The mini has Fusion and quad now...but taps out at 16gb ram
On 3/8/14, 7:15 PM, Jan Faul wrote:
On Mar 8, 2014, at 5:56 AM, Trevor Cunningham
<trevor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:trevor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
In the market for a new Mac. Thinking about the Mini for the port
options and price which leaves room to spend on a monitor.
Suggestions? Thunderbolt? Cintiq? Anything magical I should know
about? I really don't know. I'm sure this is a matter of taste
like Nikon v Canon, but I need to start somewhere. I currently have
a 2008 iMac 20", but I'm not an Apple blackshirt. I've gone the way
of the Wacom, so I'm intrigued by their products. But my knowledge
on the matter ends at curiosity.
I’m not an Apple blackshirt either, but... I recoiled from the Mac
Pro, its new black look and start price of over $3000. The Mini is
slow. What looks like a lot of ports, isn’t. I had one of these for
a while too. The one thing is seems to consistently lack is a
quad-processor at the right price.
My Mac of choice at the moment is not yet here, but will be fairly
soon. I currently work on an iMac 27� 2.9 which came from the Apple
store and like all Macs arriving here for more than 5 years, it was
refurbed by Apple.
My iMac of choice would be a faster 3.4Ghz iMac 27� i7 which by
being newer comes with Thunderbolt. I hae a bunch of non-Thunderbolt
drives and they will fit via an adapter.
I can’t really see a difference in speed on PS with what I do for
the i5 and i7. I tend to stick in the $1600-1800 range at the refurb
store where the savings are in the $270 range. The one real speed
advantage is having a Fusion HD vs normal 7200 rpm drive, as Fusion
offers a 128GB SS drive component which makes it run frequently
accessed software a lot faster. Stuff the box with 32GB of RAM from
datamemorysystems.com <http://datamemorysystems.com> rather than
Apple’s pricey RAM, install it yourself as they have made it really
easy now (if you get nervous, ask a guy who knows ho to use a
screwdriver or Geeks.com <http://Geeks.com>), and you’re in hog
heaven. I also prefer a wired in keyboard and trackball as then if you
wake up at 2AM and want to write you don’t have to go looking for
batteries if your mouse it toast. Apple refurb products are all
eligible for Applecare which folks say they never use, but I use it on
all my Macs, usually in the last 20% of the warranty. I recently
replaced a cracked motherboard for example and it would have cost $350
plus install.
This iMac is nothing like the 20� one you have now. The old 20�
had a max of 8GB of RAM and the newer box takes 32GB. Everything in PS
runs faster when the scratch disk is RAM vs. the HD.
Jan
Spaghetti King
Art Faul
The Artist Formerly Known as Prints
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