There is of course, always the humble PC laptop – usually cheaper and just as. If you're invested heavily in iTunes media, then the Apple TV is clearly the.

Sitting here looking at our Windows-based desktop and, next to it, the Mac Mini, we're starting to wonder if the full-sized desktop is running toward the end of its lifespan. Sure, gamers want a big powerful machine with loads of cooling and a super-powerful graphics card, but businesses, casual users and internet cafes want small machines, and preferably ones that are secure, stable and a little less susceptible to viruses. Now we don't subscribe to the idea that Mac is inherently more secure than Windows machines. For a start, in any virus outbreak, it's usually a human that opens the thing and infects the computer. Even Apple hasn't managed to totally avoid such problems.

But in terms of a more hassle-free life, the Mac Mini has some advantages. Although, at times, there are some clear issues too. What we wanted to know, was how the Mac stood up as a desktop PC, and how it worked as a replacement for our Windows 8 media centre. Lovely to look at Argue if you want, but Jony Ive always manages to produce something that will impress the most hard-hearted of Apple sceptics. The Mini is no exception. It's a lump of aluminium that has been shaped into an impressively small case, into which goes a computer that's powerful enough to compete with most desktops. The difference is, it's a fraction of the size.

Our review sample is a 2.3GHz Core i7 - quad-core - with 4GB of RAM with a 1TB hard drive. It's possible to order a Mini with up to 16GB of RAM, but adding your own third-party memory is really easy, and a lot cheaper. Most people, therefore, should stick to getting the base memory package and upgrading if they need to. Our system costs £679, the i5 with 500GB hard drive and 4GB of ram is £499, and for a lot of people is more than powerful enough. Connectivity is good, although everything is located on the back of the computer. You get Ethernet, for super-fast networking, Firewire, HDMI and a thunderbolt port for Apple monitors, or hard drives and four USB 3 sockets. There are also headphone, microphone and a full-sized SD card slot.

OS X We've written, at length, about Mountain Lion - and most other releases of OS X for that matter - so we won't go on about it here. But the thing we will say is that as a home OS, it's everything you need and a very pleasant experience.

That way all the drives would be available for accessing of data at any time. It is better to store them to two or more external storages in a RAID 1 architecture. Going by this logic, even a small 256 GB SSD drive would be enough as the primary storage unit on a computer. Then there are the other types of users who prefer to store as much as possible to an external (offline) storage unit. Storing a huge number of RAW files to a cloud storage can be quite expensive. Best photoshop software for mac.

The Mac app store is a solid addition to the platform, it gives access to a good selection of software, and makes it easy to buy. You get access to a decent amount of apps, they tend to be a little bit higher in quality than if you just Googled for what sort of thing you need to do, and they are managed centrally. Perhaps best of all though, you can install apps purchased on the Mac store on all of your authorised machines. That means, both your Mac Mini and Air can have Photoshop installed. In terms of slickness, it has to be said that Apple has beaten everyone else at their own game. What makes OS X so usable has to be the incredible speed with which the OS is able to switch between tasks. To give you an example, with this Mac Mini being used as a media centre, you can be playing video through Plex, and use the wireless trackpad to swipe between different desktops.

This is something that might be incredibly helpful, if you're watching something, but want to have a quick flick to see another app. Apple's use of the Mac's graphics hardware means that such whizzy visuals are responsive and don't seem to delay anything else from happening.

We were able to play 720p HD video on one 'desktop' while switching between other apps, and found it amazing how solid everything looks. Video keeps playing during the transition, and the machine handles it as if you were just typing into a word document. Trackpad is a must With all the fuss about Windows 8 being a touchscreen-focused OS, people forget how good OS X is at 'touch' gestures. When using OS X you'll very quickly start using the three finger swipe to move between open full screen windows, the desktop and dashboard - although the dashboard has limited value to us, we can see some people loving it. Three fingers up shows you all the running applications, which is by far the best method for task switching, and Windows 8 users will likely be aware of what a massive mess Microsoft has made of this functionality recently. How we'd love to see something like Apple's system appear to replace the misery of Windows switching - which used to be brilliant.

Obviously, two fingers is a standard scroll. Up and down allows you to scroll webpages, but two fingers to the right will also move you back through your history. Some people made a fuss about the tablet-style reversal for this stuff, but honestly we didn't find it much of a problem. It takes a few seconds, at most, to get used to this system. Slight graphics issues We tested our review sample with two monitors, both Samsung, and both had an issue with washed out colours via HDMI. A look around online shows that this is a widespread problem, but is related to the Intel graphics.

I don't need the entire set of microsoft software (excel, power point, etc.). Can i buy publisher for mac.