Mac Buying Advice

I could ask my son this question, but as he's in Portugal cycling at the moment and as I wouldn't understand the answer, I thought I'd turn to the good folk of the Retro-Community.

We are a Mac household and have been for a long time, My son has a latest stuff, as he's a web / graphic designer by trade. My wife has a very nice Airbook that I bought her, as she kept killing PC laptops, I have a five year old Macbook and an even older G5.

I want to replace the G5 and I'm looking at Mac-Mini as I don't really want a laptop.

Use is the general household stuff of banking and bills online, internet shopping, forums etc, plus photo handling and word processing as I'm also a sometime freelance writer (nothing to do with bikes), watching dvd's and listening to a bit of background music.

So, what spec machine would be good? And do I go new or are there some suitable used machines?

"Need input"

You definitely don't need a new machine to be able to cope with that, but if you can afford a new one, buy one. At least that way you're covered by the warranty,

Any new Mac (and most Macs up to quite a few years old) will be able to manage what you've described

I've got a late 2012 Macbook Pro (4gb RAM, 500GB HD) and it does everything I ask of it.

If it wasn't for this damn retrobike habit I've developed, I could probably afford any Mac I fancy the colour of :evil:

I know the basic Mac Mini is £500, I would have to add a screen, but I have all the other bits. Seems that might be the easiest way to go, although my past experiences of Mac's warranty have not always been the best.

If you wanted an integral DVD you would need to go for one of the older ones, but I would favour a new one. You can always dump dvds onto your network via another machine or use an external drive.

Nice wee units, if overpriced like most Apple gear if looked at purely in terms of the actual hardware on offer.

As the computer sits on my desk permanently, and external DVD would be not problem.

What would you suggest as an alternative, that is not a PC or reliant on MicroBodge Software.

Check these guys out, I have called them a few times, extremely knowledgeable and helpful http://www.thebookyard.com/

I wouldn't suggest anything else.

Given you are all using Apple it makes perfect sense.

I dump DVDs onto a home server and they go back into their cases.

Ebay seems to have plenty of the older Minis with integral drives knocking about at quite a saving.

Cool!

Thanks for the info, and the links.

Time to get searching.