Considering upgrade to Mac Mini

Question

I currently own a G4 and since I do a fair amount of graphics on my machine with the Adobe suite, (and am consideriing breaking into Flash) I want more speed, speed, speed! Is the mini right for me or do I wait til after the bake sale fundraiser and save my pennies for the Mac Pro?

Answer 1

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
In many respects, the answer to your question is more about you than your system. A G4 mini is a very capable system in its own right, but like any computer 2 or 3 years old, it's relatively old technology and has been surpassed significantly since it came on the market. Indeed, as the entry-level system it had already been surpassed technically and in performance terms when it was released in January 2005.
That said, a G4 mini will of course still run the same software it was capable of running when new, so if it was an effective tool then and no new software is required to be used, then it is just as effective now. What really determines whether it remains good enough is what you, the user, actually use it for, and how you may plan, or hope, to develop your use in the future. The mini's weaknesses are really in the fact that it has limited RAM (1Gb max for the G4 models) and slow internal hard drives. Both of these factors cause issues with graphics work, while the power of the G4 will perhaps hinder (though not really limit) the potential for Flash development.
What really matters is you. If you are doing this sort of work commercially there's a world of difference between what is the right tool in comparison to someone doing this sort of thing as a bit of fun for the sake of personal satisfaction. If the latter, then the mini is probably all you really need, and the Mac Pro would be hard to justify. Indeed, if an upgrade in system was on the cards at all, a new mini with Core 2 Duo processor and 2Gb RAM would likely be as good an investment as anything. If you work commercially however, time is money, and being able to work efficiently is greatly important. As such a Mac Pro makes much more sense.
One caveat to making any change, is that depending on which software versions you have, you may actually need to invest in new software to take advantage on the Intel processors in any new Mac. Unless your existing software is sufficiently recent to be 'universal' (meaning that it will install the native versions for either PPC or Intel depending on the hardware being used) then you may find that installing your existing software on an Intel platform gives you little real performance gains, despite the significantly improved performance of the hardware.
So, if you are serious about what you do, then check your software, and if it isn't Intel native, update, and save your pennies for the highest-end Mac you can afford. If, on the other hand, you are an enthusiastic amateur with a reasonable budget, update your software if you need to and look at a 2.0 mini with 2Gb RAM to replace your G4 model. If the budget is tight, keep your G4 unit, max out the RAM if you haven't already, add a fast and large firewire external and set it up as the boot drive. The performance gains won't be spectacular, but should tide you over for a while!