Mac mini Value
From a Mac mini fan:
Dan,
4 x Mac mini w/ KVM switch = better computer than Mac Pro. More
processors, more power, more bus, more cache, less footprint, less
noise, less multitasking, less price. Separate your tasks for more
efficiency. 1 mini for downloading, 1 for surfing/productivity/email, 1
for DVD playback/video processing/Photoshop, 1 for music.
Distribute your computing tasks, watch efficiency and speed
increase. You should be championing this machine.
Signed,
My 3 minis beat (and cost less than) your iMac.
mini,
I really like the Mac mini, but its limitations bother
me. Maybe that's because Apple has nothing between the slotless Mac
mini and iMac and it's professional model. No other computer vendor has
ignored that market, but Apple isn't any other computer company.
There are pros and cons to your approach. I like
having everything that I normally work with on one computer, but I can
see the benefit of multiple Macs for someone running a server or doing
a lot of video processing - start it and forget it until it's done.
Dan
Crab Apples for Mac mini Evaluation
From Joel Rees:
Dan,
I think the issue is that it appears that you are giving the Road
Apple to the design goals of the Mac mini.
When the Mac mini first came out, a
coworker was building a small, low power office NAS with the Kurobako.
JPY 20,000, and you still had to buy and add a (2.5") hard disk. We
talked about the mini at the original price level as a potential
alternative to the Kurobako. (Price in Japan turned out to be another
JPY 10,000 higher than we calculated.)
I do give a few raspberries to Apple for several decisions they've
made since (I assume for marketing). One was the failure to build a
dual-core G4 mini. (I'd almost agree with one apple for the Intel Core
Solo mini.) Another is pushing the price back up. The current price
moves it out of the range of a cheap small-office NAS solution for
anyone who knows where to get mini-ATX form factor boxes and how to
load Ubuntu or Fedora Core (or CentOS, etc.). Another is how far the
mini was behind even the iBook in the model upgrade curve.
I give a few raspberries to Apple for not building the white-box Mac
(xMac or whatever). If nothing else, they could set up a subsidiary to
focus on the low end of the market. (I also give Apple raspberries for
the bipolar switch. Binary behavior wasn't, and still isn't necessary,
but that would take a while to explain.)
So, are you giving the Road Apples to the mini or to Apple? If Apple
made an xMac (at a price point that would compete with whitebox PCs),
would you still give the Road Apples to the mini?
Joel Rees
Joel,
The good news is that we've eliminated the Road Apple
label from about 2/3 of the Macs that had received it. We've renamed
that section Second Class Macs, and at this point models are further
listed as Limited, Compromised, or Road Apples. Only the works Macs -
the ones that rate 3 and 4 apples - keep the Road Apple label.
Apple positioned the Mac mini as a consumer Mac, as a
low cost, entry level temptation to those buying $400 Windows PCs from
Dell,
Walmart, and the like. But they designed it as a fashion
statement, sacrificing a low price and expandability for a beautiful,
quiet, small form factor. It's probably the best computer ever for AV
duty, as it's inconspicuous and nearly silent.
I call it a Limited Mac because those notebook hard
drives limit how much storage you can put in the mini, because there's
only room for a single bank of memory (I find it wasteful to pull 256
or 512 MB of memory), and because it's insides are not easily
accessible.
We're all about getting the most life and value out of
Macs, so we're biased against limited and hard to do upgrades.
Dan
Error in Mac mini Article
From Eric Halbert:
I have been reading your site for a few months now, ever since I
found a 350 MHz G3 iMac for my wife at a
yard sale for $10 (she has since upgraded to an eMac 700 MHz G4, found on eBay for a total of
$139. I also found a 512 MB PC133 memory stick for $25 at a later yard
sale that happened to work in a Mac. But that's another story).
I have since acquired a Mac mini for myself (1.66 Intel Core Duo model, Sept 2006 model).
I need to point out a significant error in your Core Duo Road Apple article.
This model actually has two banks for memory, not just one. I know
because I bought it with 1 GB of RAM, and it came with two 512 MB
modules installed (and the System Profiler states that there are two
512 MB modules installed).
I do partially agree on your other points, but I use the Mac mini
for music creation (via GarageBand '08 and Finale 2008), and it does a
great job for that purpose. I may in the future upgrade to 2 GB of
RAM and/or replace the internal hard drive with a 7200 RPM hard drive,
but as of right now, I have no complaints with the machine as is.
But I did feel the need to point out to you that the Sept 2006 Intel
Core Duo model did indeed have two banks for memory, not just one.
Thanks, great site.
Eric
Eric,
You're technically correct: There are two sockets for
memory in the Mac mini. However, Apple sells the Intel-based Mac mini
with a matched pair of memory modules and says that memory upgrades
should always be installed in matched pairs. That's why I refer to it
as having a single bank, although it does have two socket.
That said, you can run the Mac mini with mismatched
RAM, and Other World Computing has published
benchmark results that show that in general having more unmatched
RAM provides better performance than less matched RAM. That said, the
pre-Core 2 minis can only use 2 GB of RAM, and 1 MB modules
are affordable enough that you may as well just max things out.
I will update the Road Apple articles to mention
mismatched RAM.
Dan
Reuse Is the Best Form of Recycling
From Bob Bruns:
Hello Dan,
I am a Apple user from the 70s to present with one year of PC use
(2002). I now own a recycling company which I started by saving old
Macs. I have used your site as a reference for years, and as resource
for our new to Apple customers. Today as I was reading some specs on
your site, I had time to click around and see that you had areas for
links to auction sellers and people who carry Apple parts.
We always have a selection of iMacs up and frequently have Apple II
vintage items for sale on eBay. Typically we have a 75 to 100 or more
Apple auctions up at all times. We are as a company Apple users: we
have one PC running in the building, and I want to replace it with a
mini but cannot load one with windows - it seems so wrong.
We are a growing recycling company in Texas and believe firmly in
reuse. Towards that end we run over 100,000 online auctions a year; the
proceeds help support the more expensive aspects of responsible
recycling.
You can find our eBay store at....
http://stores.ebay.com/
Erecycleronline_W0QQsspagenameZMEQ3aFQ3aSTQQtZkm
I would be honored if you would link us.
Thank you for providing to us a valuable resource, while I cannot
imagine the effort it takes, I can relate to the dedication
required.
Bob Bruns
~Ringmaster~
Erecycler Llc
Bob,
I absolutely have to agree with you: Reuse is the best
form of recycling. Sometimes things die and can't be fixed, but I'd
rather see an old usable Mac given a new home than stripped for
recycling. I'll be sure to list you on our Used Dealers page.
Dan
Leopard on an 800 MHz iBook G4
From Lisa Mehonoshen:
Hi Dan
I have 10.5 running on my 12" iBook
G4. It had 640 MB RAM and 12 GB free space on the drive when I
installed it. It was installed by putting it into Target Disk Mode and
connecting to a G5 iMac and running the installer from there. The
upgrade took it from 10.3.9. It has since had the keychain update.
Everything runs okay, including DVD Player, Front Row and Time
Machine. It boots noticeably slower, but the only noticeable issue is
the graphics breaking occasionally, such as when running the cursor
rapidly along the Dock. Xbench
gave a score of 19.85. Boosting the RAM up to 1.12 GB dropped the
Xbench score to 19.35 but has had little other impact. A disk upgrade
is probably better value.
Cheers
Lisa
Lisa,
Thanks for the report. Yes, if you don't already have
a 5400 rpm drive in your iBook, you'll love the difference. Try to find
one with an 8-16 MB buffer. Although there are 7200 rpm notebook
drives, there seems to be a much bigger improvement going from a 4200
rpm drive to 5400 than from 5400 to 7200.
Dan
Leopard on a 1.6 GHz Sawtooth
From Ed Foy:
Dan
I have an upgraded Power Mac G4 AGP
(Sawtooth) that has been upgraded.
- Power Logic G4 1.6 GHz (2447a)
- Nvidia GeForce FX5200 PC version (flashed) 128 MB RAM
- I/O/ experts dual layer DVD Burner.
The Leopard installer not only worked on this machine but was also
used to install to a mini with a failing slot-loader. The installations
were textbook. The mini booted and runs fine.
The Sawtooth did not boot. At the white start up screen, the machine
would power down in the first few seconds of the boot. I tried the
trouble shooting, zapping PRAM, reseating RAM, etc. I eventually cloned
the mini install, using Target Disk Mode and Carbon Copy Cloner. I
formatted the hard drive first using the Leopard's disk utility.
Everything copied over. On reboot, the machine booted fine. I expect it
was OS 9 disk drivers that Leopard did not like. (Just guessing.)Core
Graphics and Quartz Extreme are supported. Front Row, DVD Player, and
Time Machine all work fine. They actually perform better than the 1.42
GHz mini does, which is a supported machine.
After I found everything to be okay, I cloned my setup to another
Sawtooth tower 450 MHz machine I have, and that works also. The only
upgrade in that machine is ATI Radeon 7000 flashed PC edition. Core
Graphics are supported in Leopard using software. DVD Player works;
Time machine works. Front Row does not: Black Screen.
I hope some of this helps.
Low End Mac Reader Since 1997
Ed,
This fits with our findings: As long as the installed
CPU is at least 867 MHz, even if the computer was originally a lot
slower than that, the Leopard installer will work.
Thanks for sharing your problem installing to a drive
with OS 9 drivers. I really hope that isn't a general problem, as my G4
Power Mac can boot into OS 9, and I'd hate to have to give up that
capability when I try Leopard.
Dan
Leopard on a 733 MHz Power Mac G4
From Ryan Chang:
What unsupported Mac(s) have you installed it on? Power Mac G4
(Digital Audio)
- How much RAM? 768 MB
- How fast a CPU, and what brand, if it's an upgrade? 733 MHz,
stock processor
- What video card does your Mac have? I believe it's the stock
card that came with the machine, GeForce 2 MX
Which installation method did you use, a modified installer or
installing from a supported Mac? I installed it on a G4 Mac
mini
- Did you install to a second internal hard drive, an external
FireWire hard drive, or using FireWire Target Disk Mode? Second
internal hard drive and FireWire Target Disk Mode
- If you used a FireWire drive, did you clone it to your Mac's
internal hard drive? If so, what program did you use to do this? I
did clone it to the internal hard drive using Carbon Copy
Cloner
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. I could not run Time Machine since I don't have
a second hard drive, Front Row works albeit just slightly sluggish.
Apparently there's no DVD drive in my machine, so I can't test DVD
playback. A widescreen video I played in VLC ran sluggishly though. Too
sluggishly to be viewable.
How does performance compare with Tiger subjectively and
objectively? I am very surprised that it is performing well. This
machine was previously used a server running 10.4.10 Server, so I am
not able to judge the performance difference very much, but compared to
my other similarly equipped machines, this Power Mac runs everything
very smoothly. Cover Flow even runs decently.
If you have a chance, run Xbench and Geekbench (before and after
would be nice) and let us know the results. I did not have the
chance to run either under 10.4.
Have you made any changes to your Mac since installing Leopard -
more RAM, a better video card, a faster hard drive? How has that
improved things? No changes so far, I am very content with what I
have right now though.
One other note: I first tried installing Leopard on a 450 MHz Power
Mac G4 (AGP Graphics) to no avail. I used the same method as above
(Carbon Copy Cloned the hard drive from a Mac mini). When I started the
machine up, the Apple logo would appear and the machine would suddenly
shut down without warning. Perhaps it's out of date firmware, but I
didn't bother to update it since I also had the Digital Audio Power
Mac.
Thank you very much,
Ryan Chang
Ryan,
Thanks for sharing your findings. You'll have to boot
your 450 MHz Power Mac G4 into OS 9 to update the firmware, but I
suspect you'd find that machine taking a back seat to your 733 MHz
Digital Audio Power Mac.
Dan
G4 Processor Upgrades in the UK
From Matt Stevenson:
Hi there,
I very recently invested in a 'new' Mac - an 867 MHz G4 Quicksilver with a 20" Cinema
Display. The only problem really with it is the not-particularly-great
processor speed and the slightly flagging speed of the memory. Now,
having read most of your articles, I know that there are upgrade cards
for the G4 processors, but I'm wondering if any of your team know where
I'd get one secondhand/cheap in the UK (short of hanging around on eBay
for weeks on end)?
There's no urgency; I'd appreciate a response when you have a spare
minute please.
Oh and by the way, thanks for your site - it's a lifesaver when
someone rings you up with the offer of buying a Mac that you don't know
the specs of! It's also a damn good read when I'm in the Mac mood,
which happens quite a bit now I've got a big bloody monitor in front of
me. :D
Kind regards,
Matt
Matt,
I can't say much about the Mac world on your side of
the pond, but we do run the Mac UK
List for users in Great Britain (and the rest of Europe). One or
more members of that list may be able to steer you somewhere.
That said, there are a few fast G4 upgrades out there
selling for a bit over US$200 (1.4 GHz single G4) brand spanking
new.
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.
