Mac newbie

[kitch1403]

I've always been a PC user but am drawn by the Mac (who can possibly argue with the design?). I would like some advice: I want to try a Mac but spend as little as possible - I have a clunky 1 Ghz Athlon PC I would like to out-perform but have no idea what I would need. Also, how easy is it to upgrade (Hardware and OS)?

Thanks for humouring me!

 

[andydude117]

Get the new "headless" mac mini! Only $500! You gotta buy a screen though, or you can use an old one.

 

[g5orbust]

Yes, the headless Mac costs 500 bucks and should beat the pants off of that old athlon!

 

[horndude]

Yes, the headless Mac costs 500 bucks and should beat the pants off of that old athlon!

That would be an interesting test,a 1ghz athlon has faster fsb speed, new mini mac has slightly faster clock speed, bigger on die L2 cache as well.They are fairly closely matched actually.

 

[Terry Holder]

Hello Mac newbie,

They are great little computers!!!

 

[g5orbust]

That would be an interesting test,a 1ghz athlon has faster fsb speed, new mini mac has slightly faster clock speed, bigger on die L2 cache as well.They are fairly closely matched actually.

Acutally, the original Athlon 1GHz had a bus of 133MHz (double pumped to 266 for DDR), while the G4 in the mini runs off a 167MHz bus (333MHz for DDR purposes). The clock speed is obvious. The Athon has no on-die L2 cache, actually, instead it has a 1/3 proc speed off-die cache. The G4 has on-die L2 cache that, I believe, runs at 2:1 processor speed:cache speed (AKA: Its half the processor speed.), that is also twice the size as the Athlon's.

They are absolutely not evenly matched chips, not even in the slightest.

 

[JLobes]

Well my friend, I too am a recent mac convert. i have used a PC call my life untill i took AP Computer Science and my school dumped a ibook G4 into my hands. To answer ur questions...

1). If you are happy with the single drive Mac Mini go for that (Mac sells some pretty USB floppy drives), it should run comparably if not better than ur 1 ghz Athelon
2). From what i have heard around the tech labs at my school, macs are NOT easy to upgrade. Much of what i've heard leads to the belief that they are impossible to upgrade, besides those little wireless "AirPort" cards. but, once again, macs are not my forte, so, ask around

hope this helped!

 

[mac_mogul]

But uh, the Mac Mini has absolutely no expansion capabilities... In fact, to upgrade your ram you have to void your warranty if you don't order it with the maximum... And the video card (RADEON 9200 w/32 mb) Thats not much compared to the kind of cards you could pair with the Athlon. It pains me to say it, but the Mac Mini may not be the solution.

If you are deffinitely going with Mac, see if you can get a refurb G4 Tower or equivilent. With a G4 tower, you have the dual processor option, and the expandability of PCI and AGP, not to mention double the RAM, room for two optical drives ,and room for two hard drives. Otherwise, I think that the Mac Mini may actually be more trouble for you than it's worth...

*sniff sniff* I smell another Cube catastrophe...

 

[g5orbust]

*sniff sniff* I smell another Cube catastrophe...

The Cube only failed because it cost as much as a regular power mac but had worse specs and no upgrade potential. This Mac mini eliminated this price problem, therefore i think it will do much better than the cube ever did.

 

[mac_mogul]

Hmm, lets hope so, eh?