[Silver Samurai]

Greetings all.

So now that I'm done university, I'm looking at finally getting a desktop again. I'm looking at getting a Mac Mini because of the lower price and because for what I use it for, it suits me fine. Now that I've gotten an Xbox, the amount of gaming I do will be minimal. Which brings me to my 1st question.

Which version of Windows should I get?
XP is tried and true, but older and not as secure.
Vista is pretty bloated but w/ SP1 a lot better.
Win7 looks to be good, but I'm not totally sold on the fact that it can only be installed on 1 machine ever. I'd like to bring it w/ me if I ever decide to get another computer, which is possible w/ XP.

I'm leaning towards Vista because it's sort of in the middle as far as Boot Camp goes.

Anyways, the next question is whether or not it's even worth me selling my RevB MacBook (specs in my sig). Ideally I'd like to get $500-600 for it, but I'm thinking it's sort of a pipe dream. For the $300-400 I;d like be able to get I'm thinking it might be better for me to hang onto in the event I took it for a trip or something.

I've also briefly kicked around the idea of a hackintosh, but don't really want to deal with the bugginess and driver issues that are often associated with it. Not to mention it doesn't seem like it's dual boot friendly.

A MBP is not an option because of the price and because I have no use for a laptop as my main computer. I also am tired of looking at a 13" screen and want something bigger (22"er is what I'm leaning towards). I'll be glad once I get a new machine since I absolutely hate typing on the MB keyboard because of the razor sharp edges. Stupid design flaw IMO.

Anyways, just wondering what some of your pros-cons are.
Need so guidance of sorts!

[teflon]

A Mini sounds like it'd be perfect for you really. Decently powerful and not too pricey. You should also consider an iMac, since it'll then have a screen built in, a bit more powerful and a bigger HDD. but obviously its then not as flexible with regards to switching out the screen, should you want to upgrade that part of it, and its covered in stupid glass.

Selling the MB you might manage to push the $5-600 bracket, since macs tend to hold onto their value quite well, specially if they're well looked after. Of course, hanging onto it might be nice if you plan on road tripping quite a bit, as you said, but realistically how much are you going to use it? Once I got my MBP, my cube's usage plummeted to nothing since all my stuff was then on the MBP and it was a hassle to keep things in parity across both machines.
You could always hang onto the MB for a month or two see if you dont want to use it to brows the web in front of the tele or something..

As for Windows, I would seriously get 7 over Vista. Its nicer (for windows), faster, newer and just all around more polished.
I don't think that W7 has this one machine forever limit in place, and I have no idea where that came from. My brief googling says that it's just one machine at a time, so you'll have to deactivate windows on your current machine and then activate it on the new machine. If you have any troubles you'd have to call up MS and get them to sort out their end, but it should be possible without calling them up.
Perhaps you're talking OEM licensing?

The flip side would be that XP and Vista should both get considerably cheaper by early next year, and W7 isnt out till the end of October.

hope all that wittering helped.

[Silver Samurai]

Thanks,
ok I see it's only the OEM that is bound to 1 machine. Although at the $225CAD price, I might go w/ Vista since I'd only need the upgrade edition, which is 1/2 the price. I got confused.

I'm leaning towards the Mini since 95% of the time I'm web surfing, on MSN, checking out youtube clips or listening to itunes. The only games I really play are old games like Neverwinter Nights, the odd emulator stuff and on the XP partition, NFS:U2, Civ3 and SimCity4.
Although if I got a Mini, I'd like to be able to try out NWN2 as well as pick up Dreamfall which I really liked on Xbox. Pretty much most of the triple AAA titles get released on the 360 anyways and I'd rather not have to worry about how slow the game will run.

I would say my MacBook is 8.5/10 in terms of condition. I take care of my stuff. Since I hate the keyboard so much on the macbook, I actually use an external keyboard and mouse at home. I pretty much never use it when I'm not at a desk.

I'm not really looking into an iMac for the reasons you mentioned. Plus it also puts me into another price point which is about $400 more than a Mini since I would need a monitor anyways. But I've seen plenty if 22"ers for $200ish CAD and even 20"ers are now $160ish.

I never considered your idea for the macbook though. I suppose I could try to sell it after though. I would like a Mini sooner than later because as newer macbooks come out, so drops the price of the macbook.

But knowing my luck, once I get a Mini, I'll start to see g ames I actually want to try out. lol

[Silver Samurai]

Anyone else?
I'm open.
But am leaning towards Vista since I can get the upgrade version and don't have to get the full version unlike the full version of Win7.

[The Mail Man]

Silver Samurai, on July 25th 2009, 12:38 AM, said:

Anyone else?
I'm open.
But am leaning towards Vista since I can get the upgrade version and don't have to get the full version unlike the full version of Win7.

Go with Win7. I've been running the RC for months now and its awesome. Its just a base OS. Nothing extra like e-mail clients or anything. Just the basics. It allows you to pick what you want to use instead of having a bunch of MS bloatware you'll never need or want. The driver support is great also. Why? Because basically its Vista without the extras and you know what the best part is? Anything you like by MS that was included in past OS's can be downloaded free from MS.

Another good thing is about Win7. is the fact it hardly has any processes/services running. This frees up the CPU threads to focus on your task at hand

As for selling your laptop I wouldn't. Why? Does it still do the job? Hell I'm typing this on a 12" Powerbook with a 1.33 G4! Granted this is the last Apple I ever bought but its been good to me. If you must "upgrade" I say build yourself a PC. Thats what I did. No OEM computer in the world can beat a custom made rig for the money or the personal satisfaction. Also it ain't near as hard as you may think ether.

Heres a link to my rig. Check it out.

[Sneaky Snake]

If I were I'd keep the Macbook and just buy a keyboard and screen for it. Your going to have to do that anyways if you get a mini, so I'd do it 1st with the MB. You can always sell in like a month if you don't like the setup. If you computer is just for browsing the web, word processing, etc. the mini isn't really going to give you anything the macbook doesn't have

I also highly recommend Windows 7. Like Mail Man, I've run the beta for months on my homebuild, I had to wipe it and install Ubuntu just a week ago for various reasons, but Win7 is definitely the most polished version of windows. Its what Vista shoulda been.

Homebuilds aren't all fun and games though, they become (for me at least) quite addicting, as there is always a better component that you can purchase to make your system better, Im eyeing up the new i5 stuff right now. Also your going to have obscure little errors every now and then that wouldn't occur on an OEM machine. Just the other week my wireless card was acting up due to the voltage settings for the PCI ports, and I have no idea how that got changed, I definitely didn't do it.

Also After owning my homebuild for almost a year now, I can without a doubt say that I prefer OS X way more then Windows 7. Everything besides the basics is just a lot easier to do in OS X, and I'm fully capable in troubleshooting in both systems. I would prefer a lower powered mac, over an all powerful homebuild. But The Mail Man's right in saying that nothing can beat it in the performance/price ratio

Oh and Mail Man, very nice rig. I like your blue LED setup, and you've got great cable management

[The Liberator]

This is slightly off topic, but why the 22" screen? The resolution does not change between the 20" and the 22". The only difference is the screen real estate, and it just widens the pixels. I am very possibly completely wrong, but that is my thinking.

By the way, I would go with Win 7 also, why but a 7 + year old OS (that ain't bad) and a 2 - 3 year OS (that ain't that good)?

Liberator.

[Silver Samurai]

The Mail Man, on September 13th 2009, 06:12 PM, said:

Go with Win7. I've been running the RC for months now and its awesome. Its just a base OS. Nothing extra like e-mail clients or anything. Just the basics. It allows you to pick what you want to use instead of having a bunch of MS bloatware you'll never need or want. The driver support is great also. Why? Because basically its Vista without the extras and you know what the best part is? Anything you like by MS that was included in past OS's can be downloaded free from MS.

Another good thing is about Win7. is the fact it hardly has any processes/services running. This frees up the CPU threads to focus on your task at hand

As for selling your laptop I wouldn't. Why? Does it still do the job? Hell I'm typing this on a 12" Powerbook with a 1.33 G4! Granted this is the last Apple I ever bought but its been good to me. If you must "upgrade" I say build yourself a PC. Thats what I did. No OEM computer in the world can beat a custom made rig for the money or the personal satisfaction. Also it ain't near as hard as you may think ether.

Heres a link to my rig. Check it out.

Actually the main deterrent from getting Win7 was price. Vista is cheaper than Win7, although getting an OEM version brings the price closer to reality for me.

I've thought about making a computer, infact I've been reading up on making my own Mac. Now I realize I can't talk about "parts" here but I'm sure everyone here agrees that not being able to do your own upgrades is a PITA.
In any case I would prefer the Mini since it takes up very little space compared to even a Shuttle PC case.

As for why I'd like to sell my Macbook is simple. I have no use for a laptop. I use this at my desk 99% of the time. Now that I'm done university I don't need portability since I'm not taking notes anymore. It's not that it doesn't work (works great), but my needs have changed. I also considered getting a 20"+ monitor, but the way my desk is set up, I can't have a laptop and a monitor besides each other.

Decisions, decisions... although without a job, I'm keeping this. At least I have this to use for now!