2009 Mac Mini or a 2006 Mac Pro?

[sjorlo]

I'm looking at buying a new mac for work (I work as a graphic designer) and I'm looking at the following machines as I really could do with upgrading my old G5 to an Intel, but it needs to be one which will still run Leopard (Snow Leopard doesn't agree with my printer and a few of the applications I need).

2009 Mac Mini
http://www.jigsaw24.com/product-details/mc239ba/apple-mac-mini-2.53ghz-320gb-desktop-computer

2006 Mac Pro
http://scrumpymacs.net/featured/apple-mac-pro-300ghz-8gb-2tb-6.html?SID=59l0397r69cuq1h0usnddqol65

I mainly work with Adobe CS3, quark etc. I appreciate I'll be giving up the expandability and storage if I buy a Mini, but is the Mac Pro going to be that much better in terms of speed and useability?
Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[freaky]

If I were you, I would definitely go with the MacPro even though it's a few years older. I have the same one (bought new in Feb 07). I had several drives installed and 7 GBs of RAM, which wasn't too bad, but whenever I had to run Photoshop, Illustrator, Parallels and lots of other apps together, it would get slow.

I recently just beefed it up to 15 GBs of RAM and added an SSD drive. I also just added another graphics card so now I can run 3 screens (and not need my standalone PC anymore for the third monitor). It now runs extremely fast with all those apps listed above and more.

Having all that extra space and freedom to put a ton of extra stuff inside the case is hands-down a much better choice than the tiny Mac Mini (which may not support that much RAM -- the Mac Pro 1,1 supports up to 32 GBs!)

Even though there are much faster, and newer processors available for the Mac Pros nowadays, I think unless you're doing hardcore video rendering or something that uses a TON of CPU, then the older ones are just as good.

EDIT: Just clicked on the link above and the Mac Mini only supports up to a measly 4 GBs vs. the Mac Pro's 32. That's a no brainer if you ask me -- unless you're using it just as a media server or browsing the web and checking email.