I received an email from a community member at http://live.jak-e.com asking for my advice on buying a Mac. I felt a blog post was the best way to reply so the rest of the community could

Hey Jake, I have decided I would like to buy a Mac but I need to save up. Which Mac would you advise that I buy if I am a 12 year old? I realy love Macs. I am your biggest fan!

If you’re on a budget and don’t need a lot of power in a computer then I recommend a Mac mini. Providing you have, or are able to buy a monitor, mouse and keyboard, you’ll be fine with one. That’s what I use currently, however I am hoping to upgrade to an iMac within the next year, but that’s only because I want to edit video and perform other CPU intensive tasks which a Mac mini is capable of but struggles with (i.e. it takes a long time to export a movie from iMovie).

If you can afford it, then a MacBook or an iMac, depending on whether you want a portable Mac or not, is a better option. They are twice the price of a Mac mini but a lot better and come with a built in monitor and better speakers. But, as I said, if all you want to do is bit of word processing, surf the web, watch videos on YouTube and occasionally make a song in Garage Band or edit a short movie in iMovie, a Mac mini will have enough power. The only downside being the small hard drive, no monitor, mouse or keyboard and a bad speaker. But these peripherals are quite cheap and I’m sure you could get them all (monitor, mouse, keyboard and speakers) for around £100, if you don’t already have them. And an external hard drive only costs about £50.

If you already have a PC that you want to use along side a Mac, then you can use a little adapter called a KVM Switch to use the same monitor, mouse and keyboard for both computers. As for speakers, a few cheap cables and adapters will easily let you hook them up to both systems.

Before purchasing a Mac, I highly recommend you take a look at this page:

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

It will tell you the best time to buy a Mac to avoid paying hundreds of pounds just to find that they upgrade them a few weeks later.

I hope this has helped you if you are interested in purchasing a Mac in the near future.

Tags: advice, buyers, buying, first, jake, mac, Time, wright

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