This close to switching

[MikePageKY]

I posted this question in another forum that I belong too, and was referred here by SwampWitch

For a couple of years, I've been dual booting Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP on a Compaq PC. Well, the motherboard has gone the way of the dinosaur, and I decided to buy a new computer. The market is awash with new PC's preloaded with Windows Vista, and my hands on with Vista at the store displays has been "ewwww". So, I've given considerable thought over the last couple of days to dropping windows entirely. But, cost is a consideration.

I'm looking really favorable (see drool) at the Mac Mini. It's my understanding that I can use the USB mouse and keyboard that I had on my desktop PC, and that there is a VGA adapter included to use my old monitor, at least till I can replace it too. I just wanted to find out if I am correct on this, because there is nowhere locally to buy anything Apple (except IPods) off the shelf, so I've not seen one in person.

So basically, my whole post is....opinions please?

Oh duh. I guess that I should throw in my usage habits. Web surfing, very minor photo manipulation (crop and resize), little bit of writing, email, and maintaining some web pages; nothing too terribly in depth.

Thanks in advance for your time

 

[Daydreamer]

I've done basically the same, except I didn't replace a computer with the Mac Mini, but just have it as yet another machine to play with (and what a wonderful toy it is!), I'm using some generic Windows-oriented mouse and keyboard (Mac OS treats the windows-key on the keyboard as the apple/command-key, which in most of Mac OS serves the same function as CTRL in Windows), as well as an old 17" VGA screen.

The mini should suit your needs fine, except you'd need to find some word processing program for your writing needs if TextEdit isn't enough (comparable to WordPad and Notepad on Windows), perhaps something to edit those web pages with as well if you're not comfortable with editing non colour coded HTML, since iWeb doesn't exactly give much choice in designing your own page (you can use the built-in templates with no control over - or even sight of - the HTML, or not use it at all).

 

[astroiguana]

I've done basically the same, except I didn't replace a computer with the Mac Mini, but just have it as yet another machine to play with (and what a wonderful toy it is!), I'm using some generic Windows-oriented mouse and keyboard (Mac OS treats the windows-key on the keyboard as the apple/command-key, which in most of Mac OS serves the same function as CTRL in Windows), as well as an old 17" VGA screen.

The mini should suit your needs fine, except you'd need to find some word processing program for your writing needs if TextEdit isn't enough (comparable to WordPad and Notepad on Windows), perhaps something to edit those web pages with as well if you're not comfortable with editing non colour coded HTML, since iWeb doesn't exactly give much choice in designing your own page (you can use the built-in templates with no control over - or even sight of - the HTML, or not use it at all).

Couldn't mikepageky download and install neoOffice for MAC? I have been using that on my new macbook pro. Does the mini use tiger OSX? If so, perhaps it could run neoOffice. www.mozilla.org will have a link to neoOffice.
It has a spreadsheet program and a word processor. It can read doc files from MSWord and save files as doc, too. Not only that.... it's FREE! (you can make a contribution if you like it)