Apple releases $499 Mac mini **EDIT** Now reviewed by Anand. **EDIT again** BTO Price drops

[Dennis Travis]

Originally posted by: Eug

Do let us know how the Mini works for you!!! That is your Mini correct??

That's not my mini. I'm not buying one any time soon. I would have bought one had I not bought the Cube. That's for home at least. I'd consider one for work.

Drat! I was hoping for a Hands on report! Oh well. I know you would have given us a accurate report on it.

There are others on Anandtech who did order one. Hopefully we will get a report from a non Anti Mac person. I should have mine by next month.

 

[imported_Lucifer]

Originally posted by: Eug
Pics: Unpacking the Mac mini.

Originally posted by: Dennis Travis
Eug, how are you using your old Apple Pro Keyboard with your modern Mac?

It's not that old. It's the black Apple Pro Keyboard from maybe 3-4 years ago, and it's USB.

P.S. My modern Mac isn't that modern. It's a circa 2000 Cube I got off eBhey, but then I added a 120 Seagate Barracuda V, a GeForce2 MX, Bluetooth, and a 1.7 GHz CPU upgrade. I also added a base fan, but since the fan isn't running at full speed, the Cube is still silent.

Same keyboard I have with my G4, except mine has the power button on it.

 

[batmanuel]

You know, I really do like the way they put a DVI-I port on the Mini and used an adapter to convert it to VGA. I wish this would become the standard for all cheap PCs with integrated video, since that would make it more feasible for LCD manufacturers to start making cheap DVI-only panels.

How much to the analog to digital convertors cost in the cheap VGA-only LCDs? I'm sure you could make the monitors cheaper if they only had DVI. It's just that no one builds them that way right now since the most cheap PCs are just equipped with VGA out and no one wants to make an ultra cheap panel that won't work with the sub-$500 Compaq/Dell/eMachines boxes, which could easily be equipped with DVI outputs like the Mini if any of the manufacturers cared enough to do it.

 

[Eug]

You know, I really do like the way they put a DVI-I port on the Mini and used an adapter to convert it to VGA. I wish this would become the standard for all cheap PCs with integrated video, since that would make it more feasible for LCD manufacturers to start making cheap DVI-only panels.

I agree totally. It wouldn't be so bad if the VGA was consistently good, but some of them just suck for VGA quality.

 

[Childs]

For those who plan on opening up your Mini, get a putty knife with a angled blade. The area between the aluminum and the plastic is really tight. A regular putty knife may scar the edges. I used an exacto so separate them then stuck the putty knife in.

 

[Dennis Travis]

Originally posted by: Childs
For those who plan on opening up your Mini, get a putty knife with a angled blade. The area between the aluminum and the plastic is really tight. A regular putty knife may scar the edges. I used an exacto so separate them then stuck the putty knife in.

Are you saying you have your Mini? If so what are your first impressions? How does it run stock? How much ram did you put in?

 

[Childs]

Yeah, I got mine yesterday. I dont know how it runs stock as the first thing I did is crack it open and put 512MB RAM in it. It runs good, I believe it would benefit from the Momentus HD that I plan on putting in there. I dont have Maya or Shake on it yet so I havent tested it under real load. I did do a quick test by loading up all the "i" apps, Sherlock, Played a DVD, Mail, terminal, console, and Safari just to see how it does and swtiching between the programs is relatively fast. But at this point there begins some slight pinwheel action every so often when I switch to iDVD, but its to be expected with 512MB RAM. But using the Expose test everything was pretty smooth.

I think I'll end up with 1GB RAM and a faster/bigger HD for piece of mind, but at Stock its certainly usable. Seems almost as fast as the 1.5Ghz Powerbook I had. I'll get some of the rendering apps on here and FCP and give it a real test this weekend. But the 1.25Ghz and 512MB seems like a good bargain entry point. Aside from the HD, it feels just like the MDD 1.25Ghz Powermacs.

One complaint: The IO ports should be on the front as well. Other than that I have no complaints.

 

[Eug]

OMG, Final Cut Pro, Maya, and Shake all on a 1.25 GHz Mac mini? Are you insane?

Plus, if you're running FCP, I'm wondering if you'd want to run Motion too, which won't run at all on the mini. (For those who don't know, Motion requires a GeForceFX 5200 or Radeon 9600 just to launch.)

P.S. The Mac mini is now the best selling desktop at Amazon, and the best selling computer at the Apple Store. In fact, it's even outselling both the iPod and the iPod mini. :Q

 

[hopejr]

It's great to see it's selling soooo well! Funny that the 1.25GHz is #1 and the 1.42GHz is #3.

Childs: I'm not surprised the performance of opening all those apps. I have a 1GHz iBook G4 with 512MB RAM, and I did the same thing today, but will all the apps on my dock (Safari, Mail, Address Book, iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, Garageband, iCal, Quicktime, Sys Prefs, Terminal, MS Word 2k4, Excel 2k4, PP 2k4, Ent 2k4, MSN Messenger). The dock icons stopped bouncing after 10 seconds (note, I opened them all at once ). GarageBand toook 1.5 mins to fully load, all the office apps were open about 5 seconds after the dock icons stopped bouncing. Exposé was smooth as (even though 18 programs were running at once all with windows open), and after they're all fully loaded (takes about 2 minutes), switching between them is smooth. As soon as I click on the dick icon or cmd+tab or click on them in exposé, the switch. I closed them all together (rt-clicking the dock icon and clicking quit, one after the other) and they all closed instantly. Pretty cool I thought, but a bit insane!

 

[Eug]

More pix of the Mac mini innards

 

[Eug]

Cool. It seems that some people are getting 5400 rpm drives. Unfortunately, others have been getting 4200 rpm drives. It seems like it's just the luck of the draw so you can't pay extra to get the 5400 rpm drive. The good news is that all have 8 MB cache.

 

[imported_Lucifer]

Thanks for more pics.

 

[hopejr]

That combo drive looks like one out of an iBook G4 (the corner is 'cut' out so that it fits in with the heat sink/fan assembly near the screen hinge).

 

[Childs]

My drive shows up as ST940110A, which looks like its a first gen Seagate 5400RPM Momentus.

 

[barnett25]

Originally posted by: Eug
Cool. It seems that some people are getting 5400 rpm drives. Unfortunately, others have been getting 4200 rpm drives. It seems like it's just the luck of the draw so you can't pay extra to get the 5400 rpm drive. The good news is that all have 8 MB cache.

Can you link to where people are saying this? I've been looking everywhere, but this is the only place that I can find that says that.

 

[Eug]

So...

The #1 selling desktop at Amazon.com right now is the Mac mini. :thumbsup:

Originally posted by: barnett25

Originally posted by: Eug
Cool. It seems that some people are getting 5400 rpm drives. Unfortunately, others have been getting 4200 rpm drives. It seems like it's just the luck of the draw so you can't pay extra to get the 5400 rpm drive. The good news is that all have 8 MB cache.

Can you link to where people are saying this? I've been looking everywhere, but this is the only place that I can find that says that.

Well, Childs above confirms he has a Seagate 5400 rpm drive with 8 MB cache. I have seen other posts at Ars Technica for example which say the same thing. I've also seen people say they've gotten the Toshiba 4025GAS and 8025GAS drives, which are 4200 rpm drives with 8 MB cache.

So, all drives in the mini I've seen so far have 8 MB cache, but some are 4200 and some are 5400.

However, there may be other drives being used out there too, I dunno.

 

[barnett25]

That seems really odd, do you know if all the 5400rpm HDs are 40Gb, and all the 4200rpm HDs are 80Gb? I can't imagine that they just have a big stack of different HDs and they just grab one and stuff it in there.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: barnett25
That seems really odd, do you know if all the 5400rpm HDs are 40Gb, and all the 4200rpm HDs are 80Gb? I can't imagine that they just have a big stack of different HDs and they just grab one and stuff it in there.

So far the 5400 rpm drive reports are 40 GB, but I've only seen a few reports. The 4200 rpm drives have been both 40 GB (4025GAS) and 80 GB (8025GAS).

 

[Childs]

I did get a Superdrive as well. Maybe theres a correlation. Otherwise it looks like put any drive they could get there hands on in the Mini.

 

[thirdlegstump]

hm..apple still hasn't shipped mine. It's been over a week already.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Originally posted by: deathkoba
hm..apple still hasn't shipped mine. It's been over a week already.

Maybe the FedEx guy really wanted one too.


Lethal

 

[Eug]

Benchmarks of the Toshiba 8025 4200 rpm vs. the Seagate Momentus 5400 rpm at Tom's. The Seagate is noticeably faster. Most important is the seek time. Toshiba is 19 ms. Seagate is much faster at 15 ms.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: barnett25

Originally posted by: Eug
Cool. It seems that some people are getting 5400 rpm drives. Unfortunately, others have been getting 4200 rpm drives. It seems like it's just the luck of the draw so you can't pay extra to get the 5400 rpm drive. The good news is that all have 8 MB cache.

Can you link to where people are saying this? I've been looking everywhere, but this is the only place that I can find that says that.

I never saw any such things, and just went downstairs for this thread to check (I definitely don't like the file browser for apps, nor the dock in general, but the rest of OS X is pretty cool). $499 Mac mini shows its drive up as a ST940110A. Seagate shows no exact match, but the ST94011A (lacking one 0) is a 5400 RPM drive.

 

[barnett25]

Well, let me know if someone finds an old 250MB Apple HD from the performa days in their mini.

 

[halfadder]

I just got an email saying my Mac Mini was shipped today (Sunday afternoon). The email included a FedEx tracking number, but it doesn't yet bring up any data on the FedEx website.