Mac Mini

[shooraijin]

They'll be going on sale "officially" tomorrow -- let's see what happens then, eh? ^^

[Tycho]

They'll be going on sale "officially" tomorrow -- let's see what happens then, eh? ^^

To add a on-topic rant, "Curse you midwestern snow. You've kept me from my Shuffle. CURSE YOU!!!"

[Mr. SmartyPants]

1 ram slot eh? thats a downer. Forces you to buy a 1 gig card instead of 2 512 cards. Gig cards are much mroe exmensive than 2 512 cards

[Arnobius]

Too true. I have 2 slots in mine, but will hold off on memory until I can get a 1GB because if I expand further (2GB) I'd have to dump any new 512's I bought.

[shooraijin]

No, I agree, that is a drawback. Not a deal breaker, but it's definitely inconvenient.

[indyrocker]

Did any one els wonder way no modem? cuz i didnt see a modem on the list of specks. o well i gess ill forever be a slave to the microsoft empire till i can aford to get a laptop and then run lindows on it.

[shooraijin]

Modem is built-in.

[Arnobius]

No, I agree, that is a drawback. Not a deal breaker, but it's definitely inconvenient.

Well, like they said, it was for people who wanted to try the Mac and didn't need a super machine. I suspect there are a lot of people who never go beyond their original RAM, so it's not a real problem.

[indyrocker]

Modem is built-in.

woops my bad I just took a closer look at the speks but hay enless you want to just look at web pages thats not gona do ya much good only a 56k modem true thats the base for most systems but hay its not good for much.

[shooraijin]

Well, it has broadband also, and there's no modem faster than 56K. I'm not sure what you're getting at.

[indyrocker]

I was getting at the fact that external modems rock and yes there are faster modems avalibol just not in a internal option. and there are such a thing as a 24k modem *screem*.

[shooraijin]

Yes, but a) the modem is 56K b) how would an external modem be different? not all internal modems are WinModems c) you can't go faster than *53k* on American telephones anyway - that's an FCC limitation. I'm not sure what modems you're referring to, but 56k is -it-.

[indyrocker]

ones for brodband. DSl the info you get is still coming through the phone line but its sent by your phone company or dsl provider and the data is some how difrent than a regular phone line conection but hay what works works.

[shooraijin]

That's what the Ethernet port is for -- you plug your broadband modem into that.

POTS modem transmission is limited to 53k. DSL information is transmitted in an entirely different fashion.

[Zar]

How good is this mini thing at running photshop

[shooraijin]

With its base RAM, not so good -- you'd want at least 512MB in it. A 1.25GHz G4 is more than up to running Photoshop CS, though.

[Zar]

I was thinking about the 1.42GHz upgrade and the 512MB of memory, I wanted to go for 1 gig but that just started to get crazy expensive, Cause everybody keep saying you need alot of RAM for photoshop

[Fsiphskilm]

pft... dude

[shooraijin]

But what version of Photoshop, what version of the OS, ... ? And make no bones about it, even the biggest Mac freak will admit that OS X is memory hungry. That's why I have 2GB in this dual G4.

I suppose, to be fair, it depends on what you edit. I work with a lot of 300dpi images, for example, so I need the RAM. Nevertheless, the 128MB your system had is barely enough to boot Mac OS X, let alone suck in a full-page graphic into Photoshop, and 256MB for OS X is only functional and hardly satisfactory (let alone for running Photoshop). The unfortunate people running X on 256MB of RAM will be swapping quite a bit running the OS alone.

[Zar]

Thats true, which makes me wonder why the mac mini would have such a small amount of memory in the first place. Why doesn't Apple just start it out at 512MB, even if they trying to keep the price down your really screwing with performance

[shooraijin]

Thats true, which makes me wonder why the mac mini would have such a small amount of memory in the first place. Why doesn't Apple just start it out at 512MB, even if they trying to keep the price down your really screwing with performance

Part of it could be that Apple doesn't want to be in the memory business (they just resell Micron OEM RAM anyway). Still, it is a frequent complaint and it doesn't go well with the "it just works" image they're trying to polish that you have to go cram more RAM into it after the first day you buy it.

I'm just happy I got a deal on my Mac that gave me a gig of RAM in it as a pack-in price (and there are Mac vendors who will sell you iBooks and PowerBooks pre-upgraded to minimum 512MB for the same list price, although the margins are small enough on the Mac mini that I don't think you'll see many of those kinds of deals for it).

[Gypsy]

Well, Microsoft gave me no choice. I recently bought a mac mini. I'm still learning the interface, but I'm really liking what I see so far. I'm still a half & half user with my PC and mini on a KVM switcher (the two computers share monitor, keyboard, and mouse) but I'm very happy with my minor conversion so far. ^^

[shooraijin]

My friend CB got one yesterday (I'm typing on it now -- smile, Mithrandir, I'm teaching him Apple Mail!). I'm still amazed by how small and quiet they run. He got the souped up, so to speak, version with the 1.42GHz G4, 60GB HD, DVD burner, WiFi and Bluetooth. It really is whisper quiet, it's been on for 48 hours now, and it's barely warm. We're loading apps on it now.

[Mithrandir]

That's one bean down, one to go.

"Join into the chose!"

How fast is it? I wanna know the specs for encoding HD video.

[Mr. SmartyPants]

ohhh thats pretty cool gyps!

i believe that the mac mini's specs are pretty equivelant to that of an ibook... same speed harddrive, i THINK the ram is a little bit fawster 2400 i think? 3200 something something don't remember but

hah id like a mac mini as well

[shooraijin]

MSP, the minimum RAM spec is PC2700 DDR SDRAM (-not- an SO-DIMM, just regular RAM).

[Mithrandir]
> How fast is it? I wanna know the specs for encoding HD video.

What do you mean? It's a 1.42GHz G4, fwiw.

Jordan wants one too, we just have to talk Michelle into letting him.

[Mithrandir]

I gathered. You said it was "souped up." I just wondered if I could use it as an entertainment piece. I'd like to burn movies, too.

[shooraijin]

I think you could. It plays DVDs nicely, of course, as well as ripped DVDs (put them on an external HD and have a jukebox!) and it seems to burn DVDs fine. If your TV has a FireWire hookup, you could plug it in directly, or you could get the composite breakout box.

[Mithrandir]

Nah. I'd invest in a DVI compliant flat screen at that point. I have gigabit networking here, though, so I'm guessing I could stream anything I needed from the .5 TB worth of drives I have in my other box. I already have a componant in firewire out box that's compatable with the mac, so I could even keep my vcr and cable stuff. I don't think I could use iMovie's "Full Screen Preview" and the recorder toggle switch to view content, though. I still have to figure out how I could use the whole screen during normal viewing (without having to use a toggle switch)...

[shooraijin]

QuickTime full screen wouldn't do it for you?