New Mac Mini came early....

[SmilesLots]

and while it is a great piece of workmanship, I am disappointed that the hard drive seems so slow. I was hoping for something I could recommend, but probably not this one. I expected a lot more for $700. Two out of five stars from me. I was planning on getting a second, instead I'll just keep the G4 mini and keep using it for more audio tape archiving.

Anybody else feel let down about the new mini?

 

[NT1440]

The hard drives seem slow??

 

[Jawnathin]

Nope, not let down at all, quite thrilled actually, but then again, I'm not really using the HDD much.

 

[MikieMcBikie]

hmmm a 5400 HD seems slow. compared to a 7200, I guess if you are pushing that much data around from platter to platter. compared to an SSD, well duh.


wtf are you doing with your mini that you thought a 5400 drive would be sufficient? you read the specs before purchase, right?


wait i dont care.. you are obviously a confused individual, and I "never smarten up a chump!"

 

[thejadedmonkey]

I expected a lot more for $700.

That explains everything.

The Dell Zino costs $250 base, and it's (arguably) more capable than the $700 mac mini.

 

[Mr.T]

I'm over the moon with my new Mac mini, apple have been great to deal with given they forgot to ship my remote with the mini, I've no doubts this machine will act as my nzb/torrent download box, java & perl developement box, and my htpc all wrapped up in a tiny, quiet and to quote my wife, a "pretty" computer!

Kudos to Apple on a product well made.

 

[BlindSoul]

That explains everything.

The Dell Zino costs $250 base, and it's (arguably) more capable than the $700 mac mini.

You can't really compare the Dell Zino to the Mac Mini... Dell Zino comes with Windows. Their core is suckish and even if you upgrade the Graphics card to ATI 4330 which is like $150 more. It'll never work as nVidia 320M.

 

[i7QuadCoreMania]

YES! I'm glad someone else noticed what I have. Tried the regular mini before buying, and yes, the drive seems slow. I would expect more for $700, but then again it's Apple.

I calculated the price to get it up to speed, 2.66 upgrade, 7200rpm momentus 500gb and at least 4gb ram, those upgrades would cost me more than a base model Server at 999.

So I went and got the server with the Wife's Educational discount $949 before taxes and reconfigured it for OSX client 10.6.3 on RAID 0. currently running Plex on it hooked up to my LCD TV, loving it!

 

[iGrant]

I have the server model coming tomorrow, but I'll be honest I have owned two Mac Minis (A G4 and current a 2006 Core Solo Mac Mini) and two intel Macbooks (Macbook Rev. A and Macbook Air Rev. A) and I've never noticed a difference when I put 7200 rpm drives in these macs vs 5400 rpm drives.

I think what made the bigger difference was the cache on the drives, when I went from 2mb to 8mb in my G4 Mac Mini that made a huge difference, but the 8mb was actually 5400 rpm drive. I had bought a 7200rpm 8mb drive for the G4 Mac Mini as well and tried it and saw now real world difference in what I did normally did with that G4 Mac Mini . . .

-iGrant

 

[dellar]

Mac mini not great

I bought a new Mac mini late 2009 (2.53Ghz with 4GB RAM - what? They've halved the RAM now and increased the price???) late last year. I ended up selling it after I realised that my late 2008 Unibody Macbook 2.4Ghz screamed past it in speed after putting a 7200RPM 500GB drive in it. All other specs were the same except the mini had a faster processor clock speed. Led me to conclude that hard drive speed has a greater impact on performance then the clock speed difference (i didn't even notice a difference when the hard drives were both 5200RPMs). The Mac mini is poor value. I don't think I'd get one again unless the price was to drop significantly.

 

[shujin]

hmmm a 5400 HD seems slow. compared to a 7200, I guess if you are pushing that much data around from platter to platter. compared to an SSD, well duh.


wtf are you doing with your mini that you thought a 5400 drive would be sufficient? you read the specs before purchase, right?


wait i dont care.. you are obviously a confused individual, and I "never smarten up a chump!"

well said

 

[MikieMcBikie]

I bought a new Mac mini late 2009 (2.53Ghz with 4GB RAM - what? They've halved the RAM now and increased the price???)

That model was $799 list price. so in OUR reality it is $100 less for 130Mhz speed decrease, and half the RAM. Better graphics chip, new case, SD slot, no power brick.... fair trade IMO.

 

[OldMike]

I have to say that I am surprised by what I am reading here

I'm planning on getting two of the new Minis. The first one that I received last week was the base model. I immediately upgraded it to 8GB RAM before even turning it on.

To be honest, when I first turned it on, I thought it was sluggish, but that was just because of some background indexing tasks running. Otherwise I think the machine is great. I do a lot of work with VMs and the disk speed doesn't really bother me at all.

The second Mini I get will be the Server version. The hardware upgrades on the Mini Server are definitely a good deal - but I am actually looking to get an OS X Server license for business, and it seems like a no brainer to get it along with the Mini Server (at least for my situation).

 

[i7QuadCoreMania]

The second Mini I get will be the Server version. The hardware upgrades on the Mini Server are definitely a good deal - but I am actually looking to get an OS X Server license for business, and it seems like a no brainer to get it along with the Mini Server (at least for my situation).

the Server version is a great buy for the $$$, even though I'm not using it to it's full potential it's pretty snappy running raid 0.

 

[indg]

so far i'm satisifed with the default base model (2.4/2/320). it does everything i need it to do. i figure over its lifetime, by the time i sell it on ebay it will have cost me less than $10/month to own it.

if your current g4 mini does everything you need it do, no one here can tell you how to spend your money.

 

[SmilesLots]

so far i'm satisifed with the default base model (2.4/2/320). it does everything i need it to do. i figure over its lifetime, by the time i sell it on ebay it will have cost me less than $10/month to own it.

if your current g4 mini does everything you need it do, no one here can tell you how to spend your money.

I'm starting to like this new mini a lot more. I guess it needed some "break-in" time. Seems much faster after a day of use and several restarts and updated software. Plus I ordered some additional memory last night. And the G4 mini just keeps on going. Just wish it could power a 1920 x 1080 display like the new one.

 

[indg]

And the G4 mini just keeps on going. Just wish it could power a 1920 x 1080 display like the new one.

even the 1st gen G4 mini can do:
Up to 1920 by 1200 pixels (DVI) or 1920 x 1080 (VGA)

 

[SmilesLots]

even the 1st gen G4 mini can do:
Up to 1920 by 1200 pixels (DVI) or 1920 x 1080 (VGA)

Well for some reason mine will not. I tried digital and analog connections, which do both work on another computer, so I know it is not the cables. All i get when using this Samsung 1920 x 10890 is a message to "check the cable." Nothing on the screen. Nada. Connect it to the new Mac mini, same cable, and voila - works perfectly. Try analog on the G4 mini - nothing. Try analog with a lower resolution monitor and no problem. But it does not work on 1920 x 1080 with this Samsung monitor for some reason.