my pc is getting long in the tooth (8-9 years old) and i’m going to have to buy something new, but oh the cash flow!

looking on box.co.uk i can get a machine with 8gb ram 500gb hd and windows 8 for 270, or i can buy an older mac mini with similar for about the same cash.

anyone got any views? not really thinking software or indeed utter out and out speed as anything is an advantage on what i have, more pleasure of use and possible integration with iphone and ipad.

If you have any other Apple products, it makes sense to get a Mac.

Mac all the way

Also look at the spec of the CPU to compare. If one is more powerful than the other it may tip the balance.

Mac Mini

I have a 2009 mac mini, still works very well – I did recently upgrade it myself to 8gb ram and 750gb hard drive as the original 2gb/160hdd was no longer sufficient. Note external 1tb drives are £60 and machine runs better if disk is not close to being full.
Does mini include mouse and keyboard – I have wireless ones and use flatscreen tv as screen but it can drive a normal monitor with a simple adapter cable.
Apple stuff works very well together, sharing via iCloud, music, film, document sharing via itunes etc
Have a browse around MacRumors site and forums

If you’ve already got the PC, the Mini was designed to take the monitor, keyboard and mouse, making it a case of just box-swapping. If it’s the older model with the optical drive, you can take that out, get an appropriate caddy, and stick an extra HDD, or SSD, in the vacant space, then either find a suitable caddy for the SuperDrive, or do what I did, get a cheap Samsung external optical. Mine was modded by the shop I bought it from, and they chucked in an extra free 2Gb of RAM as well. Mine’s got 1.1Tb of storage in now, both drives are regular spinny discs, not SSD’s; they were too expensive two years ago.

So can you get slightly older lesser spec ones and upgrade them hugely ?

My PC’s run for ever, and I can upgrade them easily.
It really depends what you want to do with it….

Make yourself a hackintosh – best of both worlds!

Buy the mac and it does the job. Throw in bin in 5 years time.

Buy a PC to build/upgrade when you could be making money/working/enjoying life/women.

Throw in bin in 510 years time.

On my third desktop Mac here, started with a Bondi iMac which was changed when it wouldn’t run Panther reliably on the G4 chip. The PowerMac G5 has just been replaced with a refurbed quad core i7 Mini which should last 10 years.

Get an used intel mac mini, upgrade the memory and install a new HD one that runs at a higher speed. Quite easy to do loads of clips on youtube.

The beauty of it is for me almost instant start up no waiting around for ages like my windows lap top.

Get a PC.

I have a Macbook – it’s a pain in the arse.

Buy the mac and it does the job. Throw in bin in 5 years time.

Really? My PowerBook was bought in 2003, at work there is a Bondi Blue Mac tower, now mothballed, but still usable, dated 1999, and an Anthracite tower, dated 2001, still in use as a server. I have seen at least twenty or thirty much, much newer PC’s gutted of any usable parts and thrown in the skip. There are currently five sitting forlornly waiting to be scrapped.
A mate has one of the ‘Anglepoise’ iMacs, which is about the same age as my PowerBook, which he still uses from time to time.
What was that about throwing them away after five years?

I have a Macbook – it’s a pain in the arse.

In what way?

If integration with iPhone and iPad is important, then Mac Mini wins all day long.

My other half recently made the switch from PC to mac and love the way everything seamlessly integrates – to the point that the browser on the phone will tell her what tabs she has open on the desktop and open them on the phone for her.

Likewise with texting. Appears on desktop and phone. It’s an excellent system.

The Mac Mini was the unloved stepchild, so resale values are low. It’s a great wee box.

That said, it depends on what spec points are important to you. 8gb of ram on a 32bit windows OS will bring you no advantage over 4gb (Win 32bit can’t address more than 4gb) so numbers aren’t always the important thing either.

Make a decision based on what you want from a PC. I personally love OSX, but others will, I dare say, hate it – so no amount of memory management or benchmarks will make a difference if the PC doesn’t do what you want it to.

cheers chaps, going to have a look at older (2005’ish) g5 macs when i have a minute just to compare but reckon a 2009 on mac mini for around 200quid is the go. would like to get newer and be done with it, apple refurbished had some for 400quid this morning, but also need a workshop so used it will be.

Stay away from the G4/G5 kit! Long since considered redundant!

Ensure you have an INTEL Mac, not PPC (G4, G5 CPU)

These are the minimum specs for OSX 10.7 (Lion) – which should be considered the minimum version of OSX to use…

iMac (Mid-2007 or later)
MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)
MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later), (17-inch, Late 2007 or later)
MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)
Mac Mini (Early 2009 or later)
Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later

I’ve just bought a second hand MacBook Pro 17″ (Early 2008), with the intention of running OS X 10.9 (due in October)

great advice xiphon, did not realise that. thats the g5 out.

i’m looking at a min spec the 2.53ghz mini that i believe is later ’09.

any idea if older, circa 2003, versions of photoshop/illustrator will run on newer osx?

No they won’t – they were built for the PowerPC processor (Gx), not Intel x86.

The last version of OSX to support “PPC processor” software was Snow Leopard (10.6), with software called Rosetta (an emulator, allowing PPC programs to run on Intel processors)

OSX 10.7 (Lion) dropped support for PPC completely.

@gav I have late 2009 mini and its still going strong, runs the latest OS, as I posted before I’ve recently put more memory and HDD in as it was base spec back then. £400 for a refurb machine, I wonder what they refur?, I’d be tempted at that price to buy off eBay or another site, MacRumours is very good. As I think you’d get a much newer machine.