I have an HP Pavilion zv5000 series laptop with an AMD XP-M 1.6GHz processor,
80Gb hard drive, 512Mb Ram, DVDR+RW/CDR+RW Combo drive, NVIDA G Force graphics, 15.4" Widescreen High definition brightview LCD, internal WI/FI wireless card & Windows XP Home. (I also have a 80Gb ACOM DATA external HD for it)
(I upgraded this machine from a broken HP Pavilion zv5000 series that had a Pentium 4 3.0GHz w/ hyper threading + ATI graphics board & chip set). I swapped the LCD (original was not the brightview version) & swapped the combo DVDR+RW/CDR+RW drive (it only came with a DVD/CDR-RW) & I kept the battery, now I have backup power! (also I am considering upgrading to 1280Mb Ram by adding a 1Gb chip)
The question is how well will a 80Gb HD 1.42GHz Mini Mac upgraded to 512Mb if not 1Gb of Ram perform compared to the HP?? (I already have a 80Gb LaCie external HD & an Apple Pro optical mouse for it)
My uses do not involve gaming at all, mostly online web surfing & placing adds &/or buying on eBAY always thru a Broadband connection. I also like to design GIF's, animations, morphing images, short movies along with messing around with pictures on programs like PhotoShop &/or Jasc's Paintshop Pro 8.1 & Animation shop 3 (of course only on windows right now). I also burn a CD every now and again usually for someone else or making a backup copy of somthing for myself.
What is your opinions on which is better to go with for my needs? I am asking because I can sell the HP for $1100 right now which would give me enough cash to get the Mini I would like to have + a Widescreen LCD Monitor/TV combo......What to do????? Any suggestions????
Macs are inherently better for Web use because there's no malware/spyware/adware/virii. Of course there are programs for Windows to get rid of those, but running them hogs RAM and can slow down the computer.
The Mac mini will perform as well or maybe slightly better than the PC, but hard drive access could be a bit slower- probably not at all noticably.
It's also a lot smaller and dead silent 99% of the time, and Tiger is a very nice operating system.
The mini's video card may also be better than the nvidia card in your PC, depending on what model it is.
But if you like Windows and are used to it, and also if you have invested a load of money in software for it, by all means stick with it- just be prepared to spend a shipload of cash on upgrading if you ever want to run Windows Longhorn on it.