Mini Mac: My impressions after week 2

[maziwanka]

Originally posted by: aphex

Originally posted by: maziwanka
hows the mac mini for burning cds/dvds?

im thinking of recommending it to my mom - she would use it to surf the net, pay bills, work with pictures from her digicam, and burn the occasional cd/dvd.

edit: it would be hot to have the mac mini, a nice lcd (19" maybe), a wireless keyboard and mouse....

Works great.... DVD's burn a little slower than my old rig, but it works fine..

i wanted to ask, how easy is it to burn cds/dvds (not that its complicated in windows)?

and, is the mini able to connect to the internet wirelessly?

 

[Platypus]

Wow, 256? OSX crawls unless you give it 512 as a BARE minimum.

 

[aphex]

Originally posted by: maziwanka

Originally posted by: aphex

Originally posted by: maziwanka
hows the mac mini for burning cds/dvds?

im thinking of recommending it to my mom - she would use it to surf the net, pay bills, work with pictures from her digicam, and burn the occasional cd/dvd.

edit: it would be hot to have the mac mini, a nice lcd (19" maybe), a wireless keyboard and mouse....

Works great.... DVD's burn a little slower than my old rig, but it works fine..

i wanted to ask, how easy is it to burn cds/dvds (not that its complicated in windows)?

and, is the mini able to connect to the internet wirelessly?

Well i use pretty much the same programs to burn cd's and dvd's on here as i did on windows, so yes, just as easy

If you get the wifi card, yep. Mine gets an excellent signal.

 

[aphex]

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
Wow, 256? OSX crawls unless you give it 512 as a BARE minimum.

You did notice i upgraded to 1gb, right?

 

[Platypus]

Originally posted by: aphex

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
Wow, 256? OSX crawls unless you give it 512 as a BARE minimum.

You did notice i upgraded to 1gb, right?

Nope, working a little better for you now eh? Quartz Extreme looks great with 1GB

 

[LuckyTaxi]

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
Wow, 256? OSX crawls unless you give it 512 as a BARE minimum.

I will be upping to 768.

 

[manly]

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation

Originally posted by: aphex

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
Wow, 256? OSX crawls unless you give it 512 as a BARE minimum.

You did notice i upgraded to 1gb, right?

Nope, working a little better for you now eh? Quartz Extreme looks great with 1GB

What does system RAM have to do with Quartz Extreme?

 

[aphex]

What is quartz extreme?

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ
Mac fans are some of the least technically adept people on the face of the earth. I know a bunch, and they're firmly in the "end user" category. They're usually the people who don't know how to work on a computer, don't know how to work on a car, don't know how to do much of anything but clothes shop.

Also, I couldn't get into the Mac scene because their users are predominantly very liberal.

heh, well, my buddy is a server admin... that's somewhat technical but if all you use your computer for is internet and email... i'd rather have OS X than XP. it just costs way too much

 

[ultimatebob]

Originally posted by: lilcam

Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
Wow, 256? OSX crawls unless you give it 512 as a BARE minimum.

I will be upping to 768.

You can't do that on a Mini, though.... it only has 1 memory slot. It's 512 or a Gig on those systems.

 

[sparkyclarky]

Originally posted by: phelanor
I'm also considering the switch and I have a few questions. I admit I know next to nothing about Macs.

Was it difficult to upgrade the RAM? Cause well, you know, the things tiny. And does anyone know how World of Warcraft will perform on it with only a 32 megabyte video card? (I know, im a loser.)

I play WoW on my mini, and it runs in the 15-35 FPS range, but bogs down in heavily populated areas (e.g. multiple duels going on, capital cities). I get by just fine on minimal settings at 800x600.

However, my gaming PC provides a much, much better WoW experience, but then again my gfx card on it ran 2/3 of the price of my mini.

 

[sparkyclarky]

Originally posted by: aphex

Originally posted by: phelanor
I'm also considering the switch and I have a few questions. I admit I know next to nothing about Macs.

Was it difficult to upgrade the RAM? Cause well, you know, the things tiny. And does anyone know how World of Warcraft will perform on it with only a 32 megabyte video card? (I know, im a loser.)

Not very difficult from what i've seen, BUT due to the design the mini has no parts classified as user replaceable... Therefore doing it yourself voids the warranty....

I found a local apple certified shop that did it for $20. I figure for $20 its worth keeping the warranty...

No idea about WoW, i dont really game...

Wrong on the upgrading - you can change the RAM out yourself as long as you don't damage the case (which is pretty hard to do if you're a bit cautious). If you damage the case, that voids your warranty. That is Apple's official policy.

I had a HD failure in my mini with aftermarket RAM installed (RAM actually went bad at the same time), and the tech who replaced the HD was kind enough to point out the bad RAM and suggest I put in some new stuff. The HD was still covered under warranty.

 

[sparkyclarky]

Originally posted by: Excelsior

Originally posted by: klah
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.

Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

It has more to do with the HD and RAM and OS. What OS are you running on the 8600?

Somebody got suckered into the joke

 

[darkamulets]

My friend uses a normal Logitech trackman wheel on his Ibook, so I don't see why you just don't use a normal USB mouse for the right click functionality.

 

[joecool]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ

Also, I couldn't get into the Mac scene because their users are predominantly very liberal.

well, congratulations, that's the dumbest thing i've heard all day.

"i couldn't get into the BMW scene because their users are predominantly very conservative." ... ! (you get the idea)

 

[manly]

Originally posted by: aphex
What is quartz extreme?

Ars has a great explanation of Quartz Extreme and the new Quartz 2D Extreme (part of Core Image):
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars

Unfortunately, the Radeon 9200 GPU is too weak for Quartz 2D Extreme/Core Image.

 

[MagicConch]

Did you have any problems with DVI interface? I read on the website many people have.

 

[Kipper]

Originally posted by: klah
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.

Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

Are you running OSX on that machine? Doubt it. Previous incarnations of the Mac OS were horrifically bogged down with unnecessary crap and are far more difficult to use, far less productivity due to lack of good multitasking routines, etc.

As far as slow and unfriendly, I have OS X 10.3.9 running on a 500 MHz G4 processor downstairs with around 640 MB of memory. It runs pretty smoothly given the speed of the computer...

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: joecool

Originally posted by: 91TTZ

Also, I couldn't get into the Mac scene because their users are predominantly very liberal.

well, congratulations, that's the dumbest thing i've heard all day.

"i couldn't get into the BMW scene because their users are predominantly very conservative." ... ! (you get the idea)

It's not dumb, it's choosing not to enter a certain "scene". I neither like nor want to support that scene in any way. One visit to the Apple store with my friend was enough to keep me away from Macs for another few years or so.

Would you put a rainbow sticker on your car? A purple triangle? They're just stickers, you know, unless you actually do care about what they represent and don't want to be associated with that scene.

 

[Kipper]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ
Mac fans are some of the least technically adept people on the face of the earth. I know a bunch, and they're firmly in the "end user" category. They're usually the people who don't know how to work on a computer, don't know how to work on a car, don't know how to do much of anything but clothes shop.

Also, I couldn't get into the Mac scene because their users are predominantly very liberal.

:disgust: You WOULD bring politics into computer brands, wouldn't you? What's next? AMD users are too "Democrat" or Linux users "like penguins too much?"

Get a life, man.

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: sparkyclarky

Originally posted by: Excelsior

Originally posted by: klah
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.

Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

It has more to do with the HD and RAM and OS. What OS are you running on the 8600?

Somebody got suckered into the joke

THAT was supposed to be a joke?

Surely you are joking.

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: Kipper

:disgust: You WOULD bring politics into computer brands, wouldn't you? What's next? AMD users are too "Democrat" or Linux users "like penguins too much?"

Get a life, man.

It's very common knowledge that the Apple crowd predominantly leans left. Are you trying to deny that?

I'm not saying that nobody should own Macs, I'm saying that I wouldn't because of the scene they're part of.

 

[bootymac]

I've always thought about getting a Mac, but I game way too much to even consider

 

[sparkyclarky]

Originally posted by: Excelsior

Originally posted by: sparkyclarky

Originally posted by: Excelsior

Originally posted by: klah
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.

Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

It has more to do with the HD and RAM and OS. What OS are you running on the 8600?

Somebody got suckered into the joke

THAT was supposed to be a joke?

Surely you are joking.

I thought it was. It seems to be making fun of the people who always compare old ass Mac hardware to Windows machines, rather then the more fair comparison of new(ish) hardware from Apple to new(ish) Windows machines. Mac hardware and the OS in specific has come a long way since then.

Plus, I seriously doubt this guy is still running those old machines. A Pentium Pro 200 came out when, like 95/96 time frame? I think that was the joke, along with a Mac from the pre-modern Mac era (isn't the 8600 one of the old beige Macs?).

 

[loup garou]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ

Originally posted by: Kipper

:disgust: You WOULD bring politics into computer brands, wouldn't you? What's next? AMD users are too "Democrat" or Linux users "like penguins too much?"

Get a life, man.

It's very common knowledge that the Apple crowd predominantly leans left. Are you trying to deny that?

I'm not saying that nobody should own Macs, I'm saying that I wouldn't because of the scene they're part of.

This is quite possibly the dumbest thing I've ever read. People on this forum never cease to amaze me.