I bought two recently on ebay, a brand new m1 8/256 for $340, and a virtually new late 2018 8/256 for $265. Both have the latest Mac os. And both are truly fast. Just using them for basic stuff, ms office, surfing, email, etc, one for my wife and the other for me. We are loaded with other laptops, desktops and tablets, but I really like the mini form factor. I'd been using the late 2010 mini for years without a hitch.
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Mac minis are a bargain now
- Thread starter Nychot
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8gb memory is ok? I am considering M2 pro mac mini or a plain m3 when it comes out. But 8gb memory seems a bit too little
I would have gone for 16gb on both, but the prices weren't great and for my needs 8gb is fine. I can update the ram easily in the 2018 to 64gb, possibly more. What I've found is the 2018 is sometimes even faster than the m1. But both are great. BTW, I got ms office, the very latest, online for $40, a great bargain, mainly for Word.
Are you saying that the 2018 Mini supports more than 64gb? What makes you think that's possible? Can't recall ever seeing anyone else make such a claim, but I could be wrong...
I said "possibly" about more than 64gb. I wasn't making a claim. I thought I read somewhere that it was "possible." As you know my friend, anything possible, or so they say.
Totally agree with you, OP. I bought my Mac mini a few months ago and just love it.
To the people complaining about 8 GB of RAM, please stop. It might not be enough for you (which is fine), but it is enough for some people. I also have an M1 MacBook Air with 8 GB of RAM and it suits my needs perfectly.
To the people complaining about 8 GB of RAM, please stop. It might not be enough for you (which is fine), but it is enough for some people. I also have an M1 MacBook Air with 8 GB of RAM and it suits my needs perfectly.
I just bought a 2018 i3/8/128 with a magic key/mouse combo at a pawn shop for 200. I plan to drop 32GB of ram left over from my gaming laptop in it this week while Im off. Decent little machine. Not the biggest fan of 128 but it has 4TB ports!
2018 is intel. Intel is obsolete. Everything is moving to Apple Silicon chips.
after searching for another extra ssd drive I had an epiphany,
OWC sells a 1TB for $70, an enclosure for $40
why don't I purchase a 2014 Mac-mini for $99, 8GB instead?
but I might get bored with intel and place that next to the MacBooks that are in storage.
yes they are very affordable nowadays and the early 2010s MacBooks are hardly available anymore.
OWC sells a 1TB for $70, an enclosure for $40
why don't I purchase a 2014 Mac-mini for $99, 8GB instead?
but I might get bored with intel and place that next to the MacBooks that are in storage.
yes they are very affordable nowadays and the early 2010s MacBooks are hardly available anymore.
im using the macmini 2020 with 8GB ram without a problem
and no fan noise!
I like OWC, but that doesn't sound like a very good deal (if you're talking about USB SSD's). A quick search found a 1tb Samsung T7 for $85 at Amazon or $100 at Best Buy.
thanks for the tip, but'
ouch I would never purchase anything via amazon even if that was free.
best buys is bad as well, everything I purchased form them since the 90's broke.
and *Samsung is not up to par
compared to western digital or OWC, which is great and made for Macs.
I have a thumbdrive by *them that is garbage and fights my Macs, so I heave that away.
I would love to get another mini with Monterey but can't do intel anymore.
All I can say is that my experience is very different from yours.
I have three old Samsung T3's, going back around 7 years. Heavily used as boot disks, one still used on a 2014 Mini. I also have five 2tb Samsung T7's that are heavily used with my 2018 Mini. Zero problems with any of these.
Now, I like OWC - got my 2012 quad Mini from them in 2016 and it's still going strong. But I'd take a Samsung T7 any day instead of putting an SSD in an enclosure. Just plug it in and use it. Doesn't work? Never had that problem, but it's easy enough to exchange and there's no question about whether your disk is compatible with the enclosure, or whether you damaged something putting it together.
I only mentioned Best Buy because I frequently get things there just because it's quick and easy to return/exchange products at a local store.
It might be worth stopping and wondering why there are so many cheap 8/256 Macs on eBay...
The problem is not 8GB RAM/256GB storage as such - if that works for you, good for you - the problem is the disproportionate jump in price if you need anything better (and, sometimes, difficulty in obtaining or finding a discounted price for expanded models).
Unfortunately, the root of that problem is Apple's pricing strategy of offering a bare-minimum spec at a "bargain" price and using expensive upgrades (which are completely disproportionate to the cost of the parts) to claw back the money & drive business to their own stores. So you can't really disentangle the two (although Apple could almost certainly offer 16/512GB minimum for the same price and still sleep indoors and eat hot meals, they wouldn't accept the reduction in profit). Essentially, Apple are creating artificial scarcity of properly specced models - RAM and SSD (even low power/faster varieties) just aren't that expensive in 2023 and shouldn't be something that buyers need to agonise over "rationing".
2018 runs solid using Windows 10 natively...after partitioning windows drive using bootcamp and then dumping the OSX drive. To me it's not obsolete, especially if you have i7-8700b with 32gb ram and use a external VGA setup.
Also runs Windows 10 very well in a VM under Parallels, have been doing some big projects in Windows for over 3 years now. I realize that Apple Silicon has many advantages for native software, but I've gotten really used to the Parallels MacOS/Windows integration on my 2018 Mini. Planning to continue with it for the foreseeable future, it meets my needs now and the Apple Silicon Macs will only get better by the time I'm ready to upgrade.
Honest question: why buy an old Mini just to run Windows when you can get cheap used business-grade PCs for less that are more capable?
It has a piece of fruit on it and makes it special.
that would be nice, most base M1 I see on eBay are 400+, its crazy. Amazon has a new M2 base model for 479!