Thinking about a Mac Mini

[RandLarson]

Graham, It is too late for my comment, but I'll go ahead.
This year I had to go thru 3 different Mac Minis (I won't go into the why here). My experience is that the Mini is fine if you get the fastest with the max ram. But at that price point it's better to get a refurbished 20" iMac. For what you originally wanted, it may have been okay.

Now that you have the MacBook Pro, one configuration you may want to consider is to put your extra monitor on it so that you have a very large desktop. If you add Parallels then you can have one monitor with the Mac OS and another with Windows XP. It's pretty cool. But of course, the best option would be to learn the uniquness of the Mac OS and use the extra screen real estate to get more work done (and make more money!)

Good luck with it.

Oh, and if you get the 30 day free .mac service go take a look at the Learning Center. 15 minutes there on the Mac OSX basics can save you a lot of frustration coming from the Windows world.

[Graham_Smith]

Rand,

Thanks for the comments. Before finally making the decision I bought David Pogue's book on switching from Windows to Mac, so I was reasonably well prepared for the Mac, and I am enjoying using it.

Why of the reasons I never got the Mini was the thought that maybe an iMac was actually better value - but of course IBM then helped me make the decsion. And I ran the the thinkpad through an external monitor, so the MacBook will go the same way, once I have enough confidence in it, to feel it is the full replacement.

I have parallels and copy of XPPro waiting to be installed. I still have some Windows only programs that I need to run.

BUT, so far very impressed, except at how hot it gets, the Thinkpad only ever got warm.

Graham