It matters when you want to buy a computer that’ll last for more than two years.

O RLY? What happens after two years?

You have the rough equivalent to my iMac G3 (16 MB VRAM, ATi Rage 128 )which was basically relegated to word processing by the end of 2003. I got it in late 2001. It’s still perfectly good for word processing and internet, sure, but forget playing Warcraft III on it.

I’m looking to get a 17” iMac with the hopes that its 160 GB hard drive and decent graphics capabilities will hold me out for four years.

btw, Pilky, “toaster oven with handles” is a more acurate description for the iPod HiFi.

However, were you to buy a Mac mini, chances are that the machine will be self-relegated to word processing and net surfing.  No one buys a mini and then complains that it can’t run Final Cut Pro.

In a low-end computer, users are not horribly concerned with graphics upgradeability.  They just want it to show their pictures and surf the web.

Were this a Powermac, then people would have something to complain about.  But with the mini?  No problem.  Especially when one considers that ONLY the Powermac has an upgradeable video card anyways.

This is not that big a deal.

Tell that to my brother in law,
he wants a cheap computer, yet he wants to game on it.
He ordered a Dell with integrated graphics, I quickly showed him the way and he canceled it, then got an HP laptop… *sigh* (at least it has an nVidia graphics processor, but still). :/

Yeah, I don’t think the products Apple announced are necessarily bad, but I think the price points are all wrong.

Integrated video on a mac mini?

Make sense if Apple is trying to cut down cost to sell to the masses, but then, the price tag doesn’t seem to be for the masses does it?

This is the Intel deal, so deal with it.

Sognix, when you said you showed him the way, what exactly did you show him?  What model dell was it BTW? I’m curious.

Showed him the way = You can’t game on a PC with Intel Integrated Graphics nomater what the Dell salespeson said!

And didn’t look to see what model, but is has AMD64 chip, and an nVidia card. Don’t remember further details on it.

Sognix,

That Dell may have integrated video (and among other integrated features), but I believe there is a slot for an extra video card (my Shuttle comes with built-in Geforce MX440 video but has a spare AGP slot).

The Dell salesperson is still right though, even with the integrated video, it is good for half-life, quake3 and the sims.

Of course it’s great for those games; all those games have been around for at least six years. Try running something from the last two years or so on an integrated graphics chipset.

Informer,
um, yeah - I think he wants to play games that where made sometime AFTER the year 2000.

Namely Brothers In Arms - Earned In Blood, for one.

btw, it seems the Mac mini is just too small to handle a separate GPU; the new mini’s innards are even more tightly packed than before:
http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/03/2006 0302113924.shtml

Brothers in Arms is a relatively new game (2005), so of course some integrated video may not be able to run some of the newer games like Quake4 or Doom3 smoothly.

But um yeah, add a PCI/AGP video card and you’re set. 

Unfortunately you can’t do that on an iMac or Mini so yeah get another computer if that is the case.

Smoothly - or even run at all.
Which is why I told him not to get that Dell, dont know the name of it but it was that new tiny one, so I doubt it has a way to upgrade the video on it.

And I didn’t push him on a Mac as hard as I would because his main goal was to play games. It just makes me sick that people spend that much money on game-only consoles. (oh, and to use Word).

But, to each their own.

At least he brought it to me before he opened the box so I could build up it’s protection and not have him come to me 3 weeks later with a full infestation.