Intel Mac mini Value
From James Pearson:
Hi Dan,
I have a painting and modest recording studio 40 miles from
Nashville based around a Mac
mini G4 with an external 7200 rpm drive. I love the small form
factor, ultra-quiet operation, and a la cart cost. Unfortunately, my
mini's lone FireWire port was damaged in an electrical storm last year,
compromising my external 24-bit audio/midi interface. This, in
combination with higher system demands for new sessions forced me to
put together a budget shopping list.
I narrowed my search to the G5 iMac, Intel iMac and mini. My total
budget was $750 including shipping.
The G5s were very attractive and priced right, but reliability
reports scared me off. I saw limited opportunities to buy an Intel Core
Duo within my budget - finding only one 1.83 iMac for $699 and waving
it off after realizing it was one of the stripped down education
models. Most of the Intel iMacs start in the $850 range for the combo
drive model. The market for used and refurbished mini's is limited, but
some excellent values can be found. I narrowly missed an Apple Store
special for a Core Duo 1.83 SD at $497.
Ultimately, I bought a mini
Core 2 Duo with SuperDrive and a gig of RAM from Mac of All Trades for $595. I
upgraded the RAM to 2 gigs from OWC and purchased an additional 17" LCD
from
eBay coming in way under my budget. In the future, I can upgrade
the monitor up to 1900 pixels wide. If I'm real ambitious, I can even
upgrade the CPU.
It's hard to argue with the continued value of the mini format. I
was shocked to see the
Primate Labs overall performance scores double from my G4 1.25
(727) to the Intel Core Solo (1459) and triple to the Core Duo 1.66
(2157)! By comparison, the same money would only buy a G5 iMac with a
performance in the 1100 range. My new 1.83 Core 2 Mini has a score of
2473. For the money, I'm convinced the mini is the smarter choice.
Take care,
James Pearson
James,
Although it has a lot of limitations, there's no
denying the power and value of the Intel-based Mac mini in comparison
to the PowerPC hardware of the past. Core 2 allows for plenty of RAM,
and an external hard drive can sidestep the pedestrian performance of
the built-in notebook hard drive. For anyone who does a fair bit of
video work on a PowerPC Mac, the Intel mini can be a much better option
than any CPU upgrade.
Dan
Best Browser for YouTube with Tiger
From Derrick Streng:
Dan,
After trying a variety of browsers on my iMac G3 DV Special Edition 400
MHz running Mac OS X Tiger, I found that Firefox 3 Beta 4 plays
YouTube videos the best. Letting the video load in its entirety before
playing yields the best performance. Some have suggested using VLC for
playback; I have VLC, and I love it, but I am lazy, so I prefer to both
find and watch videos from my web browser. If you are lazy like me,
then I suggest installing Firefox 3 Beta 4; It can't be beat.
Thanks,
Derrick Streng
Derrick,
Thanks for sharing your findings. Have you tried
Safari 3.1 yet? I tried it on my 400 MHz iMac yesterday,
and it did quite nicely as well.
Dan
More Pismo Resolutions with an External
Monitor
From Gerald Wilson:
Dear Dan,
I have just souped-up my trusty Pismo: It now has 1 GB RAM and
a new, quiet, efficient 100 GB HDD. You can hardly hear the background
murmur.
Still running Panther 10.3.9 + all patches.
Decided to try Pismo with
Dell 2007WFP widescreen. Not really expecting much other than
external 1280 x 1024 stretched. Stunned to find Pismo can drive
numerous external resolutions (both 4:3 stretched and widescreen
anti-aliased) including the Dell's native resolution of
1680x1050.
Stonking result.
List of working resolutions: 640 x 480, 800 x 500, 800 x 600, 856 x
480, 1024 x 640, 1024 x 768, 1152 x 864, 1280 x 800, 1280 x 960, 1280 x
1024, 1360 x 768.
1600 x 1000, although listed, didn't work for me.
When first detected, both displays went fuzzy. I rebooted and
explored carefully via the System Prefs, working my way up the
resolution table.
The native res of 1680 x 1050 elected to work at 59.9 Hz; lesser
resolutions at 60.0 Hz and above. This small difference may have been
causing the fuzzy appearance at the start.
YMMV. Hope this info helpful. Later, I hope to try this out on a
Lombard.
rgds
Gerald W Wilson
Gerald,
Thanks for sharing your findings. I had no idea Pismo
could support so many resolutions, and I'll update our profile to
reflect the settings you've verified. Of course, they are dependent on
the attached monitor, which might be why a native 1680 x 1050 display
won't do 1600 x 1000.
Dan
iSub Problems with Leopard
From Michael:
- What Type of Mac: Power Mac G4 DA
- RAM: 1.5 GB
- CPU(S) Dual G4 533 MHz
- Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 2 MX Stock
- Firmware: 4.2.8
- Add on cards: Belkin USB 2.0 PCI card
- Install Method: The open
firmware hack
Thing that work: Time Machine, Front Row to my shock does work, DVD
Player works good, as fast or faster than Tiger to me.
Thing
that drives me nuts: I get a error message that the speakers in the
Apple Pro jack are unknown and to unplug them and replug them back in.
That pops up it seem a least once a week, but my Apple Pro Speakers
work just fine.
After I got Mac OS X 10.5 installed, it would crash after 10-20
minutes of being on. I asked my buddy that works with Linux at his work
place to help me figure out the issue. To our shock the kernel was
leaking memory 100 MB every 1/2 sec. and then would eat the VM to point
the computer would lock up and die. Let's just say 9 hours later and
tons of lost hair due to pulling it out we found out the memory leak
was cause by the iSub.
All and all it runs great, now it's time to turn this eye candy off!
Oh how I miss the days of Mac OS 9.1 and my iSub!
Michael,
Thanks for sharing your findings. We've learning a
fair bit about the iSub this year: It generally worked well with
PowerPC Macs under Tiger, but Apple dropped iSub support for Intel
Macs. The workaround for that was to have another USB audio device,
which generally let the iSub work. And with Leopard, Apple dropped iSub
support. Thanks to your report, now we know what happens when you try
to use an iSub with Leopard.
Dan
Leopard on 3 Unsupported Power Macs
From Noah Clayton:
Hi Dan-
Here is my report on getting Leopard installed on some G4's. I
followed the format from lowendmac but I posted more details on my blog
at www.muchomac.blogspot.com
What unsupported Mac(s) have you installed it on?
- G4 Gigabit Dual 500 MHz
- G4 Digital Audio 533 MHz
- G4 Digital Audio w/ Quicksilver 733 MHz processor
How much RAM? 1 GB on Gigabit, 768 MB on Digital
Audio
How fast a CPU, and what brand, if it's an upgrade? PowerPC G4
Dual 500 MHz, 533 MHz, 733 MHz
What video card does your Mac have? Nvidia GeForce MX2, Nvidia
GeForce MX4
Which installation method did you use, a modified installer or
installing from a supported Mac? Modified open firmware
to see an 867 MHz processor
What doesn't work? Especially check out Time Machine (which requires
a second hard drive at least as big as your main one), DVD Player,
Front Row, and VLC. So far everything works, haven't tried Time
Machine
How does performance compare with Tiger subjectively and
objectively? Things are slightly slower but not much. The Gigabit
does better since it has more RAM.
If you have a chance, run Xbench and Geekbench (before and after
would be nice) and let us know the results.
- Gigabit 500 MHz Dual Processor (1 GB RAM)
- Xbench Tiger - 34.66
- Xbench Leopard - 24.74
- Geekbench Tiger - 504
- Geekbench Leopard - 455
- Digital Audio 533 MHz (Single) (768 MB RAM)
- Xbench Tiger - 28.95
- Xbench Leopard - 16.33
- Geekbench Tiger - 368
- Geekbench Leopard - 317
- Digital Audio w/733 MHz Quicksilver (768 MB RAM)
- Xbench Tiger - 26.63
- Xbench Leopard - 16.42, 20.97 w/fan
- Geekbench Tiger - 414
- Geekbench Leopard - 357, 380 w/fan
Noah,
Thanks for the info. I'm still impressed at how
powerful the dual-processor machines are compared to faster single CPU
models. That dual 500 outperforms the two generation newer 733 quite
handily.
Dan
PC Cards Compatible with Macs
Dear Dan,
Too much to do, too little time, I know.
The info available about the compatibility of PCMCIA/PC-card/CardBus
devices with older Macs is very patchy; especially for WiFi.
I know you'd do a better job of collating this at lowendmac.
Don't know if you have such a project in mind.
rgds,
Gerald W Wilson
Gerald,
I don't have a modern Mac (nothing newer than a
PB 1400) to do any testing on.
I'd be happy to publish the information, but don't have the time or
resources to research it.
Dan
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
