Picking up a MiniMac & 24" Dell LCD soon.....

[aphex]

Questions though....

1) Does any USB external 3.5 enclosure work on the mac?
2) Difficult to share files between OSX and Windows?
3) Difficult to share printer between OSX and Windows?
4) Possible to share mp3's between OSX and XBox?

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Mini + 24" = stupid of you. Do you honestly expect the anemic 32MB R9200 to be able to drive the 2405FPW at native resolution? 1920x1200 desktop display (32-bit, double buffer) is about 17.5MB on its own.

- M4H

 

[aphex]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
Mini + 24" = stupid of you. Do you honestly expect the anemic 32MB R9200 to be able to drive the 2405FPW at native resolution? 1920x1200 desktop display (32-bit, double buffer) is about 17.5MB on its own.

- M4H

The minimac at the apple store was able to drive the 23" cinema display just fine at 1920x1200.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

/shrugs

Just seems to me that with the OpenGL nature of OSX and the miniscule amount of memory available, that little ah heck's going to choke harder than the Yankees.

Getting 1GB of RAM for the Mini?

- M4H

 

[gwag]

1) Does any USB external 3.5 enclosure work on the mac? yes (might be a rare exception)
2) Difficult to share files between OSX and Windows? nope
3) Difficult to share printer between OSX and Windows? easy but I had the printeron thePC?
4) Possible to share mp3's between OSX and XBox? dont know
"Mini + 24" = stupid of you." not true can drive 1920X1200.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: aphex
Questions though....

1) Does any USB external 3.5 enclosure work on the mac?

Yes. It can read NTFS, and write to FAT32. If you are only using it with the Mac, format it journaled HFS+.

2) Difficult to share files between OSX and Windows?

No. OS X has samba pretty much built in.

3) Difficult to share printer between OSX and Windows?

It shouldn't be, but I haven't tried.

4) Possible to share mp3's between OSX and XBox?

No. Mp3s only work in Windows.

Yes, of course you can. What a dumb question.

 

[aphex]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: aphex
Questions though....

1) Does any USB external 3.5 enclosure work on the mac?

Yes. It can read NTFS, and write to FAT32. If you are only using it with the Mac, format it journaled HFS+.

2) Difficult to share files between OSX and Windows?

No. OS X has samba pretty much built in.

3) Difficult to share printer between OSX and Windows?

It shouldn't be, but I haven't tried.

4) Possible to share mp3's between OSX and XBox?

No. Mp3s only work in Windows.

Yes, of course you can. What a dumb question.

Well i didnt mean just specifically mp3's, i more meant can you see OSX shares on an XBOX? I just said mp3's since thats what im going to be sharing

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: aphex
Well i didnt mean just specifically mp3's, i more meant can you see OSX shares on an XBOX? I just said mp3's since thats what im going to be sharing

You can create shares that Windows machines can access. Whether an Xbox can or not, I couldn't tell you. :beer:

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: aphex
Well i didnt mean just specifically mp3's, i more meant can you see OSX shares on an XBOX? I just said mp3's since thats what im going to be sharing

You can create shares that Windows machines can access. Whether an Xbox can or not, I couldn't tell you. :beer:

If Macs can make Samba shares, Xbox can access them.

- M4H

 

[Jigglelicious]

Originally posted by: aphex

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
Mini + 24" = stupid of you. Do you honestly expect the anemic 32MB R9200 to be able to drive the 2405FPW at native resolution? 1920x1200 desktop display (32-bit, double buffer) is about 17.5MB on its own.

- M4H

The minimac at the apple store was able to drive the 23" cinema display just fine at 1920x1200.

Yes, it can and does support that high of a resolution. But expose and other Quartz Extreme effects will be choppy because of it.

 

[Eug]

Yeah, the FP2405W will work fine, but Exposé will be laggy.

In terms of external enclosures, USB2 will work fine, but Firewire is slightly faster on the Mac.

 

[Viper GTS]

Have you read Anand's Mini article?

Specifically this:

Despite what I had originally expected, the on-board Radeon 9200 is a bit of a performance limitation. I had the Mac mini hooked up to a 23" Cinema Display running its native resolution of 1920 x 1200 and was wondering why Exposé and a handful of other animations were choppy. After tinkering with resolutions, I found out why. At resolutions above 1280 x 960, the Radeon 9200's 32MB of local frame buffer isn't enough to handle Exposé of even just four windows - swapping to main memory, and thus reducing the smoothness of the Exposé effects. At 1024 x 768, it's great and it's even fine at 1280 x 960, but once you start going above and beyond that, you start running out of video memory real quickly. I am concerned about performance under OS X Tiger, simply because with more being stored in video memory (e.g. font caches), you'll run out of video memory even quicker. Granted, what I'm discussing right now isn't a reduction in actual performance, but rather a reduction in the smoothness of animations - which to a first-time OS X user can be a huge turn off.

http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2328&p=6

Just be aware, after reading the article I wasn't nearly as tempted to buy one (this being only part of it).

Viper GTS

 

[aphex]

Originally posted by: Viper GTS
Have you read Anand's Mini article?

Specifically this:

Despite what I had originally expected, the on-board Radeon 9200 is a bit of a performance limitation. I had the Mac mini hooked up to a 23" Cinema Display running its native resolution of 1920 x 1200 and was wondering why Exposé and a handful of other animations were choppy. After tinkering with resolutions, I found out why. At resolutions above 1280 x 960, the Radeon 9200's 32MB of local frame buffer isn't enough to handle Exposé of even just four windows - swapping to main memory, and thus reducing the smoothness of the Exposé effects. At 1024 x 768, it's great and it's even fine at 1280 x 960, but once you start going above and beyond that, you start running out of video memory real quickly. I am concerned about performance under OS X Tiger, simply because with more being stored in video memory (e.g. font caches), you'll run out of video memory even quicker. Granted, what I'm discussing right now isn't a reduction in actual performance, but rather a reduction in the smoothness of animations - which to a first-time OS X user can be a huge turn off.

http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2328&p=6

Just be aware, after reading the article I wasn't nearly as tempted to buy one (this being only part of it).

Viper GTS

 

[aphex]

Actually, the people over at the apple forums are reporting the mini works surprizingly well w/ the large displays...

 

[gsaldivar]

Originally posted by: aphex
Actually, the people over at the apple forums are reporting the mini works surprizingly well w/ the large displays...

I'm sure you'll agree that there's a big difference between the definition of "works surprisingly well" on a Mac forum, and here on Anandtech.

 

[Eug]

Yeah, everything will work fine as I said. The main problem is Exposé aninmation smoothness.

My friend couldn't care less about Exposé lagginess, cuz it still works fine. ie. The end result is the same, but whereas I might get 25 fps or whatever it is, he gets something more like 5 fps. That lagginess drives me up the wall, and judging by his review, it annoys Anand even more.

I must admit, I've never specifically tried a Mac mini with a 23/24" display myself though.

 

[aphex]

Ok, well i went to another store today and played with the Mac Mini (upgraded model) with a 17" lcd... Played with Expose and saw the smoothness...

A nice employee commented that he would also like to see the mini w/ the 23" Cinema display, so i helped him open one up and plug it in....

Yes, Expose does alow down a tad and isnt as smooth, but its not bad by any means and still was very usable... I would say it runs about 85% of full "smoothness" on the 23", and this was with about 8-10 different programs/windows open.... Other than that, it chugged along without any trouble at all.... I was very impressed...