MAC mini

Quote from ceb229 : anyone ever buy from gain$saver ?

25 seconds google search:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/...-site.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/a...saver.html
http://forums.macrumors.com/showt...p?t=257967
http://forums.macrumors.com/showt...?t=1202354
http://forums.macrumors.com/showt...?t=1147697
http://forums.macrumors.com/showt...p?t=612588

They rely on people's desires, and rip them off. If every Apple product's price is heavily controlled, and every store from the Apple store itself to Best Buy or Wal-Mart is selling them for about the same price, shouldn't a few alarm bells be going off if there is suddenly some no-name place that is significantly cheaper, even cheaper than used prices on ebay or Craigslist? You've been a slickdealer for 4 years, you should know better than to ask this. Your choices are either to pay retail, or to not buy Apple.

And about buying used, make sure you buy a current model if you do. And regardless of what you buy, make sure to buy AppleCare, it pays for itself, especially with the student discount.




By the way, I've been thinking about a Mac Mini vs iMac, and it's actually not as clearcut as others and I made it out to be. It really depends what he does with his computer. My desktop is a PC, but my laptop is a Macbook from the beginning of 2009. I still use it fairly often for surfing the web, Office (mainly Excel and Word), and even for a decent amount of Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom work. It still works well for all these tasks, and the graphics card has never held me back. People really overvalue what a graphics card actually does; most people that buy one never use it anywhere near its potential. It's the RAM and processor that are my limiting factors. Even with just a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo and a 9400M integrated graphics card, it does these tasks fine. Graphics is nice to have for certain tasks, but if your son isn't gaming, then Intel 3000 graphics is good enough for him. I haven't run into any issues where my 9400M has held me back. The graphics chip is a non-issue for most non-gamers, unless you do a lot of 3D work, like for engineering programs.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/...15484.html

The bottom-end Mac Mini would work for your son just fine, as the processor is noticeably better than mine and the graphics card is a tiny bit better. It turns out that you can upgrade the hard drive in the Mac Mini relatively easy, to add an SSD, and it has a slot for a second hard drive to use the old one as a secondary to hold music, movies, and photos. Look back at older computers, and you'll see that RAM is what ends up being the limiting factor in performance, like the last-gen Mac Minis that could only use 3GB RAM. It turns out that the new Macs can use 8GB per slot, so the Mini can actually use up to 16GB of RAM (while the iMac can then hold 32GB). You can either buy a decent Logitech mouse, or you can buy an Apple one on Craigslist. Add a keyboard, and it's a one time thing. For your next computer, instead of having to buy everything over again, you can just upgrade only the Mini, and you'll have the rest of the peripherals already set up.