Need help deciding between imacG5 and Mac Mini

alphonse101 · Feb 15th, 2005, 06:25 PM

Good day to all!

I am shopping for a new computer and then decided to switch to mac. but thing is, there are too much to choose from. I should take the iMac G5 with the super drive. but I am kinda attracted to the charm of the mac mini.

Bassically, all I want to do is mainlly go on internet, but also I want to burn and edit dvd's and some photoshop and illustrator editing too. I know that there should be a difference between G4 and G5 but I don't know what it would be.

I am seeking your advices to all, the more the better

Thank you very much!!!

Heart · Feb 15th, 2005, 07:03 PM

iMac G5

Why?

You said it yourself:

	Quote:
	I want to burn and edit dvd's and some photoshop and illustrator editing too.

All three items are processor intensive items. And you can not go wrong with the extra power that the G5 has now and will produce for you a couple years down the line. And look at that beautiful screen that is on it.

If you have to do too many upgrades to the mini (SD, HD Speed extra Ram) it is not quite a deal. (Do you have a monitor already or would you be purchasing one?)

IMHO

Toca Loca Nation · Feb 15th, 2005, 07:09 PM

if money isn't an issue, go imac for sure.

if money is an issue, buy a mini, assuming you already have a keyboard and a monitor.

if money is really not at all an issue, buy-em both!

used to be jwoodget · Feb 15th, 2005, 07:17 PM

Welcome alphonse101!

There's a big difference in price between these two models but either should meet your needs. The mini is cute and is sold without peripherals (keyboard, mouse, monitor). The iMac G5 is all-in-one and includes a 17" or 20" LCD screen. It's about twice as fast as the mini (the G5 is one generation up from the G4 which sits in the mini). If you already have a monitor, keyboard and mouse, the mini is a great deal.

Here are two comparator listings:

iMac G5 17"/superdrive
$1,849.00

17-inch widescreen LCD
1.8GHz PowerPC G5
512K L2 cache
600MHz frontside bus
256MB DDR400 SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra 64MB DDR video memory
80GB Serial ATA hard drive
Slot-load SuperDrive

Here's a Mac mini (which I tried to configure similarly - drive size, etc):

No monitor/keyboard/mouse
$824
256MB DDR333 SDRAM - 1 DIMM
80GB Ultra ATA drive (4200 rpm - slower than iMac)
4x SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
56K v.92 Modem
Radeon 9200 32Mb
1.25GHz PowerPC G4

You really need at least 512 Mb of RAM for either (the G5 has two slots, the G4 only one).

Both can be ordered with integrated Bluetooth and/or 802.11g cards and both have integrated 10/100 ethernet, USB2 and Firewire 400 ports.

Neither machine is particularly expandable. You cannot upgrade the video card in either and there are no PCI slots in either. These models aren't intended for that sort of usage. That said, either should meet your needs in terms of photoshop editing, etc. Both come with iLife which makes DVD authoring, photograph storage, etc efficient and easy. You'll presumably need to buy Mac versions of PhotoShop and Illustrator.

The mini is a little trickier to find right now - especially if you want a customized configuration but supply will catch up. It's a no frills but plenty of thrills machine.

I think the mini will hold its value quite well if you want to "trade-up" in a year or so. Might be a safer bet unless you have $2000 burning a hole.

farfisa · Feb 15th, 2005, 07:55 PM

I guess it's the slower cheaper charm of the Mac Mini vs. the polished elegance of the iMac G5.
Should I throw an iMac G4 into the mix? If you're not into their look, forget it, but there are good deals to be had in those now, great screens (in the 17 and 20" models) and performance could be better than the Mini (faster HD, can add more RAM more easily).
The mini's have been shown to be pretty fast though!

macsackbut · Feb 15th, 2005, 09:03 PM

Hi alphonse101 (and welcome to ehMac),

I've been wavering between these two choices myself. Before the mini came out, I was resigned to buying yet another all-in-one mac (attractive as the iMac G5 is). But now that the mini is out, I will probably go with that. My needs are perhaps a little different than yours, however, which is to say primarily word processing, along with the usual internet/e-mail/music uses.

Many have said that once you add on the extras to the mini it's not such a great deal. And while there's some truth to that, for me, the real allure of the mini is that it allows me to buy CPU and screen separately without having to spend a fortune on a Power Mac. Since a large screen is important to me, I'll gladly sacrifice a bit of processor speed (and lets face it, a G5 is overkill for wordprocessing anyway) to be able to buy a separate display that I can then use with a subsequent upgrade (perhaps even a Power Mac 2 or 3 years down the road). With the iMac, I have to start from scratch yet again when it comes time to upgrade.

Hope this is food for though in your decision-making process.

MacS

Lawrence · Feb 15th, 2005, 09:26 PM

Don't buy either...Build a monster instead.
It's always fun and enlightening to upgrade a second hand Mac like a G4 tower.

Just ask the FrankenMac himself...(Not me...I'm not worthy)

Dave

hayesk · Feb 15th, 2005, 11:13 PM

If you will be doing Photoshop and Illustrator, fork out for a GB of RAM - no matter which model you choose.

alphonse101 · Feb 16th, 2005, 02:03 AM

thank you very much for all your replies. it helped me a bit to finally decide, so I finally choose the IMac G5. looks to darn nice. upgreading an older system seems interesting but I think I will go through the easy way for now

thank you very much again!

Macaholic · Feb 16th, 2005, 02:49 AM

I thought my ears were burning, dolawren!

Alphonse? Welcome to ehMac

Yeah, upgrading my old Sawtooth to Frankenmac was fun, and the dual processors and 2Mb L3 cache for each really help me to do what I need. In the end, however, I surely spent more bucks on ALL the components I stuffed in the tower than what a G5 iMac would have cost (the RAID was kinda overkill, but I thought it would look good in my sig

). But I also needed PCI slots, which iMac (and Mac Mini) do not have.

The advantage with my -- or any -- dual CPU setup is when using processes that are multiprocessor aware... like many Photoshop plugins. In the CPU rendering test referenced below, you'll see that all the other single CPU models are roughly (and surprisingly) equal... too equal to make the choice a clear one, in my view:

That dual 1.42gHz G4 even smokes the single 1.6gHz G5. As mac OS X is currently 32 bit, the coming 64 bit update may change things, considerably. G5 owners will in some cases experience quite the speed bump.

There are other facets of Mac Mini where it falls short. The hard drive is a slower laptop-class device:

http://barefeats.com/mini01c.html

And mac Mini shouldn't be considered the gamer's choice:
http://barefeats.com/mini01b.html

But that's not what Apple envisioned the Mac mini for -- as surely did not the PC makers with Intel's integrated "extreme" graphics capabilities at the low-end of their product lines.

More general tests of a range of Macs' processing capabilities:
http://barefeats.com/mini01.html

It appears to me that a 1.8gHz G5 will be faster than a 1.42gHz Mac Mini. But it won't be mind-blowingly faster.

As for myself, I am eagerly awaiting a Mac Mini's delivery for the family. I intend to make it my living room stereo, iPod mothership, iLife station and web master. Frankenmac will still be doing the professional music production chores.

With the upgrades to the 1.25gHz Mac Mini I added, that being 512Mb RAM, 80Gb drive and Superdrive, it, along with a printer (with $100.00 rebate), a BenQ DVI 16ms response time 17" flat panel display (with a $50.00 rebate for an awesome price of $305.00), Apple keyboard and MS optical trackball, the total is $1,339.00. That's $607.00 less than the 1.8 G5 iMac with 512Mb RAM. And, I JUST priced out Dell's cheapest system with equal features (same PC components including Firewire, Office Standard -- Appleworks reads/writes Word/Excel), printer, and 17" DVI monitor... and antivirus subscription. Total: $1,412.00. That's without iLife equivalents on the Dell... and my son will certainly be cutting his teeth on Garageband (I should get a gig of RAM

)

Overall, I'm quite happy with the coming of the Mini.