So like a teenager all giddy, I immediately called my friend and said "dude, I've found the solution! Well Ron thought of it anyway..."
I told him about the Mac Mini and it's low cost compared to the rest of the Mac line of computers, and he seemed to be pleased with the idea. He would be able to use his existing monitor - that saves a big expense right there.
So my friend set out to save, save, save for a new mini mac and after a few months he gave me a call and said he had the money in the bank, he was ready to get it, and he wanted me to take him to the Apple Store.
Well it turns out he had to wait another month because I was out of town for a video shoot, but that turned out to be a good thing because in that time Apple announced a new more powerful version of their Mac mini and from what I remember it was $100 less expensive than the previous version.
Score!
Now I've had more than a few people tell me the mini Mac is a bad deal, that it's the same thing as one of their Macbooks without the screen and keyboard for a little less than the laptop, and essentially that's true.
But I wouldn't call it a bad deal.
In fact if you already own a monitor and a USB keyboard and mouse for $600 you could have a killer Mac computer that you could do some creative things with, and I can vouch that it works well for recording.
In the case of my friend who had very little money to spend on this, it made the difference of him being able to get a functioning work station for his ProTools rig vs waiting until he could afford something else that would serve the same purpose.
In fact he doesn't need anything more.
This is a perfect set up for him.
The only thing I told he could do down the road is to max out the RAM and maybe get an external drive for archival and storage, and that's all he would need for a few years.
In summary if you are on a budget, and need a good computer for recording, I highly recommend the Mac Mini, especially if you already have a computer monitor.
Simply plug in your monitor, keyboard, mouse and recording interface and you instantly have a recording studio in a tiny box.
The Mac mini comes pre loaded with GarageBand, a pretty sweet program for recording music that's easy to learn and use, as well photo and video programs if you want to take your creativity beyond music production.
