rootofnewt | Attention Mac folks!

i dont have one myself but i used one @ my last job for about 3 or 4 months.

i think the processor is too slow & for my money, id go with a G5 imac if i were looking to buy
(theyve dropped the prices on the 1st gens now that the 2nd gens have come out).

rev1 g5 imacs have Serious problems with them. i fix the damned things for a living.

Last AD I saw for the mini it was on sale at Best Buy for like 499? I looked at the specs they had listed, which really wasnt that impressive... The thing I found the most absurd though is that you're paying like 500 bucks and don't get a monitor,keyboard,mouse, and from what I could tell from the add no wifi only ether...

they were just speedbumped not too long ago. stock 499 has no wifi but for 100 bucks you double the hd space, get wifi and blue tooth. worthy option. and keep in mind this is apples pricing, not Dells, your not gonna get a 200 machine, and a 50 dollar moniter/printer.

Keep in mind I hate Dells, and you can get a really decent machine for around the same price..

my view on all of this kinda stuff is skewed. i havent look at retail pricing in /years/. i build my own boxes, and because of my jobs i pay 6% over operating costs, plus taxes on any and all components. I have never bought a fully prebuilt system, and the last one i inherited was a 200 mhz machine, roughly.

There's no way I'm going to pay that kind of cash for a machine I can't upgrade. One RAM slot and a 2.5" hard drive? No thanks. I'm looking at buying a dual G4 desktop for only a little bit more.

Heres the deal. tight little machine for the money(remmeber, apple pricing).

New mini macs come with wifi. if your gonna drop the dough, get the 59. (double the hd space, and wifi stock.)

amazing, and i do mean bloody amazing engineering. i've had to fix ONE of the damned things, and that was a DOA harddrive. (no faulty logicboards that i've freaking heard of.)

downside: 1 ram slot, 2.5 inch harddrive(5400 rpm, rather slow). expansion is kinda an issue, but when you look at disk space with firewire drives not so much.

Your call.. If you already have a moniter go with it, if you dont, concider the imac g5. (much faster). the rev1 G5 imacs however have logicboard problems. Lots of them. most common machine i ahve to fix in the last 3 months. rev2 arent so bad, but still not nearly as good as what i've seen with the mini mac.

now i remember reading that a while back.
:(

the one i got for a friend had a dead HD right
straight out of the box but compUSA fixed it
up immediately & we've had great luck with it
ever since...of course, cause ever since has
only actually been a few months, theres still
plenty of time for it to fuck up.
;(

thank goodness for applecare.
;)

if you get an imac, get applecare..with a mini its not so much of a big deal..i dont remember what parts are..but jebus. applecare on imacs will cover an optical drive/hardddrive, not to mention logicboard.

haven't played with one myself, but the GF has one at the office that she absolutely died over - thought it was the best machine she'd ever seen. apparently it was the only machine in the entire company to correctly autodetect and autoconfigure for the company LAN.

I soundly reject the "for $500 you don't get a monitor, mouse and keyboard" argument. The monitors that come with those $500 all in one dell and HP systems are utter, complete, crippling crap. Any one who knows any self respecting geek can get a basic keyboard and mouse (ie the same crappy kind that come with those all in one systems) for long term loan for the price of an afternoon visit. And really, a decent keyboard/mouse shouldn't run you more than $30 - $50 tops. (My optical, name-brand Kensington 3-button scroll wheel mouse cost less than $10. and it wasn't even on sale.) Besides which, even at this late stage most of those systems come with PS/2 mice and keyboards, which guaranteed will not work on whatever your *next* system is if you buy it new.

Lack of upgradability is certainly an issue - less'n of course if you're not a geek and don't care about upgradability. $500 is about as cheap as decent computers get so if you're just looking for a system to buy until you buy your next system, it's pretty good.

Things seem to be rock solid. Girlfriend had it on her desk for just under a year and never had a problem with it - unlike either the PC or the iMac (indigo i think - space egg oldstyle) which both had to have IT service them at least once (thrice in the case of the PC) during the same period. Granted they were older systems, so that may not prove anything.

I'd say it's a good system for anyone who has a monitor already and has a digital camcorder they want to play with. Otherwise, there just aren't that many consumer applications that demand firewire. The other target audience is anyone who doesn't want to think about the computer as technology - someone who just wants something they can put on their desk, plug in, and go. Doubly so if they don't want to have to worry about viruses or spyware.

I bought a Mac Mini as soon as it became available. It is the first computer I've loved rather than merely tolerated since my Amiga in the early 1990s (and this coming from someone who is a professional software engineer). OS X, while it has a few flaws (for example, sharing folders over the network is harder than it should be), is still much, much better than Windows or Linux. And the hardware itself is beautiful and quiet. Unless one is into games, the speed of the processor is more than adequate; it's only disc space that is starting to become an issue (and only then because none of the external drive cases is quite perfect so I'm holding off buying one).

(As for the lack of keyboard, mouse and monitor, I just got a KVM switch and plugged the Mac and my PC into it. But then after a few months I realised I wasn't using the PC and switched it off to save electricity.)

In fact, I'm so impressed with the whole package that a couple of weeks ago I bought myself an iBook too.

"Attention Mac folks" got my attention. Unfortunately, I don't have a Mac Mini, so I won't be much use here. However, there are some Mac communities on LJ (such as

macintosh) which might bring in far more answers...?

And he can go ask himself if he wants to bother a community. ;) He asked me and I volunteered my flist.

I'm happy with my iBook.

Attention Mac folks!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject