TopBanana

I'm thinking of buying a Mac Mini to use primarily as a PC for work, but also for OS X for video editing and the like. Do they make pretty good PC's? Are Vista drivers available yet? Also, if I were to buy now, would I get a free Leopard upgrade when it comes out?

Thanks

RichB

1. I wouldn't think I mini would make a great PC - Sure it will run Windows etc but it is 'lowend' Mac.
2. Vista Drivers? Er Not sure what you mean there - Don't know if Vista will run on Intel Macs... Seem to remember reading something that suggests it wont. Also as Vista wants 2gb (is it) of RAM that you need to max out the Ram in the Mini - although you can upgrade it yourself it (used to) invalidate the warranty.
3. No free upgrades. There is no release date yet. Mac Word San Francisco may bring more news so why not wait until late January.

If you are doing anything intensive like video or image editing I would say you are better off getting something more powerful than a mini. Just my 2ps worth but I dont actually have any experience of any of the above so it could all be a load of plop

Markus

If it's a core solo Mac Mini, forget it. Core Duo is a bit better and if/when Core 2 Duo Mac Mini's arrive (you could build one yourself, but you'd void the warranty) they might be even better. But to be honest I'd rather go for, at the least, an iMac, if not a Mac Pro. Really does depend on how heavy the video editing is you're going to do. If it's just using iMovie then the iMac will probably be fine.
I'd certainly pop into your local Apple Store and have a chat and see what they think.

When it comes to Bootcamp, well, you can run vista on it, have a look here. But it's not officially supported as yet, and won't be until Vista is officially shipping and/or BootCamp goes final (when 10.5 is released).
I can see Apple not releasing vista support until BC is final, thus making users upgrade to 10.5 to get vista support.

As for Vista drivers, the BootCamp driver image does not have specific drivers for Vista, and I'm not sure if the XP drivers will work with Vista, or if they are needed.

I would expect that as soon as the release date for 10.5 is annouced you'll see money off vouchers for 10.5 when you purchase a new machine that is shipping with 10.4. You might get a free upgrade, but I'm not sure if Apple usually offer this.

What exaclty will you be doing in the PC environment? I ask as instead of dual booting you could use Parallels Desktop for Mac. It's a VM solution, bit like VMWare/Virtual PC. It supports various versions of Windows, including Vista (I've got RC2 running as a VM in it, as well as XP SP2, 98SE, 2000 and 2003 Server), plus other OSes, such as *nix (I've tried SLES9 and SLES10, Ubuntu and FC5). If you're not doing anything too intensive, or that requires directX then you should be ok. It's endorsed by Apple as well, so that says something good about it.


From personal experience, BootCamp is pretty good, I've only tried it on a friends machine as my hard drive is partitioned, and it currently only works if your drive is not (I hope they change this for the final version), but it is as though you are running on a normal PC. Both cores are used and the machine is pretty quick. BC is great if you want to game. I use Parallels for my needs and it is very very good. I typically run 2003 server from within it, and have around 5 - 10 client computers connecting to it (macs btw) whilst testing our software and it's fairly responsive. XP is pretty good, and Vista is ok. I say OK as I've not really used it in anger, but it certainly works as well as XP does. I don't give it heavy usage, but I've done web browsing and such like.

One other thing worth looking at, if it's just apps you need to run and not a whole VM, is Codeweavers CrossOver product. It's basically a WINE implementation for OSX. There's a beta available and it's not too bad. I've run Office 2003 in it and it's pretty quick, IE 6 is snappy as well. There's a few issues but it is in beta, so that's to be expected (We're talking real beta here, not google's idea of beta )

AllanB

Apple rarely offer any kind of free OS update. I cannot remember the last one and I've been involved at MacWarehouse for nearly 15 years. Small updates yes but very rarely anything major.

Vista is a bit of an unknown but my gut would be inclined to say whilst the Mac mini is a capable machine it may not have the raw power and expandability to be the best choice to use as a PC or for Video editing. System requitments for Vista likely to push the Mac mini a bit too far.

Next year should be one of the most significant years for the IT market and the Mac market. Adobe ships CS2 and rumours abound of plenty of significant new products for hardware and software form Apple and third parties.


AllanB

ScoobyDoo555

IMHO, I'd just get a PC........ if your work is predominantly PC-native apps.....

Otherwise, get a Mac, most of the apps are available for it, plus you get your movie-editing stuff.

The you'd not need Windoze at all..........

I certainly wouldn't want to start running one OS in a non-PC machine - not with a Mac Mini anyway. (I've even decided to leave my MacBook Pro OSX only......)

As stated earlier though all IMHO

Dan

TopBanana

Thanks for the replies chaps.

I think I'll wait until Jan until I buy anything. Parallels sounds ideal Markus. I have a VPN client for several clients and use remote desktop to get onto my dev machines on-site. Doesn't take much CPU power, but it does require windows unfortunately