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I've never used a Macintosh, and would like to buy a MacMini, but there are applications that are Windows-specific, so I need both OS's.

How solid does Windows 7 run on a Mac Mini through BootCamp? Is it a valid alternative, or am I better off getting a good quality PC instead?

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Well, you will pay for the Mac already. So, either Windows 7 works out for you, and everything's fine, or you'll have to buy another PC anyway. If you consider buying a PC instead of the Mac Mini, why do you even want the Mac in the first place? (Btw. Windows 7 runs fine on a Mac.) – slhck♦ Nov 23 '11 at 23:38
Macintosh have a reputation of being better hardware, and I'd rather use MacOS when I don't need to run Windows applications. – OverTheRainbow Nov 23 '11 at 23:44
It is not related to your question per se, but hardware is independent of the operating system. It is therefore possible to have better, equal, or worse hardware on a non-mac. – soandos Nov 23 '11 at 23:56

closed as not constructive by slhck♦, techie007, Simon Sheehan, Sathya♦ Nov 24 '11 at 7:40

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How solid does Windows 7 run on a Mac Mini through BootCamp?

It's solid. I've been running Windows XP/7 on a mac mini for years. If you have enough hardware resources (CPU, Disk, RAM) it's really nothing to worry about.

Is it a valid alternative, or am I better off getting a good quality PC instead?

Macs are more expensive in terms of price the quality is well worth it. Macs are better (quality) than OEM value-added desktop manufacturers (Dell, HP, etc.). I tend to think of the mac as a better alternative to a PC as macs can have a foothold in two worlds (windows and osx) where as windows pcs cannot (excluding hackintoshes of course).

If you're debating on whether it's a good purchase or not, you should approach it more functionally and see if the programs you need will run with windows via bootcamp OR vmware/parallels.

From my personal experience, using Windows on Mac are just fine both in Bootcamp and in VMWare.

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Thanks all for the feedback. – OverTheRainbow Nov 24 '11 at 0:19
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You might want to take a look here, where apple lists the requirements for running windows through bootcamp.

Basically, if your OS can run Lion 10.7, and you have 16+GB of hard drive space (this is the absolute minimum, but I would recommend more since you want to install applications on the windows partition).

Your mac must also have an intel processor.

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Mac Mini is Intel-based computer, so you can run Windows 7 on it through BootCamp. The performance of Windows 7 on cheapest Mac Mini will be same as a PC packaged with 2.3 GHz dual-core i5 & 2GB DDR3 RAM. And, this performance is good. Spend more & you'll get better performance.
Intel-based Mac is better than PC because on PC you can't run Mac OSX natively (without using virtualization). So, go for it if you want.
Other than BootCamp, I'll recommend to use VMware Fusion which is a powerful virtualization software to run Windows applications on Mac side-by-side without rebooting. Means, you'll get Windows taskbar & Mac Dock on same desktop. Alternatively, you can use Parallels Desktop for Mac too.

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Thanks Sachin for the feedback. – OverTheRainbow Nov 28 '11 at 13:18

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