>>>
Yellow, Mac fans! Does anyone think it'll drop in price anytime soon?
<<<[/quote]
actually i think it will go UP in price. i think you will see it on ebay for more than what the apple store sells it for, because folks will want one RIGHT NOW and can't wait for the lead time of weeks or months that the apple store will have.
in about six months we'll see a speed bump or a model revision; i'd guess the processor speed will go up 20% and the RAM and HD will increase, but everyhting else will stay the same. at that point you MIGHT see the older mini 1.0 drop ever so slightly; or refurbs may appear on apples site for maybe $400-$450. apple refurbs are generally the way to go; i've had lower fail rates with the refurbs!
slam
Apple's new SFF box: "Mac mini" is here!
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grandpa_boris
- Posts: 255
- Joined: Thu Jun 05, 2003 9:45 am
- Location: CA
regarding the fan in the mini: it's there. here is a sequence of pictures of the mini disassembled, fan included.
I've had my mini since last Thursday so I thought I would post my review for anyone who might be looking for more info...
EDIT: cleaned up lots of spelling goofs, didn't realize "check spelling as I type" was turned off, sorry!
It is outstanding, right now my list of stuff I run frequently includes....
Safari
FireFox
Mail
Pages
KeyNote
iTunes
iPhoto
PhotoShop Elements 2.0
iSync
Transmit 2.0
CandyBar
Diablo II
and to a lesser extent
iMovie
GarageBand 2
Chess
MacJanitor
CockTail
Specs for those who have not seen my other comments about the mini:
G4 1.42 / 80GB HDD / 512MB RAM / DVD/CD +/-RW combo drive / AE + BT
NEC LCD1735 NXM w/ DVI cable, Logitech Z3i 2.1 Speakers, Apple Pro Keyboard (wired), Apple Pro Wireless Mouse, D-Link DL-524 Router/WAP, Epson Stylus C80 printer on D-Link 301U ethernet printer server
Everything opens quickly, usually one bounce on the dock and it's up and usable. I have spent a good deal of time moving my vacation photos (about 800-900) and music (about 3400 tracks) to their respective apps. Both iTunes and iPhoto still snap right open and are usable pretty quickly, although obviously startup scans of large libraries take a few seconds. Application performance is great, very smooth and pretty much what I expect of OS X. Pages and KeyNote are very responsive and stable, PhotoShop Elements 2.0 is the only laggard, as it is on any system.
A big improvement for me is not having to turn off eye candy and little features to maintain performance. This is my third Mac, I've gone from an iMac G3 700 Snow w/Jag to an iBook G4 800 w/Panther to the mini I am currently running. For the first time I don't have to turn off dock animation or magnification, find a hack around transparency or turn off font smoothing to avoid those occasional chops that would happen to my other Macs. Finder is smooth and responsive and outside of the occasional delay with iDisk synching is vastly improved from Jag and even my earlier Panther experiences.
Browsing my network, mapping drives on my Wintel box and even remote managing my DVR is perfection. I have the AE/BT option. AE immediately finds my Dlink DL-524 and works with it's WPA-PSK settings with no hassle. The Apple wireless mouse was found on first boot and OS X shows you a little 2 step pictogram so the OS can pair the device before it is even completely launched. BT performance is overall about the same, although it does not ship with the 1.2 firmware upgrade, which definitely made for smoother mouse tracking. Pairing with my Nokia 3650 is still a little wonky, but this appears to be my phone at fault as it pairs poorly with anything.
The size is truly impressive and you have to see it in relation to the rest of your hardware to really appreciate it. It runs virtually silent all the time, even under moderate load the fan barely kicks up. The fan is a rotary blower similar to the ones in the new iMacs, although obviously a much lower profile and slightly different form factor. It does kick up during gaming, and while it makes more noise, it is more of a whoosh of air than anything mechanical or clicky. I think most of the noise is due to the shape of the exhaust vents more than the blower. At higher speeds you can definitely feel it moving some air, so I feel pretty confident the mini gets adequate air flow.
The hard drive is quiet, I rarely even here it seek. In fact, hard drive noise is so rare when I do hear it I tend to notice it. Hard drive performance has so far proven to be pretty decent, it honestly doesn't feel slow or hesitant when it's working. I am sure a large video project would tax it and plan to invest in a FireWire enclosure soon, but for general use and even some light video editing it fits the bill.
EDIT: The hard drive, after doing a little research, turns out to be a Seagate Momentus with 8mb cache, which explains some of the better than expected performance.
The Radeon 9200 has so far been adequate for everything I have done, good image and text quality and smooth movie playback. I don't game much anymore, in fact all I have really done is play Pac-the-Man2 and Diablo II a little, but both were smooth and obviously weren't over-taxing the system as the fan did not hit top end.
Audio quality is what I have expected from Apple since my first iMac, good overall mid-range quality sound, far better than most of the integrated audio I have heard on any PC. Unlike many compact systems I have owned, the headphone hack does not pick up or transmit any system noise at all.
The combo drive is adequate, fairly quiet after the initial disk seek. Rips and burns at rated speeds. Nothing shocking or disappointing here. I wanted a SuperDrive but was on a budget, probably won't miss it until I do some movie work (although I guess I can create an image and send over to my Wintel box and burn the ISO with NERO?)
That's about all I can think of right off the top, feel free to ask any questions.
Overall, solid performance, virtually silent and Mac OS X for a decent price, I'm not sure what else anyone could ask for?
Some visual splendor for anyone who is interested, and my barely tweaked OS X desktop.
EDIT: cleaned up lots of spelling goofs, didn't realize "check spelling as I type" was turned off, sorry!
It is outstanding, right now my list of stuff I run frequently includes....
Safari
FireFox
Pages
KeyNote
iTunes
iPhoto
PhotoShop Elements 2.0
iSync
Transmit 2.0
CandyBar
Diablo II
and to a lesser extent
iMovie
GarageBand 2
Chess
MacJanitor
CockTail
Specs for those who have not seen my other comments about the mini:
G4 1.42 / 80GB HDD / 512MB RAM / DVD/CD +/-RW combo drive / AE + BT
NEC LCD1735 NXM w/ DVI cable, Logitech Z3i 2.1 Speakers, Apple Pro Keyboard (wired), Apple Pro Wireless Mouse, D-Link DL-524 Router/WAP, Epson Stylus C80 printer on D-Link 301U ethernet printer server
Everything opens quickly, usually one bounce on the dock and it's up and usable. I have spent a good deal of time moving my vacation photos (about 800-900) and music (about 3400 tracks) to their respective apps. Both iTunes and iPhoto still snap right open and are usable pretty quickly, although obviously startup scans of large libraries take a few seconds. Application performance is great, very smooth and pretty much what I expect of OS X. Pages and KeyNote are very responsive and stable, PhotoShop Elements 2.0 is the only laggard, as it is on any system.
A big improvement for me is not having to turn off eye candy and little features to maintain performance. This is my third Mac, I've gone from an iMac G3 700 Snow w/Jag to an iBook G4 800 w/Panther to the mini I am currently running. For the first time I don't have to turn off dock animation or magnification, find a hack around transparency or turn off font smoothing to avoid those occasional chops that would happen to my other Macs. Finder is smooth and responsive and outside of the occasional delay with iDisk synching is vastly improved from Jag and even my earlier Panther experiences.
Browsing my network, mapping drives on my Wintel box and even remote managing my DVR is perfection. I have the AE/BT option. AE immediately finds my Dlink DL-524 and works with it's WPA-PSK settings with no hassle. The Apple wireless mouse was found on first boot and OS X shows you a little 2 step pictogram so the OS can pair the device before it is even completely launched. BT performance is overall about the same, although it does not ship with the 1.2 firmware upgrade, which definitely made for smoother mouse tracking. Pairing with my Nokia 3650 is still a little wonky, but this appears to be my phone at fault as it pairs poorly with anything.
The size is truly impressive and you have to see it in relation to the rest of your hardware to really appreciate it. It runs virtually silent all the time, even under moderate load the fan barely kicks up. The fan is a rotary blower similar to the ones in the new iMacs, although obviously a much lower profile and slightly different form factor. It does kick up during gaming, and while it makes more noise, it is more of a whoosh of air than anything mechanical or clicky. I think most of the noise is due to the shape of the exhaust vents more than the blower. At higher speeds you can definitely feel it moving some air, so I feel pretty confident the mini gets adequate air flow.
The hard drive is quiet, I rarely even here it seek. In fact, hard drive noise is so rare when I do hear it I tend to notice it. Hard drive performance has so far proven to be pretty decent, it honestly doesn't feel slow or hesitant when it's working. I am sure a large video project would tax it and plan to invest in a FireWire enclosure soon, but for general use and even some light video editing it fits the bill.
EDIT: The hard drive, after doing a little research, turns out to be a Seagate Momentus with 8mb cache, which explains some of the better than expected performance.
The Radeon 9200 has so far been adequate for everything I have done, good image and text quality and smooth movie playback. I don't game much anymore, in fact all I have really done is play Pac-the-Man2 and Diablo II a little, but both were smooth and obviously weren't over-taxing the system as the fan did not hit top end.
Audio quality is what I have expected from Apple since my first iMac, good overall mid-range quality sound, far better than most of the integrated audio I have heard on any PC. Unlike many compact systems I have owned, the headphone hack does not pick up or transmit any system noise at all.
The combo drive is adequate, fairly quiet after the initial disk seek. Rips and burns at rated speeds. Nothing shocking or disappointing here. I wanted a SuperDrive but was on a budget, probably won't miss it until I do some movie work (although I guess I can create an image and send over to my Wintel box and burn the ISO with NERO?)
That's about all I can think of right off the top, feel free to ask any questions.
Overall, solid performance, virtually silent and Mac OS X for a decent price, I'm not sure what else anyone could ask for?
Some visual splendor for anyone who is interested, and my barely tweaked OS X desktop.
Last edited by bob670 on Wed Jan 26, 2005 4:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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grandpa_boris
- Posts: 255
- Joined: Thu Jun 05, 2003 9:45 am
- Location: CA
does it make the high-pitched keening squeal?bob670 wrote:The hard drive, after doing a little research, turns out to be a Seagate Momentus with 8mb cache
i have an older 40GB/2MB cache version of the drive, which i found unacceptably noisy. if yours isn't squealing, it's a great news for me. i was considering getting a mini for the house. but when momentus was mentioned on the forums, that plan came to a grinding halt because of my past unpleasant experience with that drive model.
Nope, and I have used several other momentus drives to upgrade laptops at work, they appear to have fixed that issue, at least on the 8mb cache models.grandpa_boris wrote:does it make the high-pitched keening squeal?bob670 wrote:The hard drive, after doing a little research, turns out to be a Seagate Momentus with 8mb cache
i have an older 40GB/2MB cache version of the drive, which i found unacceptably noisy. if yours isn't squealing, it's a great news for me. i was considering getting a mini for the house. but when momentus was mentioned on the forums, that plan came to a grinding halt because of my past unpleasant experience with that drive model.
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acaurora
- *Lifetime Patron*
- Posts: 1464
- Joined: Mon Dec 29, 2003 2:51 am
- Location: Elk Grove, CA
- Contact:
and so the Mac revolution continues...
I bought a Mac mini the day I ran into Apple to get an iPod Shuffle (go figure, plan to spend $149, end up spending $599).
Overall, it's very quiet and quick. That is, until you stick in a CD. The thing I dislike about the drive that it comes with is that you have to stick it nearly all the way in before it clamps on and draws in the CD. Secondly, the loading mechanism is pretty noisy, and the seek sound is pretty bad =[... it's worse than the Pioneer Slot DVD drive I have!
However, it does not create a lot of noise when the CD is not being accessed (randomly), and is even quieter without. I haven't tried upgrading to 1 GB, but if I decide to keep it I most definately will upgrade, especially the HDD to a 7200.1 in March (if Seagate is on track, and the rumors are true).
Now if only they were flashy enough to put white LEDs on the top to make it glow ;P
I bought a Mac mini the day I ran into Apple to get an iPod Shuffle (go figure, plan to spend $149, end up spending $599).
Overall, it's very quiet and quick. That is, until you stick in a CD. The thing I dislike about the drive that it comes with is that you have to stick it nearly all the way in before it clamps on and draws in the CD. Secondly, the loading mechanism is pretty noisy, and the seek sound is pretty bad =[... it's worse than the Pioneer Slot DVD drive I have!
However, it does not create a lot of noise when the CD is not being accessed (randomly), and is even quieter without. I haven't tried upgrading to 1 GB, but if I decide to keep it I most definately will upgrade, especially the HDD to a 7200.1 in March (if Seagate is on track, and the rumors are true).
Now if only they were flashy enough to put white LEDs on the top to make it glow ;P
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skoorbevad
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Tue Apr 20, 2004 2:01 pm
- Location: Atlanta, GA
- Contact:
I got mine about a week ago as well, the 1.42GHz model with the 80GB Seagate and 512MB RAM. I didn't opt for the Airport Extreme or the built in bluetooth as I have no need for wireless and I've already got a bluetooth dongle.
As far as noise goes, it runs nearly silent the majority of the time. I've got two 200GB Baracudas in Firewire enclosures attached to it in a RAID1 format, and its currently doing some light webhosting and fileserving.
Tonite I really taxed it (loaded the Gentoo for OSX portage tree, and compiled some things) and noticed the fan really kicked in. it wasn't an overbearing noise, and it took quite a bit of load for the fan to ramp up fully. Mostly a wooshing noise, laptopish.
My only real qualm about it is the harddrive speed is rather slow (but it IS a laptop drive)... sometimes it's annoying to wait for it a little bit.... but for its job, im not complaining!
As far as noise goes, it runs nearly silent the majority of the time. I've got two 200GB Baracudas in Firewire enclosures attached to it in a RAID1 format, and its currently doing some light webhosting and fileserving.
Tonite I really taxed it (loaded the Gentoo for OSX portage tree, and compiled some things) and noticed the fan really kicked in. it wasn't an overbearing noise, and it took quite a bit of load for the fan to ramp up fully. Mostly a wooshing noise, laptopish.
My only real qualm about it is the harddrive speed is rather slow (but it IS a laptop drive)... sometimes it's annoying to wait for it a little bit.... but for its job, im not complaining!