I'm saving up for Mac Mini :D

[desie]

Well I just want to know your experiences with them and to see if it's worth it. I do have a very good Laptop (PC) but I'm on an Interactive Design course and if I get a job in design and there all Macs I'm stuffed.

So I need to learn OSX, I have used it about 15 times on video editing (Apple G4 & G5’s) in Final Cut Pro but that’s about it.

Well this is just me saying I’m getting a Mac Mini, just wondered how you get along with them, going to take me a while to save up but I'm managing, just. I can’t wait to try the latest OSX.

 

[Xie]

I love mine. I would just make sure to upgrade the RAM to 512MB (either from Apple, or if you feel comfortable doing it yourself you may save you $). Also you may want a external FireWire drive as I found the internal 80GB drive slowish (it's only a 4200rpm). Other then those 2 upgrades I find the mini a rather solid machine. It's not much for a game player but for everything else it seems fine. I havn't turned on my XP box for anything other then games since I got my mini.

If you think of any other questions I'd be happy to take a shot at answering them.

 

[desie]

Well I have bookmarked a few tutorials on how to upgrade the ram and hard drive your self. It seems easy, though on the hard drive tutorial the guy puts in a 5400RPM hard drive for cooling purposes.

Thing is people don't make many cheap 100+GB 5400RPM drives now, would a 7200RPM hard drive damage the hardware? Maybe I could put in a small 486 CPU style fan under the hard drive is there even room?

Cheers, my laptop has a 4200RPM yes they are slow but not to bad, I do all my gaming on my laptop (see sig specs).

I have an 80GB USB 2.0 hard drive, I understand MacOSX can't write to NTFS as I found out on my mates PowerBook G4.

 

[Xie]

Well I have bookmarked a few tutorials on how to upgrade the ram and hard drive your self. It seems easy, though on the hard drive tutorial the guy puts in a 5400RPM hard drive for cooling purposes.

Thing is people don't make many cheap 100+GB 5400RPM drives now, would a 7200RPM hard drive damage the hardware? Maybe I could put in a small 486 CPU style fan under the hard drive is there even room?

I have read people replace there 5400rpm(40GB)/4200rpm(80GB) drives with 7200rpm and all seems well. As for the fan, I don't think it would work as 1) no space 2) no way to power it.

Cheers, my laptop has a 4200RPM yes they are slow but not to bad, I do all my gaming on my laptop (see sig specs).

I have an 80GB USB 2.0 hard drive, I understand MacOSX can't write to NTFS as I found out on my mates PowerBook G4.

Yeah OSX can read but not write NTFS .. reliably. If I was going to go external drive though the FireWire will be a bit faster overall and will suck less CPU.

 

[desie]

Ok so 7200 drives are fine then, I guess it will get a bit hot . What specific type of ram do I need, is it DDR SDRam or SDRam, what speed shall I get. I might just get 1GB of the stuff. I have a USB Pen Drive that is Fat32, it's only 128MB but enough to tranfer important data, I can transfer everything over my home network I guess and I'm upgrading the hard drive so I will have enough space .

 

[champ2005]

From what ive heard there is a single slot, definately DDR (sd is sooooo old now), so it might be an idea to get a 1gb stick straight off.

 

[Geffy]

The USB external drive would be OK for keeping backups, though you would not be able to image your entire hard drive to it and boot from it as OSX only supports booting from Firewire and even then only some Firewire controller chips have that functionality, so choose carefully if you want a bootable firewire drive

Reading NTFS is all I have ever done with respect to using NTFS hard drives with my iBook, doesnt surprise me that it cant write very well if at all. No non Microsoft Operating System can to my knowledge as Microsoft have kept just about everything about NTFS behind closed doors.

 

[Xie]

From what ive heard there is a single slot, definately DDR (sd is sooooo old now), so it might be an idea to get a 1gb stick straight off.

What he (^) said. The speed is pc2700 though your mini probably will ship with pc3200 as I think Apple got a deal.

 

[desie]

I don't want to boot of an external drive and mine is USB 2.0, not firewire so it's not a good idea to boot of it. Yup there is a single slot I seen in a picture, thanks for telling me the speed. I did have another question, but I forgot it now.

Edit, Crucial 1GB DDR PC3200 CAS3 is £94 inc VAT. That will do fine .

What make hard drive is it, I like maxstor my self, never had a problem with my 160GB M. drive. I also remember my question, is the dvd drive good in it? I know I can't put a PC Drive in it but I just wondered if any of you have got flaky ones, I'm getting the very basic package, no extras.

My PC has a 16x DVD Burner so I will use that for DVD Burning. I could buy a USB dongle wireless thing instead of expensive airport. I have a wireless network, but I also have a 16 port hub if wired networking is easier on macs.

 

[Xie]

What make hard drive is it, I like maxstor my self, never had a problem with my 160GB M. drive. I also remember my question, is the dvd drive good in it? I know I can't put a PC Drive in it but I just wondered if any of you have got flaky ones, I'm getting the very basic package, no extras.

My mini has a 80GB Seagate in it. I'm not sure if the 40GB drives are Seagate as well. I got a "Superdrive" in my mini and it works fine for me, writes DVD+/-R and such. It's probably not the fastest ever but works.

 

[desie]

Thanks for info. Not a bad price, would an 8MB cache hard drive kill a mac mini? At 7200RPM surely it would spin loads and be an increase in heat with 8MB cache?

 

[Xie]

Thanks for info. Not a bad price, would an 8MB cache hard drive kill a mac mini? At 7200RPM surely it would spin loads and be an increase in heat with 8MB cache?

Well, to run it internal it would be a laptop drive so would run cooler then it's desktop brothern. As far as I know people installing 7200rpm drives havn't had an issue in their mini with heat. I would do some reading on what folks are using first though.

 

[desie]

Ahhh so your mates are installing 7200RPM laptop drives right. There expensive.

 

[Xie]

Ahhh so your mates are installing 7200RPM laptop drives right. There expensive.

I visit a few Mac forums and a mini only forum (I can give you links if your interested). I don't know anyone personally that has done it.

 

[desie]

LoL ok then, do you know any cheap sites in the UK that sell cheap 7200RPM Laptop drives?

 

[Geffy]

ebuyer can be reasonably decent sometimes

 

[desie]

Yes I buy from there a lot. Only better though if you buy more than one item cause p&p is high.

 

[muzikool]

Just ordered a Mac mini for the company I work for. It won't be mine, but I'm still excited about getting it in and playing with it some!

 

[desie]

LoL if they don't like it send it my way for free

 

[muzikool]

Hahaha, I'm gonna like it and that's all that matters!

How long do you think it'll take for you to save up?