Mac Mini with Dell IPS monitor vs iMac

Hi,

After many visits to the Apple store, I am very tempted to get a Mac for the photo editing. The display screen looks awesome. The question that I have in my mind is whether a Mac Mini with a Dell IPS monitor will give me the same or close to quality of the iMac display, in terms of colors, etc, etc.

BTW, I am running a PC with the Dell IPS monitor, 2401M. Maybe I should calibrated again?

Cheers

If your display is calibrated, then it's calibrated. Doesn't matter what the computer is.

Why calibrate again? Is that why you're planning on changing over to Mac?

When you buy an iMac the price of the monitor is built in. So, it would be logical that you could spend a little less for a Mac mini and use the extra cash to buy external storage for archiving and Time Machine. The mini is kinda an odd fish though. It's billed as an 'entry' level computer, but at the cost of limited upgrade-ability. But the newest iMac's are a PITA to upgrade and repair - but their gorgeous to look at though and the new anti-reflective coating works well. So, my vote is a Mac mini with extras.

Or, you could build (or have a friend build) a hackintosh. I use Kakewalk and was up and running in less than two hours (from building computer to running OS X Mountain Lion). I wouldn't recommend this for business purposes or for people not willing to do DIY projects.

MaxxuM wrote in post #15336149
Why calibrate again? Is that why you're planning on changing over to Mac?

When you buy an iMac the price of the monitor is built in. So, it would be logical that you could spend a little less for a Mac mini and use the extra cash to buy external storage for archiving and Time Machine. The mini is kinda an odd fish though. It's billed as an 'entry' level computer, but at the cost of limited upgrade-ability. But the newest iMac's are a PITA to upgrade and repair - but their gorgeous to look at though and the new anti-reflective coating works well. So, my vote is a Mac mini with extras.

Or, you could build (or have a friend build) a hackintosh. I use Kakewalk and was up and running in less than two hours (from building computer to running OS X Mountain Lion). I wouldn't recommend this for business purposes or for people not willing to do DIY projects.

I'm actually thinking of building a HackMini as a HTC machine. TonyMac shows you how to build a "CustoMacMini" using off the shelf parts, starting with a mini-ITX MB. They use an i3/3225, but there's no reason (except maybe cooling) why you couldn't run a much faster CPU.

They have good info, but it's hard to sort out, so Lifehacker interprets their guides and makes them a lot clearer. I currently have a 2550K running four monitors on a Radeon HD 6870 with Windows 7, but OS X only supports 3 monitors per card, so next week I'm adding another 6870 to see if I can get four monitors (or even more) running on it - all from using their installer software, which is very straightforward, right up until the very end. That's when you need to read LifeHacker.

The TonyMac installer is pretty easy. I just updated my i7 hackintosh to Mountain Lion without a hitch. Of course, you should always have a backup - just in case.