Mac Mini mini-review

[Eug]

Anand's review is up

 

[hopejr]

I have my mac talk to me about 30 seconds after a message comes up "Excuse me! Safari can't find the server!". It's so funny.

I also like the way on OS X it's so easy to do accented characters like é and á and å using the option button.

Oh and option+shift+8 for °

 

[Chadder007]

Originally posted by: Thin Lizzy
Or, if you dont want to use Office 2004, you can get iWork, which is an add on to AppleWorks. I read it makes a good competitor to MS Office.

Or...you can even download OpenOffice.org

 

[Stark]

nice.

 

[Childs]

Originally posted by: halfadder

Originally posted by: fuzzyuu
Hey, what HD's came in your Mini's? I read that they were all supposed to be 4200rpm HD's.

I ordered the base model (1.25 GHz, 256 MB, 40 GB). I'm away from home at the moment and don't have the exact model, but it's a Seagate 5400 RPM 8MB. Feels quite a bit faster than the 80GB 4200 RPM 2MB in my year-old PowerBook.

Ordered the same config with Superdrive and got the Seagate 5400RPM drive. At first I thought the drive was slow, but then I think a lot of it had to do with thinking that I had a 4200RPM drive in it. When I placed my order I had my mind set that I was going to upgrade the RAM and HD myself, so I think I was looking for ANY reason to replace the HD. After using it for almost a week I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing wrong with the HD, especially since it shipped with the hardrive I was going to put in there myself!

 

[Eug]

The Mac mini's BTO options have changed.

Mostly it's price drops, but the SuperDrive is now 8X. (UJ-835 I'm guessing.)

BlueTooth/Airport Express combo now $99.
1 GB RAM now $325.
80 GB hard drive upgrade now $50.

 

[Childs]

Originally posted by: Eug
The Mac mini's BTO options have changed.

Mostly it's price drops, but the SuperDrive is now 8X. (UJ-835 I'm guessing.)

BlueTooth/Airport Express combo now $99.
1 GB RAM now $325.
80 GB hard drive upgrade now $50.

I think that Superdrive shipped with my Mini last week! System Profiler shows MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-835F.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: Childs
I think that Superdrive shipped with my Mini last week! System Profiler shows MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-835F.

Schweet. Maybe they had some 4X drives left over they wanted to get rid of, but you lucked out.

That drive should support both + and -R/W. The drive mechanism also supports DVD-RAM, but I dunno if the Apple firmware for that drive supports -RAM.

 

[piasabird]

I looked at this product and couldnt help thinking it would make a nice car computer. I can imagine it mounted under a dashboard. I would have thought 512 megs of RAM would be better.

 

[Childs]

hah, well when I saw the price drops I was a bit peeved and was going to try to pricematch, but since I got the 5400RPM drive I wanted and 8X superdrive, I'll let them keep the $30 I spent extra on the wireless.

 

[Eug]

I think they honour price drops if you purchased within 10 days of the price drop. But yeah, you already did well, getting the 5400 rpm drive and 8X DVD burner. Nice.

 

[AU Tiger]

I'll have to check my hard drive when I get home. I picked up the basic 1.25 model from my local Apple store this past Saturday. Only played with it one evening so far, but so far I like it. It sits nicely on top of my Shuttle SB75G2 case.

Edit: Checked the drive and it is the 5400RPM model so I won't be upgrading the hard drive until I decide I need more space.

 

[halfadder]

Originally posted by: AU Tiger
I'll have to check my hard drive when I get home. I picked up the basic 1.25 model from my local Apple store this past Saturday. Only played with it one evening so far, but so far I like it. It sits nicely on top of my Shuttle SB75G2 case.

Can you post a photo of the Mini sitting on top of the Shuttle case? It would be fun to visually see the size difference.
My own upgrade was a little more extreme:
http://www.mjkweb.com/macmini/d.html

 

[scruffles]

if you can afford it, i'm 100% behind the mx1000, it's multiple programable buttons are easy to change and the tracking is awsome. For gaming it is not the best. Has a pause when you pick up the mouse then put it back down. Not the best for fast twitch games.

 

[imported_hscorpio]

I want one!

As a mac noob, could anyone tell me if an external(usb2) nec-3500a burner will work with the mini mac?
The upgrade price to the superdrive seems ridiculously high, actually all the upgrades seem way to high.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: hscorpio
I want one!

As a mac noob, could anyone tell me if an external(usb2) nec-3500a burner will work with the mini mac?
The upgrade price to the superdrive seems ridiculously high, actually all the upgrades seem way to high.

It should work, but I dunno for sure. If it was Firewire I'd say yes for sure, but I don't have much experience with USB 2 burners.

However, $100 is pretty good for a laptop slot load 8X DVD burner upgrade, considering these things cost $300 from 3rd party vendors.

BTW, Ars has published A mini-guide to Mac OS X for new Mini owners.

 

[scruffles]

considering teh nec burner is $65 and the enclosure is prolly $10-20 along with a cable or 2, you're talking $100 right there. Prolly better all around to go with the internal upgrade for $100. then you get it under the apple warranty, which i've heard is pretty good service.

 

[Commodus]

I'd go with the interal Superdrive option too, if just to avoid clutter (which is part of why one gets a Mac mini in the first place, right?).

And by the way, has anyone noticed that Apple has seemingly become more liberal in its attitude towards hardware with the advent of the Mac mini. The mini itself is the biggest - Apple no longer feels that consumers "need" an all-in-one on the low-end. But they've also abandoned the notion that DVD-R is the only viable format. If you have iLife 05, you can burn pretty much any DVD format you want. I don't know if the iApps now officially support 3rd-party burners, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did...

 

[Childs]

Originally posted by: hscorpio
I want one!

As a mac noob, could anyone tell me if an external(usb2) nec-3500a burner will work with the mini mac?
The upgrade price to the superdrive seems ridiculously high, actually all the upgrades seem way to high.

It will work. The only thing you might have to do is create a profile. http://burningman.apple.com/unsupported.html

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: Commodus
I'd go with the interal Superdrive option too, if just to avoid clutter (which is part of why one gets a Mac mini in the first place, right?).

And by the way, has anyone noticed that Apple has seemingly become more liberal in its attitude towards hardware with the advent of the Mac mini. The mini itself is the biggest - Apple no longer feels that consumers "need" an all-in-one on the low-end. But they've also abandoned the notion that DVD-R is the only viable format. If you have iLife 05, you can burn pretty much any DVD format you want. I don't know if the iApps now officially support 3rd-party burners, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did...

They've been more liberal with +R support in desktops already.

The problem was the laptop drives. Not too many people use slot-load drives, whereas every Apple laptop has a slot-load drive. And Panasonic was the first supplier of laptop slot-load SuperDrives IIRC. However, the first Panasonic drives didn't support +R at all. The current ones do, and +R has become more common, so it's only natural to add support for it.

OTOH, I don't see the big deal, since +R and -R basically do the same thing anyway. I guess the main point is now you don't have to pay attention to what media you're buying.

BTW, I don't know if iDVD '05 supports external burners directly, but a new feature is built-in support for DVD images. Actually, that feature (as well as external DVD burner support) was also built into previous versions of iDVD, but you needed extra files to activate it, so it was hidden to most users.

You can burn DVD disc images created by iDVD with Apple's Disk Utility (free) or else Roxio's Toast.

 

[metalmania]

Even at $100, external NEC3500 is much better. Sure you can get the internal one with Apple's warranty, but for what? The external DVD writer (1394/USB2.0) can be used on PC also, it's an easy switch. In fact I just use one 1394/USB2.0 DVD writer between an ibook and 3 PCs. That's handy.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: metalmania
Even at $100, external NEC3500 is much better. Sure you can get the internal one with Apple's warranty, but for what? The external DVD writer (1394/USB2.0) can be used on PC also, it's an easy switch. In fact I just use one 1394/USB2.0 DVD writer between an ibook and 3 PCs. That's handy.

Cuz it takes up space. The NEC drive is even bigger than the mini itself. Small form factor is nice.

And I say this as someone who owns an external Firewire LG 16X dual-layer burner.

 

[metalmania]

Originally posted by: Eug

Originally posted by: metalmania
Even at $100, external NEC3500 is much better. Sure you can get the internal one with Apple's warranty, but for what? The external DVD writer (1394/USB2.0) can be used on PC also, it's an easy switch. In fact I just use one 1394/USB2.0 DVD writer between an ibook and 3 PCs. That's handy.

Cuz it takes up space. The NEC drive is even bigger than the mini itself. Small form factor is nice.

And I say this as someone who owns an external Firewire LG 16X dual-layer burner.

I know. You can put the external writer on the ground, just like that huge power brick adapter of MINI. Consider that power adapter, minin is not a mini anymore.

 

[TheGeek]

Originally posted by: Eug
BTW, Ars has published A mini-guide to Mac OS X for new Mini owners.

does anyone know of any other mac/os x beginners guides?

 

[mrbass]

Originally posted by: Eug

Originally posted by: Commodus

BTW, I don't know if iDVD '05 supports external burners directly, but a new feature is built-in support for DVD images. Actually, that feature (as well as external DVD burner support) was also built into previous versions of iDVD, but you needed extra files to activate it, so it was hidden to most users.

You can burn DVD disc images created by iDVD with Apple's Disk Utility (free) or else Roxio's Toast.

Is it a .iso image or a proprietary format. In other words can you transfer it to an external fw drive and burn it with dvddecrypter for instance. I'm guessing not. (see question E)

Also someone mentioned 40GB is 5400RPM which is correct but 8MB? How do you figure the model on seagates website says something like has optional 8MB cache. (see question F) Anyway here's my questions:

Thinking of getting one but before I max out the cc here's some questions/comments.


a) I like that MacOS X is BSD based and mac mini is competitively priced

b) read all 3 reviews Anand Lal Shimpi posted

c) quiet (my shuttles with 200W were quiet but since upgrading two of them to Silent-X 250W and buying one with a Silent-X 250W) that Silent-X is an oxymoron. I cannot do video encoding at night and sleep in the same room. Nearly impossible. 85W for mac mini is simply awesommmmmmmmmmme. Only dvd makes some noise but that's acceptable and normal.

d) iDVD does it encode DD 2.0? On the comparison page it doesn't mention Dolby at all. Is it just PCM which is a huge waste of space? "Combining iMovie HD with iDVD, you can create not just a run-of-the-mill DVD, but a blockbuster." So by stating that it should include Dolby encoding correct? http://www.apple.com/finalcut/

e) iDVD Can it export to an .iso which can be burnt on windows if transfered over, thus eliminating the $100 4X DVD±R if only doing occassionaly dvd burning. Finally Apple doesn't restrict to DVD-R only and allows burning DVD+R. Question does it allow book-type bitsetting though for DVD+R media?

e) Tiger 10.4 upgrade will be $129? Hmmm should one just wait 5 months and get it for free? Of course you have to ordered it before April 12th to get that $90 Epson printer. Will Tiger even work with 32MB video card, doesn't sound like it. At least the party about rendering every pixel. Universal search thing no problem though.

f) 1.25GHz vs. 1.42GHz ...now granted it sure doesn't seem worth the extra $100 ($50 actually if the 80GB hd is worth $50 upgrade). I wonder if the 1.42GHz really is worth it. It just seems like if I had a Pentium 500Mhz would I upgrade it to a Pentium 700Mhz for $100...I doubt it.

g) I know Mac has RTCW but only if it had ET I'd truly be in heaven.

e) cheapest bluetooth keyboard on newegg was $123...anyone know of a cheaper bluebooth keyboard for under say $50? Just in case I decide to get the $99 airport/bluetooth bundle. Guess if they're this expensive only worth getting airport for $79. Cheapest is Apple's wireless keyboard combo $99? Also on apple store it has Kensington Wireless Optical Desktop for Mac $79.95...hmm is this bluetooth or RF?

f) Read the 40GB Seagate is 5400RPM/2MB cache. However, the 80GB Toshiba 4200RPM/8MB cache. Now considering this I think I value a 4X larger cache hd memory to a slower by RPM. Maybe that $50 upgrade for $80 is worth it after all? All my hd's purchased last 2 to 3 years have all been 8MB as to me it makes a difference (not super huge but a difference nonetheless).

g) Everytime you view a .mov does Quicktime in Mac OS X have the "Upgrade Now or Later" crap that windows quicktime has?

f) Does that free rebate for an epson printer include free shipping?