Replacing a family PC with a Mac Mini?

Feek

Feek

Feek

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16 Oct 2002
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Our 'family' PC is quite old now, it's an AMD XP-3000+ Shuttle and in all reality it does the job well, although slowly. It plays all the games that Mrs. Feek and the kids want, just a bit slowly.

I'm thinking about swapping it out for a 2.53GHz Mac Mini. My concern is how well the handful of Windows games that they want will work. I know that they'd be fine through a bootcamped Windows but I'd rather use Parallels. I know that XP running the new version of Parallels is very good, but is it going to be as acceptable as what they've got?

The games aren't new - A handful of Steam games (Half Life 2, Sam 'n' Max' and the old Lucasarts adventures) and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.

I'm pretty sure that this won't be a problem at all but would like some reassurance. My daughter is a Sims fanatic and Sims 3 is available native for the Mac so that's not a problem.

It'd be driving a 19" monitor at 1280x1024.

I think this will work well, I use my MBP with the same 9400M graphics card, the same amount of memory and a slower CPU to play games natively and it's absolutely fine.

So is this a good plan or what?
 
Well the other option is to get a good gaming PC but JAMAL is right, I'd rather have a Mac there than a Windows box.

It won't get connected to the telly, I have the Apple TV there already and it's in a different room anyway.
 
I've already considered that, it's not an easy thing to do. It's also maxed out on RAM and spends most of the time thrashing the hard drive already. It's getting noisy (even after a good blow out of dust) and I'm loathe to throw money at it. It won't handle the Sims 3 for my daughter either which is another good reason not to consider upgrading it.
 
It just occurred to me that of course I can test this! My MBP has a slower CPU than the machine I'm considering so I can just set up the VM and see how the games work. If it's all OK then I just move the VM over to a new system and it'll work.
 
K1LLSW1TCH said:
I'd get a nice new Mini, I think you are deserving of a new machine seeing as you've had that old Shuttle for quite some time now! :)
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Is the right answer!

This is what I'm looking at.

mini-20100101-175129.png
 
EVH said:
So why use Parallels when Bootcamp would give better results?
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Yeah, I've already decided that! I will bootcamp to either XP or Windows 7. The cheque has cleared and I just need to get the cash transferred into the appropriate account and I'll be ordering. This seems to be dragggggggiiiiinnnnngggg on.
 
It's a massive improvement over what it's replacing in all ways. It won't be used for any 'modern' games so I'm happy with the decision. Now that I've paid for it though, I just want it!

Moses - I don't think that's likely. The 3 day estimated shipping is because it's a custom order and they always overestimate the delivery time.
 
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