On the fence between mini and imac

Question

Lightning hit my g5 mac a coulple of weeks ago and I am looking to purchase another. I don't really like the new mac with the glossy display. So I thought why not just purchase a 20in or 23in apple monitor with a Mini....I know it's a little more exspensive but I like the thought of it. Any help or suggestion on the two different options?

Answer 1

I think the generally best advice is to buy the best system you can afford within your budget and which meets the needs you have, or perceive yourself to have. Anything less and the result will be more likely to be a system that in 2 or 3 years proves insufficient and is more likely to need replacement. Buying a system at the top end of the budget means better flexibility, more likely to meet your needs as those change and perhaps expand, and which due to better performance is also more likely to encourage further use.
The Mac mini is an excellent system in its own right of course. For the money you get a tiny computer which actually outperforms its form factor by a surprising degree. The new models are rather faster and have more 'grunt' than the top of the range G5s of barely a couple of years ago and which were billed as genuine workhorses (which they were), but it does suffer from a couple of minor shortcomings which could figure greatly in the longer term: it has a slower (laptop) drive, and integrated graphics. Neither are crippling issues unless you need very fast storage (large Photoshop files for example) or highly demanding video uses, but they have to be considered. The upside is that the mini is very expandable in terms of the things you can hang on it, such as faster hard drives, and you get the choice of display (but only one display). The iMac's shortcoming is the all-in-one design, but if the screen looks good, the imac is very hard to beat.