Mac Mini, viable option to an iMac?

[voice-]

Thinking of buying a new Mac in the next half year (just to avoid them releasing new and shiny hardware a week after I buy something), and I'm stuck between an iMac and a Mac Mini.

iMac was my first choice, but price is an issue and it seems judging by CPU I will get more power out of a Mac Mini than a 21" iMac. On the flip side, I can stuff 8 gigs of RAM into the iMac versus only 4 in the Mini.

I already have a mouse and a spare HD-ready TV, so with HDMI cable, that's a decent monitor for the Mini, right? If so, even after getting the external DVD drive and paying for the keyboard I'll save a good chunk of money.

I'll hook either alternative up to external hard drives, so the internal HD difference isn't important to me.

I guess my problem is that I have no experience with the Mini. Will the RAM restrictions really hamper me? Will I have trouble using a TV monitor? Are there things I'm not thinking of here? This will be my chief toy for years to come, I don't want to make mistakes here.

 

[DeltaMac]

Why do you think there's a memory restriction? Isn't 16 GB enough? Any current mini will take up to 2 x 8GB for 16GB max, and the iMacs have 4 slots, so can go to 32 GB - except for the late 2011 iMac, which is an educational-only version, with just two slots, and is the only current one of those that is actually limited to only 4GB per slot.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/iMac/2011/DDR3_21.5_27

I've never been impressed by a TV used for a computer monitor, but if you already have the TV, then you may be OK with that.

 

[voice-]

Oh, I was under the impression that the cap was 8 GB for the Mini, Apple's online store won't let me order with more, so I assumed it would not accept more at all...16 should be fine for the foreseeable future, so that's one concern put to rest.

As for the monitor, I know HD TV is another way of saying low resolution monitor (compared to its size), but then again I don't see myself being unhappy with 1920x1080 pixels spread over 32 inches. I'm just wondering if anyone's had problems connecting via HDMI.