lately on my visits to fry's i keep visiting the mac mini they have on display for cusotmers, its a very sexy computer to say the least, one of the reasons i like it is because unlike most computers its small, it has a Intel Core 2 Duo, and its a mac, i used a mac in school, and i rarely hear bad things about macs. i have come to the conclusion that i must get one.

one of the few things that trouble me are obviously the apps that I'm limited to in a mac compared to a pc, i know that most popular apps like VLC media player, Real Player, ect... all have mac os installers, binaries, and what not, and for those that don't theres virtual pc for mac, which i just googled moments ago to not seem like an n00b who won't do some simple research before axing for help. all i want to know who here has a mac (preferably a mac mini), and can provide me with info like: does virtual pc perform well when running pc only software such as for example: UMD GEN or Goldwave?

i want to properly spend some money I've saved up and would like to see it go towards a mac mini or a tattoo (which will still come in the future if not now) or a Wii, and as a first choice i want a mac mini but i don't want to be burdened with problems running software i like to use like XN View, which won't have official mac osx support until sometime decembeer this year which isn't too far from now but still what if they cancel it? so anyways some sort of feedback would be nice from everyone thank you :)

Looo. macs rool. I needed a laptop and my dad was really into his new imac so I decided not to go through the drag of comparing all those 1000000s of laptops and got a macbook pro. I thought there would be some problems with software but the fact that u can just dual boot windows on them solved that problem.

now that ive had it for a month or 2 or something, its really much better than i thought (mac os x). anyone with a bit of a logical, computer-orientated mind (aka anyone whos familiar with windows) and some willpower can make the switch easily. once you get the mac, concentrate on finding all the software you like (for mac) and learning all the settings and preferences and customising it the way you like. The last thing ull want to do is install windows, because if u do it first u might not come across the perfect mac os alternatives for the programs u use. that's how i did it.

mac os x is very user friendly. unlike with windows, the software that comes with it like ilife and safari are actually really good and useful, and unless you really really need to you shouldnt go looking for an alternative without giving them a try. Also, installing apps is as easy as click and drag, everything always works fine and stuff, just great.

in our house wee have a mac mini (an older ppc version), an intel core2duo imac (20") and my c2d santa rosa macbook pro (15"). the mac mini is certainly not slow or inferior, though it does need a decent amount of ram (when wee got it there was 256 mb, wee put 1gb in and it went BLAZING fast).

about running windows, you can do it in 2 ways: virtual or native. native is better because its exactly the same as any other pc BUT it requires a reboot to get to it and back. it is preferred if you want to attempt gaming though. Virtual can be done in about 4 ways, and involves running windows in a window on top of mac os. 1. Parallels. it may work, it may not. not really my fav. installs a winxp desktop so u can do anything. 2. Virtual PC, idk, never tried. 3. Crossovermac. This is different from the rest because you don't run a complete windows install but just one program instead. uses wine.

Number 4 is what I use, its new. VMWare Fusion is the mac version of the legendary VMWare series for windows, linux and more. ive used vmware for windows and it totally rox and when I heard they were making a mac version i got it straight away. in vmware you just get a virtual pc, you shove a virtual cd in (point to an iso) and install windows just like on any pc. then when it finishes u can install vmware tools onto the windows machine which lets u access ur macs files from the windows machine, and even lets u go into a mode where the windows windows (like a program window) appear as mac windows on your mac desktop. vmware supports virtual harddrives, dvd drives, floppy drives, memory, etc etc and even directx 8.1. it works perfectly.


if theres ever any question u have about macs ill be happy to answer it. also, check out this forum: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/forumdi...62337c&f=8

by the way, they will probably stop selling mac minis soon because they don't want macs to be cheap and small or somet, but its a wonderful and very cool machine so get it while u can. theres lots of accessoires for it too.

diego_429 Wrote:hmm im not sure it works that well because my brother has a macbook and he doesn't want to dual boot it with windows since he heard it splits everything in half (ie. HDD space, RAM, Processing Power.) but im not sure about this since this is just what he 'heard'.

havent heard of this virtual Pc though.

wahahah what a load of bull. dual boot only takes up some harddisk space to install windows, and u can decide how much urself. even virtual windows doesn't do that, whenever im using vmware and im using my mac at the same time its still around 15% cpu usage. virtual pcs do take up lots of ram though cause it has to reserve it for the os. mine uses 512mb but u can chose it urself. and only when its running.

diego_429 Wrote:that's glad to here that my brother is a load of bullchocolate since I hate him. . .

anyways I just read about virtual PC and it seems good but I read on a page that was titles 'Virtual PC for macs' and it was all good till I saw this line "note: virtual PC does not work on Intel based macs" . . so I'm not sure if it will work for you but now I just suggest listening to Ge64 since he knows what he is doing. . . . .so just listen to him.

yeah i saw that too

Ge64 Wrote:Looo. macs rool. I needed a laptop and my dad was really into his new imac so I decided not to go through the drag of comparing all those 1000000s of laptops and got a macbook pro. I thought there would be some problems with software but the fact that u can just dual boot windows on them solved that problem.

hell yeah macs rule they are uber user friendly

Ge64 Wrote:now that ive had it for a month or 2 or something, its really much better than i thought (mac os x). anyone with a bit of a logical, computer-orientated mind (aka anyone whos familiar with windows) and some willpower can make the switch easily. once you get the mac, concentrate on finding all the software you like (for mac) and learning all the settings and preferences and customising it the way you like. The last thing ull want to do is install windows, because if u do it first u might not come across the perfect mac os alternatives for the programs u use. that's how i did it.

cool cool

Ge64 Wrote:mac os x is very user friendly. unlike with windows, the software that comes with it like ilife and safari are actually really good and useful, and unless you really really need to you shouldnt go looking for an alternative without giving them a try. Also, installing apps is as easy as click and drag, everything always works fine and stuff, just great.

i know safari and other apple apps, they're uber easy to install , most are just simple executables with the whole app in one file arent they?

Ge64 Wrote:in our house wee have a mac mini (an older ppc version), an intel core2duo imac (20") and my c2d santa rosa macbook pro (15"). the mac mini is certainly not slow or inferior, though it does need a decent amount of ram (when wee got it there was 256 mb, wee put 1gb in and it went BLAZING fast).

yeah i like macs, and the mac mini is very sexy and its one of the various things that keep atracting me to macs more and more

Ge64 Wrote:about running windows, you can do it in 2 ways: virtual or native. native is better because its exactly the same as any other pc BUT it requires a reboot to get to it and back. it is preferred if you want to attempt gaming though. Virtual can be done in about 4 ways, and involves running windows in a window on top of mac os. 1. Parallels. it may work, it may not. not really my fav. installs a winxp desktop so u can do anything. 2. Virtual PC, idk, never tried. 3. Crossovermac. This is different from the rest because you don't run a complete windows install but just one program instead. uses wine.

Number 4 is what I use, its new. VMWare Fusion is the mac version of the legendary VMWare series for windows, linux and more. ive used vmware for windows and it totally rox and when I heard they were making a mac version i got it straight away. in vmware you just get a virtual pc, you shove a virtual cd in (point to an iso) and install windows just like on any pc. then when it finishes u can install vmware tools onto the windows machine which lets u access ur macs files from the windows machine, and even lets u go into a mode where the windows windows (like a program window) appear as mac windows on your mac desktop. vmware supports virtual harddrives, dvd drives, floppy drives, memory, etc etc and even directx 8.1. it works perfectly.

hmm so the best to use pc-specific apps is VMWare Fusion bada$$

Ge64 Wrote:if theres ever any question u have about macs ill be happy to answer it. also, check out this forum: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/forumdi...62337c&f=8

thanks I'll check out the forum too :)

Ge64 Wrote:by the way, they will probably stop selling mac minis soon because they don't want macs to be cheap and small or somet, but its a wonderful and very cool machine so get it while u can. theres lots of accessoires for it too.

yeah i something like that in wikipedia i think... anyways I'm almost there just need my buddy to pay me my money and i have exactly the price

I've had Mac's in my house for as long as I can remember. They're very efficient. I know for a fact that booting Windows using BootCamp is identical to booting it on a PC. In other words, it's pretty much flawless. There are still some driver issues when using certain Mac-specific hardware on Windows, but they pretty regularly update. In other words, Macs are the way to go.

On a side note, my parents are getting me a MacBook Pro as a graduation present. Macs are really better for the things I do on the computer.

On another side note, the Art Institute that I'm going to for college has about 50 of the gnarly, souped-up Mac Pros in the whole school. Each one costs $4000-5000 0.o Maybe that's why the tuition is an arm and a leg.

(This post was last modified: 17/09/2007 11:28 AM by Chroma.)

w00 mac pros are the shiite

mac pros are out of my league man, I'm satisfied with what the mac min has to offer in specs

Yeah, I was just marveling at the awesomeness of the school I'm going to :D

Anyway, if the Mini has an Intel processor, then you can definitely boot Windows. I don't know about driver support and graphics on Windows, but it should work for ya.