Help me decide: new 27" iMac or min+monitor ?

I'm in the same boat. I was leaning towards a Mini anyway but now with the new announcements that choice looks more solid now. The specs of the i7 quad look pretty impresive - and that's before any changes and upgrades to memory and hard drive(s). I'm pretty confident at this point that it should work for both my targeted applications, photo editing and audio recording.

The iMac looks as if they were mostly worried again about design for the consumer market. I frankly don't care what my computer looks like and will be happy to throw a Mini under my desk or into a rack. The 27" monitors have been pretty unimpressive so far. Maybe the new one is better, but then you're stuck with it.

I've decided to buy two really nice 24" screens instead to hook up with the Mini and set things up with a good calibration system. That's more real estate and likely better quality - even after the Mini gets replaced at some point with maybe then a Mac Pro if I like the Apple route (I'm still on PCs right now).

And honestly, for just photo editing even the i5 Mac Mini should do. 16MB RAM from an external vendor for cheap should do also.

The new Mac Mini i7 looks like the equivalent of my 5DII to me: finally a good enough Apple product in the price range I'm willing to invest in while offering pro-grade quality with some head room actually.