Posted on by Martin

Mac Mini

Mac Mini Okay, so beyond the ability to check web designs on Safari, what reasonable excuse do I have for buying a new Mac Mini? I mean, apart from RAW UNCHECKED LUST.

At £339, I’m already trying to figure out where it would fit on my desk, and how much a decent keyboard/mouse switch would cost. Sheez.

16 Replies to “Mac Mini”

  1. No queue jumping now…
    Only question, other than “how much with extra bits” once the UK Apple Store resurfaces is the audio capabilities? It says it has a line out, so is that just stereo? No 5.1 (even on BTO) to go with the DVD?

    andy

  2. Yeah, I’d noticed that the Store was down, because I was wondering how much it would be to get the memory bumped up from 256MB to a much more sensible Gig. I can live with a small hard disk (especially with a nice big outboard motor), but the RAM is is bit stingy.

  3. UK Store is gradually resurfacing. I can now get to the page which has “Select” on it for either the 339 or 399 model.
    I see on macrumors.com that to take it from 512 to 1gig is about $300 or more? (That site seems to be holed under the water too though, so I can’t get back to the page with that on it)
    The iPod Shuffle thing slightly baffles me, why couldn’t one take a playlist and sync that to play either straight or shuffled. It assumes you aren’t listening to some live, classical, concept album or something similar where it will be jarring to not play in order? Cheap though…

  5. Got through for a bit, timing out again now though
    Upgrade to 512MB DDR333 SDRAM 1 DIMM is £50.01
    Upgrade to 1024MB DDR333 SDRAM 1 DIMM is £290.00

  6. £290??? At that price they’d better be using some bizarre, unconventionally shaped memory, because a standard stick of 1GB DDR333 won’t set you back any more than £150. Some markup…

  7. I believe it to be fairly typical for Apple to have a humungous markup on memory.
    http://www.crucial.com seems to be where Apple people go to get the memory.
    “Must be installed by Apple Authorised Service Provider”

  8. I always get through to the blurb after hitting post..

    Memory

    The more memory your computer has, the more programs you can run simultaneously, and the better performance you get from your computer. It’s especially important to have sufficient memory if you work on large, graphics-intensive files or memory-hungry programs. Increasing the amount of memory is an easy way to improve performance.
    ”
    Mac mini contains PC2700, 333MHz double data rate, synchronous dynamic random-access memory (DDR-SDRAM), one of the fastest memory technologies available today. Double data rate memory (DDR-SDRAM) provides twice the throughput of single data rate SDRAM and boosts overall system performance. Your Mac mini comes with at least 256 megabytes (MB) of memory. You can select additional memory up to 1 Gigabyte. You can upgrade your memory later by taking your system to an Apple Authorized Service Provider.”

  9. So it’s not something you have to choose at the time you buy it, like the Airport Extreme stuff. But can you bring along your own stick of RAM to the Apple Authorised Service Provider and say, “here, install this” ?

    It’s either that, or warranty-voiding manoeuvres ahead…

  10. I’ve just ordered one. It’s going to become the new house server, replacing a 9-year old tower running FreeBSD, and the house will become 100% Mac OS X. I’ll immediately break the warranty and install some decently priced RAM.

    As for where it will fit? Good god, it’s the same size as an external firewire drive. It’s a tossup as to which one will sit on top of the other.

    Martin – buy this, and a hefty external disk, and you’ve got a media server. It’s even got a DVI port, FFS. Apple’s going to sell absolute shedloads of these….

  11. No idea, someone is asking that on the forums at MacRumors, but no reply so far. Somewhere else someone states they’ve seen a picture of the inners and it looks like a usual PC style RAM upgrade.

    It comes to 568 with an AirPort Extreme card (though I don’t have the other side of that yet, 512 and a SuperDrive, I wonder how much I’ll get for one of my spare organs 😀

    Oooh, Channel 4 just dropped off the air, everything else is still broadcasting though. Davina was about to interview Germaine Greer about leaving Big Brother, Jackie Stallone is a weird fish…

  13. We’ve already got the hefty external drive–a nice 300GB job with dual usb/firewire interfaces, so I could have it plugged into to ‘puters at the same time. My monitor has got two inputs, so I wouldn’t even have to suffer the signal degradation of going through a KVM switch.

    I’m too far into the Microsoft world to give up the PC completely, though. I earn my living from .NET, so I will need a development machine. But for other purposes, a Mac might do nicely….

  14. Upgrading to 512Mb is £50 extra which isnt too much of a kick in the teeth. 512Mb is comfortable in OSX (YMMV)- and lets face facts, this isnt a gaming machine!

    If you will be using this beside your PC then you could save some dosh by using internet sharing on XP via a cross-over cable and buy an airport card at a later date?

    I was going to be changing from an emac (700mhzG4) to an ibook this year. Now I’ll get bugger-all for the emac on ebay…

    So at £389 you shouldn’t even be thinking about this Martin! Get the credit card out.

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