2012 Base Model or 2011 w/ 6630M?

[Griffon]

Hi again,

Smithcraft - Well, the iTunes Store (for music and videos) launched only a few weeks ago here. Apparently we're still a third-world country for Apple.
The bad thing is, Apple is a huge "status symbol" here, so all their products are expensive - an iPhone 5 begins at 1200 $ without a contract.

marv777 - As far as I know, Apple store does not ship abroad. Definitely not to Turkey, as people here tried. In fact it's a good "trade" for people visiting the USA to buy Apple products and sell them with a margin here.

b0bb - Thank you for the information. I also checked a few benchmarks. In Geekbench the 2012 i5 mini is a bit better than my iMac but not decisively. The quad i7 is of course better. GPU-wise the 4670 in my iMac is better than both in Cinebench.

I love the Mac mini - the looks, the compactness, silence.. But I agree I might not find the performance increase I'm looking for. I would mostly gain ease of adding an SSD and a separate monitor where I can also plug in a PS3, but at a serious cost.

If I sell my 2010 iMac with 8 GB RAM and buy a 2012 i7 mini, 8 GB RAM, a Dell 2312HM monitor, a 256 GB SSD (to be installed at an Apple service to keep the warranty) and an Apple wireless keyboard (since mine will be sold with the iMac) I will have to spend 1.000 $. Without the SSD it would be 650 $. I'm not sure if it will be worth it.

I guess I would be better off keeping the iMac - since I feel it's powerful enough for me - and spending the money on a camera or iPad. I will be waiting or the Haswell mini, though. If only my iMac didn't have a screen buzz..

Thanks for the replies!