Now that the Haswell MacMini is out, I'm left with a tough choice...

trubadortrubador
Posted:
in General Discussion edited October 2014

Ok. So the RAM appears to NOT be soldered on the new MacMini. But that leaves me with two choices (actually three): P.S. I'm currently limping along with an old PowerPC iMac stuck on Tiger and using a secondary monitor due to the original screen being unviewable.

 

1) Buy the mid-tier MacMini at $699 with the Dual Core i5 at 2.6 Ghz and the Iris graphics card. I can either buy the 16gb RAM from Apple for $200, or buy it third-party for approx. $160 (then deal with the reselling of the original 2x4 RAM), upgrade to the 1TB Fusion drive (another $200), and buy an Asus 24" monitor (another $170). That's $1269 (or $1229 minus the resell of the original RAM).

 

2) Buy the mid-tier 21" iMac at $1299 with the Quad Core i5 at 2.7 GHz and the Iris Pro graphics card. Bump the RAM for $200, and the 1TB Fusion drive for another $200. No need to buy a monitor now. So, that's $1699.

 

So that's a difference of $430 (or approx. $500 with the RAM resell in option 1).

 

I have thousands of songs (7600+) in iTunes and thousands of photos. Along with basic everyday computer uses, I'll be using the computer for processing photos from my DSLR (as a serious amateur hobbyist) using an older version of Photoshop and maybe a non-subscription alternative to Lightroom (if there is any), maybe putting together very simple home videos, and using Garage Band and several software plug-ins for music composition/recording.

 

Is the spec bump to a Quad at 2.7 with the Iris Pro for the extra $430-500 worth it for these needs?

 

My third option… wait for that mid-tier iMac to be spec bumped with the Broadwell early next year? (I know now that the MacMini will most likely never be spec bumped to a Quad, and it would be at least a full year or longer before it got spec bumped to Broadwell).

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 1
    trubadortrubador Posts: 80member
    Well this is severely disappointing. Macminicolo just verified that the new Mac Minis do NOT have user-upgradeable RAM. I waited over a year for the new Mac Mini. This is NOT what I had expected from Apple. The base model is a joke. The top-tier model is a very minor spec bump from the mid-tier for $300+ more (???). if the mid-tier was a quad core with user-upgradeable RAM for the same $699 it would've been perfect. Just pop in your own extra RAM for an additional $150 and you're set. Instead... Meh! Now I'll have to get the mid-tier iMac 21" (when I already gave a monitor, keyboard and mouse) with an Apple-installed 16gb RAM and spend over $400 more than I needed to. This may be great for the bottom line (heck, I'm a very minor shareholder), but for the end-user (which I also am) this truly stinks.

    Not happy!! :no:
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