Members blueyedmule Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 I know we got some serious rocket scientists (and a few wannabe Unibombers, your help is also appreciated, just not your mail) hangin' here. I've been a Mac guy for most of my computer-usin' years. I'm not a gamer at all. Wife is ready to buy, to finally upgrade from our Sawtooth 400 to a new computer. Shall we do the Mac Mini at six hundred bucks, or what could I do with a PC tower for that much? I wouldn't mind building my own as long as it doesn't get too involved. The computer will be used for pictures, downloading music, probably recording some bass for fun, email, maybe watch some movies or try out hulu, nothing too trick or crazy. Like if it was for your granddad who was an old metalhead bassist. Bear in mind the cost has to at least include the OS. I only have access to OS X 10.1 as far as actual install discs go, in order to do a Hackintosh. I'd have to buy the latest OS of whatever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Super Bass Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 I vote for PC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members sludgebass69 Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 For what you want, I'd go Mac Mini. You're use to mac and you'd get the latest mac OP and it should more than suffice for what you want. my $.02 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Goofball Jones Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 The Mac Mini may be a way to go. It's speedy enough for what you want to do and it comes with the latest version of OS X and you can update it and everything...unlike what you can do with a Hackintosh. Having said that, I'm waving goodbye to the Mac world. I love OS X. I mean I love this OS. But the fact of the matter is, the software I use just isn't found on the Mac...or in many cases it's crippled. 3D is the red-headed step-child on the Mac. No 3D Max, no XSI, No Vray, crippled Zbrush, hardly any 64bit applications yet (Cinema4D is) while they Windows versions have already switched to 64bit. I could go with a Mac Pro and just dual-boot to Windows...but why pay the premium only to use Windows anyway? And quite frankly, I abhor dual-booting...or even rebooting at all. OS X is great for everything else really, but 3D is just not there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blueyedmule Posted March 5, 2009 Author Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 What about something like this: Dell Inspiron 518Intel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Bluescout Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 What about something like this:snip$599 after $149 "instant rebate"Seems like a lotta awful computer. . . Fixed that for ya... JK... :poke: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members knuckle_head Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 Mac Mini has FireWire 800 and 5 USB2 ports along with E-net. It'll support just shy of 1080 resolution on a 24" monitor. It'll sport 4GB of RAM and I can use the monitor and keyboard I have. It will come with Garage Band just to screw around with. It's my next computer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ToeJamFootball Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 Man seriously for $600US you can build a pretty decent PC. I am off to the shops now but will chime in later and spec one up for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Bluescout Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 Mac Mini has FireWire 800 and 5 USB2 ports along with E-net. It'll support just shy of 1080 resolution on a 24" monitor. It'll sport 4GB of RAM and I can use the monitor and keyboard I have. It will come with Garage Band just to screw around with.It's my next computer. I don't understand Apple dropping the Firewire 400 ports. They work great and upgrading Mac owners probably have stuff for it that will be obsolete. If they had to pick one, I'd have stuck with the 400. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members illidian Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 I don't understand Apple dropping the Firewire 400 ports. They work great and upgrading Mac owners probably have stuff for it that will be obsolete. If they had to pick one, I'd have stuck with the 400. I thought 800 was backwards compatible? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members zachoff Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 http://www.theonion.com/content/video/apple_introduces_revolutionary Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Emprov Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 I don't understand Apple dropping the Firewire 400 ports. They work great and upgrading Mac owners probably have stuff for it that will be obsolete. If they had to pick one, I'd have stuck with the 400. Firewire is going bye bye, it's going to be all about USB. Apple stopped shipping computers with disk drives the second Costco stopped carrying the disks and people screamed like mad about it. Same thing with FW. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Bluescout Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 Firewire is going bye bye, it's going to be all about USB. Apple stopped shipping computers with disk drives the second Costco stopped carrying the disks and people screamed like mad about it. Same thing with FW. It's going byebye but plenty of people still have really decent accessories, external hard drives and so on, and isn't Firewire the preferred interface for recording devices? They're still selling Firewire 400 stuff!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Emprov Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 It's going byebye but plenty of people still have really decent accessories, external hard drives and so on, and isn't Firewire the preferred interface for recording devices? They're still selling Firewire 400 stuff!!Yes, but more and more things are switching over to USB, the writing is on the wall. Apple made the switch with its iPods a while back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Incubitabus Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 The Mac Mini may be a way to go. It's speedy enough for what you want to do and it comes with the latest version of OS X and you can update it and everything...unlike what you can do with a Hackintosh. Having said that, I'm waving goodbye to the Mac world. I love OS X. I mean I love this OS. But the fact of the matter is, the software I use just isn't found on the Mac...or in many cases it's crippled. 3D is the red-headed step-child on the Mac. No 3D Max, no XSI, No Vray, crippled Zbrush, hardly any 64bit applications yet (Cinema4D is) while they Windows versions have already switched to 64bit. I could go with a Mac Pro and just dual-boot to Windows...but why pay the premium only to use Windows anyway? And quite frankly, I abhor dual-booting...or even rebooting at all. OS X is great for everything else really, but 3D is just not there. You might want to read up on Snow Leopard. A lot of your concerns (3D rendering and 64-bit processing) will be addressed with that update to the OS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Incubitabus Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 Firewire is going bye bye, it's going to be all about USB. Apple stopped shipping computers with disk drives the second Costco stopped carrying the disks and people screamed like mad about it. Same thing with FW. It's like taking off a band-aid, you do it quickly so the pain is short but intense, but 5 minutes (months) later, no one will care any more, and they'll be back to being happy Mac buyers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blueyedmule Posted March 5, 2009 Author Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 http://www.theonion.com/content/video/apple_introduces_revolutionary What about : http://www.theonion.com/content/video/sony_releases_new_stupid_piece_of Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members zachoff Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 What about : http://www.theonion.com/content/video/sony_releases_new_stupid_piece_of That one was awesome too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members cwatson Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 have basically the same transfer rate, one has to go and it would seem that its firewire 400. I believe they are working on a usb 3.0 which will give firewire 800 competition. For what you want I'd say the mac because for those tasks it does as a PC would but better (the operating system is a lot more stable). The only reason I'd choose PC over mac is if I needed specialist software e.g. compilers or 3d rendering software that only runs on windows. But even then you can run a windows partition so its not the end of the world. For many the cost is prohibitive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Incubitabus Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 have basically the same transfer rate, one has to go and it would seem that its firewire 400. I believe they are working on a usb 3.0 which will give firewire 800 competition. For what you want I'd say the mac because for those tasks it does as a PC would but better (the operating system is a lot more stable). The only reason I'd choose PC over mac is if I needed specialist software e.g. compilers or 3d rendering software that only runs on windows. But even then you can run a windows partition so its not the end of the world. For many the cost is prohibitive. USB 2.0 has a faster top speed (around 480 mbps), but it can't sustain it. This makes it more useful for quick processes like flash drives, printers, digital cameras, etc. Firewire 400 can sustain it's 400 mbps for long periods of time, making it better for audio recording (find me a GOOD analog to digital converter with more than 4 channels, and I'll show you a device that connects via Firewire), video transfer (especially uncompressed Raw), and external storage. iPods, IMHO, switched to USB 2.0 as the standard because the majority of iPods sold are flash-based. Flash-based HD's can generally log quicker than spinning disk drives, so Apple chose to go with the medium that provided the fastest transfer rate. Add that to the fact that most of the current iPods sold are under 30 GB in size, so the need for a transfer format that would sustain high speeds for long periods has diminished. Our current big dog iPod, the classic, is 120 GB - 75% the capacity of its predecessor. I really think that it was firewire 800, not USB 2.0 that supplanted firewire 400. It's backwards compatible, so its fairly easy to adapt even current firewire 400 devices to work with the 800 port. The only connectivity lost is the ability to have an external storage drive AND some sort of firewire device plugged in simultaneously, but that is less of an issue now due to the increase in internal HD space on most firewire-enabled Macs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Goofball Jones Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 You might want to read up on Snow Leopard. A lot of your concerns (3D rendering and 64-bit processing) will be addressed with that update to the OS. I know all about Snow Leopard....doesn't really do anything about the companies that haven't converted their applications over to 64 bit though. We're waiting FOREVER for Adobe to Carbon-ize Photoshop...much less make it 64 bit on OS X. 3D will still be a second-thought on OS X for the big manufacturers. Snow Leopard won't automagically make Zbrush in parity with it's Windows version (no Zmapper for instance...they just left it out on the OS X version). Snow Leopard won't automagically make Autodesk put out versions of 3D Max or Softimage on OS X nor will it automagically make Maya 64-bit (though, they talk about a version come out....any...day...now). 64-bit computing is here now on OS X and it's a kick-ass system for 3D...and Snow Leopard will make it even more kick ass. But that means squat if the big 3D software companies don't take notice of it and port their applications. We waited 2 fricken years for Pixelogic to bring Zbrush up to 3.1...and when they did, they left parts of it off that Windows users had been using all that time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members catphish Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 I went with the Mac Mini for similar purposes. Mine was a refurb I got for very cheap and it's working great delivering a picture to a 53" LCD. I'm sure the new ones would be even better. That said, if I had the time I would have preferred to build my own box. It would have cost about the same and had better performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members catphish Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 Sorry to derail, but Goofball (and other graphics and design people) have you checked out the new Sketchbook 2010 preview from Autodesk?? http://area.autodesk.com/sketchbook_preview Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WillPlay4food Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 Autodesk is porting Alias to OS X so at least they're considering putting their software on OS X. I too would die if 3DS Max made it to OS X but honestly I'm still learning basic character animation and skeleton rigging in Blender which has more than enough power for me right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members T. Alan Smith Posted March 5, 2009 Members Share Posted March 5, 2009 VERY happy Mac Mini owner here. Got mine this past fall. I could have gotten a "better performing" Dell at half the cost, but the Mini was the simple n elegant solution. If you don't have a monitor, go w/an IMac, however. I already had a kick ass Samsung monitor. I'm thinking of either an IMac or a Mac laptop for my 2nd PC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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