Thinking of a Mac Mini

[stingx]

Ok you Mac guys. Anyone going to talk me out of replacing an old desktop PC for a Mac Mini?

I have a great widescreen LCD with DVI and wireless keyboard and mouse so the Mini seems like a good pick. I don't game any longer and basically I just edit photos and video in addition to recording. I have both a M-Audio Firewire 410 and my PodXT for the latter and Tracktion works great on a Mac so I think I'm set.

As for specs, I am looking at the 1.83 GHz Core Duo but I will add an extra gig of RAM to make it 2 GB in total and up the HDD to at least 120 GB. Do you think this would be robust enough for the intended purposes of the purchase?

I'm interested in feedback on this.

Regards,
Pete

[Robert****]

Hey, I'm interested in this too!

[Jimi75]

One of the biggest music stores thourghout Europe, located in cologne Germany, offers the MAC mini with a bunch of software. I have once spoken to the teamleader of the multimedia department and he said that this little thing can fullfil all your dreams regarding recording.

Only yesterday, by coincidence when thumping through their catalogue, I saw the Mini again and it still awakes my interes, as I am looking to set up a new home recording studio.

www.musicstore.de

Check it out, they have also an English site.

[sunvalleylaw]

I am waiting for Swede's advice on performance as I have not had experience with the mini specifically. I do what you are suggesting for computer uses on my old "lampshade" iMac which has weaker specs than that mini, and it works great, as long as I have room on my hard drive and watch how many programs I am running at once., so it should be great! The bottom end iMac comes with a 2mhz processor, so if it were me, I might invest the extra $200 to get the slightly faster Mini, just for longevity. Not very scientific analysis, I know, but I am not a scientist about these things. Maybe SS can be more specific.

[SuperSwede]

Pete, the mac mini is a great computer for the price, but it comes with a 5400rpm HDD which I cannot recommend for recording (or editing video for that matter). Its a standard Serial ATA drive, so it should be easy to replace it. You could get yourself a external firewire drive and use that instead. Get as much RAM as possible!

[stingx]

Pete, the mac mini is a great computer for the price, but it comes with a 5400rpm HDD which I cannot recommend for recording (or editing video for that matter). Its a standard Serial ATA drive, so it should be easy to replace it. You could get yourself a external firewire drive and use that instead. Get as much RAM as possible!

Thanks, Swede. I plan to use my external 1TB firewire drive for recording. I will get 2gb of ram when I order it.

In addition to using my Traction software by Mackie, I plan to install Digital Performer as well.

[Robert****]

Scott Henderson uses Digital Performer for composing.

[stingx]

Scott Henderson uses Digital Performer for composing.

Robert, I was fortunate enough to have someone in my local music store spend over one hour with me giving me a hands on demo of DP. I was really impressed with the software. I explained that I didn't own a Mac at the time as was deciding on what system to buy. He even suggested the Mac Mini.

[SuperSwede]

Thanks, Swede. I plan to use my external 1TB firewire drive for recording. I will get 2gb of ram when I order it.

In addition to using my Traction software by Mackie, I plan to install Digital Performer as well.

Then I must suggest that you use the FW drive as the system drive as well, everything will run much smoother.

[sunvalleylaw]

SS, my old iMac PPC G4 (3.3) has a speed of 1.25 Ghz. It handles Garageband, iPhoto, and iMovie just fine, but takes a while when rendering and burning in iDVD if I am using effects, transitions between slides or movie clips, etc. It works fine, just had to take a while. My newer Intel processor iMac is much faster. Do you think the what seems to be nominal difference in processor speed would make much of a difference?

Below are the specs of the old iMac (this is NOT like the new ones that have the intel chips) just for comparison sake.

Machine Name: iMac
Machine Model: PowerMac6,3
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (3.3)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1.25 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
Memory: 768 MB
Bus Speed: 167 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.7.8f1

[SuperSwede]

Well, the newer Intel macs have core duo processors which basically means that they have two processors.
Anyhow, I dont think that you would notice much of the difference between the two mac mini models unless you do some serious video coding/decoding. Adding more memory however will drastically improve the performance of Mac OS X and all programs. The speed of your hard drive(s) will affect performance quite a lot too since X needs to write to/from caches much more than the older classic system. Another thing to consider when looking for a new mac is that there is a lot of eye candy going on, and all that needs a good (read fast) graphics accelerator to run smoothly, and quite frankly: the Intel GMA integrated graphics isnt good enough, and it doesnt have enough VRAM (only 64mb shared with the system).