As above, got an iphone, ipad, and apple tv and get on with them all. Can get a Mac Mini brought back from the States. Would it be better upgrading my PC to Windows 8? I need more ram too. Or take the plunge and get a Mac Mini? Quite like the idea of a Macbook Air so I’m not constantly in the spare room, but can’t really stretch to that at the moment. Is the Mac Mini a good starter to cope with video editing etc, will I have to upgrade it? thoughts please. Thanks.

It seems Sir has already persuaded himself to go for the fruity option.

I know Macbook Air has been ruled out, but with the new MBA releases yesterday, an extraordinarily minor upgrade, old MBAs are going cheap* at John Lewis:

I imagine other retailers will follow suit.

Plus there is the refurb store: http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/macbook_air

*Relatively speaking.

Thanks Jamie, didn’t realise there was an upgrade. Still a bit too much for me at this time though! According to the exchange rate I can get a MM for £355 from the US. Their prices have not dropped yet for the MBA. Might start with a MM and see how I go. 😀

I don’t believe Xp to Win 8 is the greatest option, from what I’ve seen Win 8 only really shines with a touch screen (and some tweaking to get hide metro). Windows 7 would be my suggestion as the cheap and cheerful option, & works really well with older hardware, though would obviously will work better with a decent amount of memory (4GB upwards).

What do you use your PC for? That might steer your decision. Lots of secondhand Macbooks on ebay, gumtree etc, and I have bought from those sources before with no probs, so always an option?

I’d be tempted to upgrade the pc. Should be under £100 for a decent bit of ram and Windows 7. Then start saving for the air if that us what you want.

I’ve had a Mini Mac, they’re a nice little box that does pretty much everything well.

Windows 8 is actually rather good now that the 8.1 upgrade has been issued. A lot better than XP, the Metro interface doesn’t need to be used at all so if you don’t have s touchscreen, then you don’t need to use those features.

In general 8.1 is faster, more reliable, has support, and is a bit nicer to use than XP. It is arguable that Win7 does all of this too, and I would definitely advise an upgrade to 7 if you don’t fancy 8…. however I upgraded to 8 for £15 direct with Microsoft.

Pc and Mac are definitely choices, you seem to have bought into Apple in general, so I think your question is more: “Why shouldn’t I buy a Mac Mini for £350?”.

If there are no good reasons, then do it.

Or spend £15 on a Win8 upgrade. This will not, however, get you a Mac.

Yep would need to upgrade ram first on PC. Windows does get on my nerves with the constant updates etc. Just getting into video editing and photos with a dslr. Already got a good keyboard and mouse. Looking at getting a LED 1080p monitor too as the one I have a the moment is a bit crap.

I remain unconvinced that Win 8 will work well with older hardware, the machines I’ve seen it on are brand new/reasonably well spec’d and were definitely far from speedy. That said, I’ve not tried it (on old hardware) and a £15 upgrade does seem great value.

I upgraded to 8 for £15 direct with Microsoft.

Got a link? Its normally £100 for basic and £190 for pro. Even students pay £50

Whats the spec of the PC you’ll be sticking W8 on?
Have a look at getting an SSD as well as more ram for the PC, I just picked up a 240GB Crucial SSD for £78 from ebuyer.

Realistically if you are running Xp the pc is >6yrs old ?
If so even with a ram upgrade it will run like a dog with Windows 8 – esp for intensive processes such as video editing.
So personally i would go for a fruity option, but i would hang fire on the purchase as there is Rumours of an upgrade in the near future ( but they have been saying that since Jan !

Is the Mac Mini a good starter to cope with video editing etc, will I have to upgrade it? thoughts please. Thanks.

They feel slow because they come with a very very slow 5400RPM laptop hard disk, unlike the Air, Pro etc which use SSD disks.

CPU and memory are both okay, but really 4GB is a bit low (I have 4GB in mine and find it constantly swapping even just to browse the web). The dual core CPU, again is usable, but you can get double the speed (quad core) for $200 more.

If you’re doing a lot of video work then an SSD is a good investment. I stuck a 500GB SSD in my old MBP and it now flies handling 10s of Gb of photos (I can easily come back with 50Gb + from one event).