way to add a video card to a Mac Mini. Not necessary -
the GMA950 is fine for everything I want to do with that computer.

Don't you think it would be nice to have a TV tuner for $70 more? I do. The nice thing when you have a PC built, is you have it built to *your* specifications, not Apple's.

Then, at twice the price, you get the equivalent of a $600 PC. But it
still has the original mobo, and you can run OS X.

To me, a "$600 PC" is totally useless, because it doesn't run Mac OS X,
and is probably way too big and noisy.

First, let's not talk about a $600 PC, but a $849 PC. I mean, you wouldn't want a Mini-Mini, right? If you don't want anything outside your Mini, you want an ultra fantabulous StuporDrive that can *write* DVD -- something normally worth $39 in the real PC world... -- and a fantabulous 1G of RAM... for a little $250 more.

Well, I'll tell you one thing. I'd rather run Mandriva with heaps of free software on a $849 than OS X on Crappy Mini. Of course, all the $200 an hour on newsgroups Morons on this group all need PhotoShop. I need to reframe pictures for a background and, eventually, remove lettering. The GIMP does this wonderfully, and a whole lot more. I set the preset selection to 4 x 5, and bingo, I select to the size I want.

Yes, I know everybody here is into printing and needs 4 colors, but there's a GIMP plugin for that.

What? Install a plugin? *** man! They're all $200 an hour artists, are they going to spend 5 minutes installing a plugin?

Boring Morons!

I wanted a compact, quiet computer for my living room. The Mac Mini is
ideal.

If you're short of a cubic foot in your house -- maybe you're resourceless living in a Tokyo drawer-room ? -- I can understand your concern. Otherwise, I'd rather have a casing with one more cubic foot to install everything I want in the casing by just sliding a side panel open. And any PC can be made as quiet as a Mini.

You ugly Mac Morons are a sect and never look beyond Jobby's Reality Distortion Field. Of course, you'll say that Linux is a sect too. Well, it might be... but it doesn't cost *anything* to be part of it. Tell me, what kind of a sect is that? It's the one I'd rather be part of: it runs fabulously well, no problem at all.

*And I'm not a geek, damnit!* If Wesly GrosLot can't run Mandriva nowadays, somebody's looking for him at the fools' house.
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