Looking to buy a new desktop, probably a mac because my ibook is nice to use and has been relatively reliable over 4 years. Does anyone use/have opinions on the mac mini and imac? I don't need bells and whistles – most of my time will be spent word processing, emailing, online researching and maybe some photo editing. After something reliable, above all. Is an imac worth the extra £300? Cheers.

First obviously question when considering the £300 price difference is whether you already own a monitor you could connect the mini to or whether you need to buy one. (Likewise you also need to budget a little bit for keyboard + mouse with the mini.)

If you're going to do any graphics intensive stuff spash out on the imac. If i remember correctly the mini mac shares the main memory for gfx so struggles a bit. Mines got a gig of ram and watching BBC HD programs offline on the iplayer really hits the limits and can be quite shonky if I've forgotton to shut everything else down.

As said above, unless you've got a monitor already, or have plans of plugging it into your telly (which with bluetooth keyboard and mouse poo's all over these internet ready tv's!), go for the imac.

Have both an iMac and Mini – both work well and do the job. Bought the Mini for the living room, because it can run through a normal flat screen TV, which fits the room better and can be used as spare TV / for games consoles. iMac sits in "office" space and Screen on iMac is very good – and the new one is awesome! If you are going down the photo editing line this may well be worth considering…

Wireless keyboard and mouse works well in living room… Looks good and is practical…

I've got both, went through the same process. Got the Mini first, then got the iMac. Mini now lives attached to the tv as a fancy dvd player and for kids to do internet browsing under supervision.

Save money, go straight for the iMac 🙂

Cheers for this – keep it coming. I don't own a separate monitor or keyboard, but the bloke in the shop reckoned I could pick up a mac mini with monitor, keyboard and mouse for around £650-£700. Mind you, if that means a cr*p monitor, I'll be tempted to just go the the imac. I know virtually nowt about this kind of thing (in case you couldn't tell!).
How have your apple's been for reliability? Mine will be my main work computer (I'm self-employed, working from home), so I can't be doing with repairs, crashes, downtime, viruses etc. Thanks again.

I've had the (G4) Mini since launch and it's been outstanding actually – literally not a problem in all that time (best part of 5 years). The only time it's been rebooted has been for OS updates. Mine certainly isn't that fast though – only 512mb in there and so it struggles a bit when too much is going on. The latest ones are miles faster though. The HDD wasn't that big on the launch model either, not sure what the options are these days…

I'm buying the 27" Imac early next year as an upgrade as it looks fantastic – I'll use the mini as a headless server after that prob'ly….

If it's only £300 extra for the smaller imac get that no question.

A half decent HD (1920×1080) monitor will cost you £150 – 200, and won't be as good as the one in the imac, which is an IPS panel (better colour).

Then a decent KB and mouse will be another 50-70 ish, depending what you go for.

So yes, the mini could be cheaper, if you get cheap kit. But ALL your interaction with the computer is through the Kb, mouse and monitor – so you want those to be good ones!

Ah wait, there's actually £450 difference, you were assuming £150 would get you monitor, KB and mouse? They'd be pretty poor ones!

The Mini's great value if you need a small form-factor and already have screen/keyboard, but if not…

I presume you're comparing the bottom standard Mini (£499) with the bottom standard iMac (£949) because that's the only way you're going to get a Mini + screen + keyboard + mouse for £650 (and, as above, probably not the same quality as you'd get with the iMac). In which case bear in mind that with the iMac you're not only getting the built-in good quality screen, and good keyboard and mouse, you also get 30% faster processor (3GHz vs 2.2), much bigger hard disk (500GB vs 160), twice as much RAM (4GB vs 2) and a much faster hard disk (7200rpm vs 5400 in the Mini) – that lot together is going to make the iMac a fair bit faster, and a better long term bet (160GB of storage doesn't go all that far these days…).

get a pc

;-p

I've got an iMac and am really pleased I decided to get an extra 512Mb RAM when I bought it. If you get one, make sure you've got a decent amount of RAM and beware of firmware upgrades, they can go wrong…

I have both and they are fantastic. In your place I would get the iMac without hesitation. The screen is superb, really showing up the attached Dell screen (which is admittedly much older). Also the new mouse is said to be outstandingly good, a real added value. As ever, max out the memory. One caution: if you have an old Firewire 400 drive, you will need a new cable. The FW 800 socket in the iMac is smaller.

Useful advice – cheers for all this. Imac sounds like the best bet, all things considered.

typing from my imac!!!!

I run a mini under the tele, it sits there next to the xbox and other bits and bobs, surfs the net perfectly and screen picture is impressive on my aging lcd tele, i prefer it in the living room so i can turn it off and watch the tele for other stuff otherwise i tend to stay in front of the computer for hours on end!

The mac mini has really become a lot more attractive thanks to having a decent GPU the same as the950£ iMac. Unfortunately they are both shared memory chips which is not ideal if you want to game at all.

The only main difference performance wise is the hard drive. The 5400rpm is slowish however if you didn't care about it in your iBook you won't care about it in your mini.

There are decent monitors for 150£ on the 20-24" size but you probably will be giving up the integrated web camera. Also I find the aluminium apple keyboard REALLY good and if you don't care about the numerical keys the small BT one that comes with the iMac is gorgeous. I found the Magic mouse good not great(certainly Apple's best mouse but that does not say much as their previous ones were horrible).

So if you go for the Apple keyboard/mouse thing you are looking for 225-250 on top of the mini including new monitor. The difference then becomes about 200. For the hard drive speed and flexibility, the camera and the total aesthetics of the package I'd spend the extra 200£. But that is just me.

Got a little mini in the lounge for surfing etc: and running iPlayer to the big TV (with a DVI splitter box). Used as a backup server, and digital photo dump, video archive (through extra drive attached)

Whole thing works a treat, and is running 24/7 with no issues/noise/heat problems.

1 Gig of RAM was the only upgrade when i bought it.

Got mine as a re-furb from the mac store (like all my macs) and it was only £300 with the extra RAM.

if you don't already have a good & stylish monitor get the iMac. It looks like it comes with the new & brilliant magic mouse and the slimline keyboard.

I'd go with the imac too. Just wanted to add my bit in.

'get a pc

;-p'

Wondered when that'd come up. Give us a break please.

Macs are not the best for men with very small heads.