The Grand Experiment

So. The notion on the table is blowing off buying a huge and powerful PC and instead getting a Mac Mini and running Windows off of it. And if I get really complainy we go ahead and get two Minis so one can be rendering while the other does other work or whatever.
That's the notion.

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Thing number one: M-Audio is apparently not a big fan of updating their drivers. This is too bad as the M-Audio 2626 is a fine A/D converter with really very serviceable microphone preamps.

This becomes a doorstop then.

So that's too bad. Very sad really. Boo.
That said, I'm getting irritated in general with FireWire. I just wish I didn't have to deal with FireWire anymore. I can't understand why it's no longer available on laptops and it's really difficult to... wait a minute, I'm just whining.

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What else is wrong with the Mac? Well, like with any modern Apple it doesn't come with a DVD drive. Now in reality there is a curse put on my studio wherein I cannot make DVD's anyway. All our drives are broken all the time. Okay, that's not really true but actually right this minute it is.
A portable optical drive is about thirty bucks. And honestly we just don't need one on each computer at all times. That is overkill. But right now I do not have a working DVD drive in my studio with which to load software. That is a bit of a pain in the tuchus.

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Resolution. Apple disables the high-resolution output from the DisplayPort on their Minis. Why? Because they hate you. Now, I need 4K because my eyes get all blurry otherwise. Apparently the problems with outputting 4k using the appropriate DisplayPort to HDMI 1.4-compliant adapter works perfectly fine when running Windows on the Mac. This is because Microsoft is greedy for your money, not arbitrarily hostile to you as a person.
Thing is, I don't have one of those adapters (the "HDMI 1.4-compliant" part is what is somewhat rare). Apple doesn't even have an overpriced one in their stores and B&H doesn't have them. So I'm waiting for Amazon to deliver. Is it worthwhile to go ahead and order an optical drive? All for this grande experimentia in running a Mac Mini as a powerhouse audio-editing and 3D computer?
Heck. I dunno.