Mini Mac

[scanfor]

Question for the Apple guys here please.

My young bloke wants a Mini Mac - he's looked on ebay/gumtree and found some that are sub $100 (he's only 11 years old, so not a big budget).
They seem a bit underpowered/underspecced to me (40GB HDD etc) but they may in fact not need anything more to do the job required of them.
I have no idea, so was hoping those more knowledgable on the forum might be able to offer some guidance please?

Regards Scott

[goingbush]

if you are used to windows machines a mac has a lot more grunt per processor power , but 40gb is still only 40gb, you can always add on a cheap external backup drive to use as storage.

A mac mini is a great choice, they are excellent computers and use very little power, I has a server running on a apple cube for years (predecessor to mac mini) and never missed a beat.

[weeds]

i have a mini mac and its never missed a beat.......it seems to slow down when the kids jump on, me being an IT numpty i don't whether its the computer or the internet connection

[uninformed]

like any computers they have evolved. The latest having more speed and storage. Note the latest now also have the power supply built in but no disc drive so you need to get the extra, exteranl disc drive etc with the earlier types having a disc drive built in. Many guys out there using Mac Mini as a dedicated music sever. They seem to prefer the late 2010 build ones for various reasons to do with sound quality.

[stuee]

Can you not replace the HDD with a bigger one in the mini mac? Or are they a sealed unit?

[Judo]

The answer depends on what your son will be using it for. Browsing the internet, writing up homework in Word, etc, it's perfectly fine. Playing any recent games, almost certainly not...

[scanfor]

Thanks Judo

Yes, he'll be doing schoolwork, but also plays minecraft and a few other on-line games.
I told him he'd probably be disappointed with the performance compared to his hand-me-down Core i5 with all the fruit, but he wants to go down the Mac path.

[scanfor]

Ended up getting him a new one for his Birthday/Xmas combined, Core i5 500GB.
Seems quite responsive, and runs minecraft for him with no issues.
He likes the Mountain Lion OS and packaged software.
It worked out at $850 with keyboard and mouse, so not cheap but if it encourages him to do his homework, then I suppose it might be worth it.

[JamesB71]

My home desk computer is a high spec Mac mini and its fantastic.

[simonmelb]

Good choice - the good thing about Macs is the long effective life - I still have a G4 PowerBook (10 year old machine) that works fine and used for streaming music and and Apple G4 Cube that's used as a file server - a 13 year old machine.