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286
 
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I was discussing Mini Macs with a guy at work the other day as he admitted that he bought his purely on looks and didn't realise that it wasn't a "PC" so has had trouble with his software. He knows that I'm "into computers" and asked me my opinion. I didn't want to make matters worse for him so kept most of my thoughts to myself,I personally don't have anything against Apple (I have an Ipod) but their computers don't meet my needs and I'm happy with what I put together myself. However it got me thinking, is it possible to format the hard drive on an Apple and have Windows or Linux running instead?
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I was asked a very similar question in the pub last Monday. I'm not a MAC expert by a long way, but put him off buying one, not the least because of the lack, and cost, of software for the MAC's for the average user.
(plus the fact that he'd also have to buy as monitor, etc. on top of the base unit) Apple build and control the hardware that goes in to their machines very tightly, and the Mac internal architecture is very different to a PC, notably the CPU, although some items such as graphics cards & HDD's are common. In short - Windows won't (think back to the old days of Sinclair v. Commodore v. Amiga etc. - different architecture, different O/S). Linux might, there are some people attempting to port Linux onto the later MAC's (and the MAC OS X is, I believe, built around a Linux kernel) but it's still very much at the geek stage.
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286
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You can't directly run Windows on a Mac any more than you can run Mac OS on a PC. But there are PC emulators available, Virtual PC is probably the best of them. It would probably be too slow for recent games, but it's usable for most Windows apps.
There are quite a few mature Linux distribtions aimed at Apple hardware. Have a look at Debian, LinuxPPC, SUSE, Yellow Dog Linux, MkLinux, Mandrake, or quite a few others. Support for the Mac Mini's hardware isn't perfect yet, but people are already installing Linux on it: http://www.sowerbutts.com/linux-mac-mini/
But I'm not sure Linux would be suitable for a computer novice who doesn't even know the difference between a Mac and a PC. I think he'd be much better off trying to use Mac OS X before looking at other operating systems. In my opinion the easy to use operating system is the Mac's one big advantage over Windows PCs. It seems strange to buy a Mac and not use it.
Unless you want to run all the latest games, I don't think that the state of software for Mac OS is too bad. The bundle of apps you get with the Mac Mini is pretty decent for the average user. Mac OS X is based on NeXTSTEP; a commercial UNIX created in the '80s by Steve Jobs' old company NeXT. That's made it a lot easier to port open source Linux apps like GIMP and OpenOffice to Mac OS. You can get software to do most things without having to spend a lot of money.
Any idea what the guy with the Mac Mini wants to do with his computer? I'd be quite surprised if he can't find Mac OS software to do the job.
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286
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I looked at a few of the various emulators that are knocking about on the net and most of them came to a same conclusion, they just run too slow.
The guy I mentioned is happy enough with his mini mac, he just didn't realise that he wouldn't be able to use his existing games.
I was just curious really about the possibilities of running windows on a mac, I know that Apple would never consider it but what a coup it would be for them to have their "iconic" machines running with any type of windows software, the best of both worlds, though personally I'd rather have a mini mac running Linux!
Asrock 939Dual-VSTA
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ @ 2200 MHz
2048 MB
7300GT 256MB
Maxtor 200 GB
SAMSUNG 200 GB
Freecom 500GB External
NEC DVD_RW ND-3520A
NEC DVD_RW ND-4550A
Thermaltake Damier Blue 480W
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