I assume that you would want better video performance than you would get in the mini. It is easy to add an external drive via firewire.

If you deal with large files, a desktop mac would be a better choice. It also seems that the ram upgrade is expensive enough to put you in the desktop range by the time you make that addition.

Shop the refurbs from the Apple site for nice deals.

I've run PS and the CS pkgs on a Cube (G4, 500Mhz.); a full install of apple software, Panther, full CS, 1000 fonts is only about 13 Gig storage. The key for me is RAM. On a G4, Panther and these apps work fine with at least 1Gig of memory, but will struggle at 512Meg. A separate Firewire backup drive is nice, also.

I feel the miniMac is more for web, email, wp, and PS Elements, not so much for serious work.

JMHO.

Regards

John

Well, either buy the mini for $500 and upgrade in 2 years for another $500, or by a $1800 tower now, and then uprgade it over the next 4 years piecemeal.

Also, I bet within a week or so you'll start seeing instructions on how to add RAM yourself to it.

Now, if you're doing super-high-res Photoshop work, well, then maybe you want to go with a tower and maxed out RAM...but that'll cost you much more than than the Mini.

What would be cool is if you could connect multiple MINIs together to increase processing and RAM...sort of a mini-supercomputer. ;o)

Finally, I'm running a bunch of design software on an old Powerbook 665mhz machine. The minis are what? 3 times faster than that?

The mini is almost as powerful as my TiBook, which runs most apps (such as CS) just fine. The mini is very attractive for a lot of reasons. It just doesn't seem robust, which is something people like us seem to need/like. Not expansion-friendly, etc.

That being said, having to move two full-size towers makes me year for a computer that I could cradle in one hand, along with my limited desk space...perhaps I'll just get Apple's stamp-sized G7 in 2010.

"What would be cool is if you could connect multiple MINIs together to increase processing and RAM...sort of a mini-supercomputer. ;o) "

Well, you can make a Beowulf cluster with G5s, so you could probably do it with Minis.