Apple's Mac mini - Tempting PC Users Everywhere
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 25, 2005 7:39 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Upgrading the mini
Now that you've seen the innards of the Mac mini, it's pretty obvious that there are only a few things that you can really upgrade in this machine. You can replace the hard drive; however, you're going to want to make sure that it lines up with Apple's custom connector in order to work properly.
Memory installation is pretty easy, considering it uses regular desktop 184-pin DDR DIMMs (you still need to buy Mac specific memory - G4 or G5 memory will work because the motherboard is quite sensitive to the SPD on modules). The first thing I noticed was that the left latch on the memory slot can't be extended all the way. Apple definitely did their best to not waste a single centimeter in here:
The default memory that ships with the Mac mini comes from Hynix and features no heatspreader (not that one is needed, as there are obviously no memory overclocking options on the machine). Unfortunately, all of the Mac memory that we had in the lab came with heatspreaders, but to our amazement, our OCZ G5 modules actually fit in the system. It was a tight fit as you can see below, but it worked:
Original 256MB stick installed on the left.
OCZ 512MB stick installed with heatspreader on the left
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elvisizer - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
also, someone needs to tall anand that you can get pictures out of iphoto via drag and drop, not just going to Share->Export.Saist - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
Wanted to step in and comment that the Microsoft Office problem is also solved by a little application that you may or may not have heard of.It's called.
OPEN OFFICE.
http://www.openoffice.org
wilburpan - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
#44Not to mention the lack of a need to buy an antivirus subscription, which kicks in at $25/year for Norton's antivirus program. If you keep your Windows PC for 4 years, that's an extra $75 in software updates you'll need to buy.
shuttleboi - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
"The comparison above was very deliberately set up to focus on hardware alone, ignoring things like software differences and form factor differences. "Hello? The Mac Mini comes with over $100 worth of software. Where are you going to get a software suite on Wintel for $100? Kazaa?
edwardhchan - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
#25: I used a Kingston ValueRAM PC2700 1GB DIMM... Works like a charm. Just a note on using as a media server: Divx and MPEG4 playback is fine with VLC. DVD is good too, but the DVD player doesn't have a very good de-interlacing algorithm. My Mini is being watched on a 43" Samsung DLP at 1280x720. Beautiful display for the compy :)Eug - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
Apple has just dropped pricing on some of the BTO options:BlueTooth/Airport Express combo now $99.
1 GB RAM now $325.
80 GB hard drive upgrade now $50.
And now the SuperDrive option is 8X. Cool. :)
pbrice68 - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
Just a quick FYI:TextEdit does open MicroSoft Word documents. Obviously, it doesn't support all of Word's features, but it will open and display the text and try to maintain all of the formatting.
Although you went over a great deal in iPhoto, you really didn't mention it's built in slideshow features, professionally printed books, and the ability to purchase prints directly from the application. The books really need to be seen to appreciate them.
Doormat - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
#26: the mini takes a regular DIMM, not an SO-DIMM. 1GB PC2700 DIMM is under $200. Plus the putty knife you'll need to open and install it.And I was planning on getting one until I read that they had problems at 19x12. As someone who is going to hook this to a HDTV at 1920x1080, this is disappointing news. Maybe next years refresh with a 9600+ with 64MB framebuffer will do the trick.
barnett25 - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
First I want to say that I loved the article. With that out of the way I have to ask, when you said that Pages exports well to html, what were you smoking? I just recieved iWork yesterday, I bought it becuase Pages seemed like an easy way to make good looking webpages. I saw the family newsletter template and knew my mom would love to have a webpage based around that. But try saving just the template, with no editing, to html. You get a big mess. Pages was not ready to be shipped. It's export to .doc format is messed up with the supplied templates too, but I can understand that being due to Word's lack of refinment and features. I do like pages, but it seems to only be good if you are either printing, exporting to pdf, or simply saving as a pages file. For any other kind of exporting it's next to worthless. (By the way, if you go to Apple discussions you will see dozens of people with similar compaints to mine.)jasonsRX7 - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
Apple today lowered some of the prices on the BTO Mac Minis at the Apple store.http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/01/25/lower.mac.m...