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Mac mini Dissection
xbasque writes "Smash has a video showing the technique for cracking open a Mac mini safely. Upgrade the RAM and hard drive yourself and save a bundle (ain't that the point of the mini?)" And if you don't plan to take one apart yourself,
parvenu74 points out the pictures of exploratory Mac mini surgery on mini-itx.com, writing "From a post: 'The board itself is slightly smaller than Mini-ITX at about 160mm square by our estimations, and includes Ethernet, Modem, DVI/VGA, 2 x USB, Firewire and Audio connectors (sadly not optical).'"
Let's hope it's not hosted on a dissected mac mini. Unless it's overclocked. Then it's OK.
This was not ripped open. This mac mini was just one motherboard provided to the press for the purpose of looking at its motherboard. MacNews.de aren't the only site with images of that particular motherboard.
RST
To put one of these babies in my car.
Then put some wicked cool Red LED Lights in the front of the car, and whenever the car talks to me, the red lights act like a visualizer of sorts. Knight Rider here I come!
It would make a good brain for a robot
I don't understand how the MAC-mini works. If it's so small, how does it keep the rain out?
Is there an actual audio in on the board? Cause there's no socket for it. Apparently this is because there are superior USB devices that work with GarageBand so no-one would use an audio in jack if there was one. What I wanna know is what's the best way to use this as a PVR? Are there USB tv tuners? How about USB high definition receivers?
How we know is more important than what we know.
So does the Mac Mini use a laptop hard drive or what? It doesn't say anything about the HDD on that page nor the pages that I looked at on the day of the announcement. It would make sense, seeing how the Mac Mini is basically an iBook in a box, but it would kill performance.
Read as MiniMac. Don't blame me! I'm a lighting guy!
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
http://www.mini-itx.com/news/98490587/
On the same site..... WAAAAAAAY cooler, or hotter, depending.
Elgato systems sells a number of models of the EyeTV, they even have an HD model! I think it's the best best for PVR style capture. I believe it also comes with PVR kind of software.
Then you just need to hook it into some kind of IR blaster...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's mentioned in the article, but it probably bears repeating here: "Apple states that as long as you do not BREAK your Mac Mini while working on the inside, it is still covered under warranty."
Left unanswered is the obvious question: well then, if any hardware problems arise, how will Apple know I'm not to blame? Based on my experience getting Macs serviced (4 years in university), I'd say there's really not much to worry about. If you break the RAM slot, then tough luck. But if, say, the CPU dies through no fault of yours, Apple's not the sort of company to refuse to service your Mac on a technicality. There aren't a lot of assholes working for Apple customer service.
Nevertheless, I do wonder if there's some sort of sticker or seal on the inside to let Apple know you've opened the case.
If you're going on about size... why don't you go for PC/104 format? 96x96mm...
http://www.pc104.org/
I'll just spring for the extra 500 bucks and have apple do it for me.....or just buy two whole stinkin' computers for the same price. Hmm....
You can build two stinking x86 computers - or one very decent x86 computer, which would be my choice - for $500. If you know how to put parts together, you can easily make something that outperforms the mini. The problem is that 95% of the people out there don't build, but buy their machines from Dell, HP, etc. and $500 Dells suck badly. They come with Celerons and Intel Integrated graphics, they don't have Firewire or CD burners, and so the Mac mini looks reasonably competitive - especially if you value the aesthetics.
this is awesome! Think of the insane value you could get out of upgrading the ram and hard drive yourself! Cheap/powerful editing station here I come!
i have a mirror at http://www.forgottennewbies.com/~natef/macmini-sma sh.mp4
:)
just in case
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
Can I guess Smash's method of opening the case or should I RTFA?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
or if you like OS X.
or if you want a silent computer that doesnt overheat.
for a good cheap comp though, nforce3 + athlon + ram + HD + cd/dvd + case probablly might end up coming out to around $500. But the computer definetly wont be the size of the mac mini, or as quiet.
Is the slot for the WiFi\Bluetooth card any sort of standard connector? Apple carges $75 for 802.11* ($125 for 802 and Bluetooth), which seems sorta pricy, unless, of course, you need to get an Apple specifc part, at which point it is just a ripoff.
Yeah, you probably could just hook up a USB 802 adapter, but then you loose some "look how small it is" points.
#include <signature.h>
Just in case you're not: the slot at the top isn't a PCI slot, it's the DIMM slot...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
That's assuming that the size is an advantage for this crowd, when most users would rather have the slots and an accessible case.
Don't kid yourself, the size is more of a justifcation for a crippled low-end Mac than a feature.
But to a geek, small and quiet are generally "luxury" options. Given the extra $500, the geek isn't going to buy the computer equivalent of leather seats, he's going to get the turbos.
[evil]
... I can imagine the expressions on their face when they see the all the pieces laying there on the table ...
Dissecting a MiniMac is sort of like ripping the limbs off of your kid sister's Barbie dolls and glueing them back onto your GI Joe action figures
[/evil]
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
From the FA:
the rounded corners should help cramming it into unusual places
I know I'm going to regret asking, but just what are the usual "unusual places"?
yeah speed if your encoding video or playing games. For day to day computer use, the mac mini is beyond perfect.
Plus the noise of pcs is horrid, my friend just recently built an athlon 64 rig with a nforce 3, and it is loud... so loud he had to get an even louder fan because it was running too hot. My PC is also very very loud, a P4 2.53ghz. My ibook on the otherhand, is dead silent which I love.
$399 Dell PC: "No Wireless"
$499 Minimac: "AirPort Extreme- and Bluetooth-ready"
So.... that'd be the "no wireless" option for the minimac too?
The revolution will not be televised. It won't be on a friggin blog either
Untill you get to thinking about the slots and what you need them for. Example, my PC sitting here has 5 PCI slots and 1 AGP slot.
The AGP slot is occupied by a video card, which I just recently replaced for the first time in 5 years. On the mac mini, that's already built onto the board with an ATI chipset.
1 PCI slot is used by my Soudblaster card, which I just recently upgraded, again for the first time in 5 years, and that was because the card never worked right in the first place and this happened to be the time I was upgrading things. On the mac mini, this is built into the system
1 PCI slot is occupied by an ethernet card, un upgraded in 5 years. Gigabit is built into the mac mini
1 slot contains a USB/Firewire card, again, un upgraded, and built into the mac mini.
The other two slots remain unused, and for the forseeable future, I have no use for them. In the end, they're actualy a waste.
So when I look at the mac mini, it has everything I would use PCI/AGP slots for built in.
So then the question becomes well what if you want to upgrade?
Well, when I did my mass upgrade for the first time in 5 years (until now, I had only added RAM), I bought a new motherboard, a new processor, new graphics card, new soundcard and new RAM. My total cost came out to about $600 after rebates.
After reflecting on this, it occurs to me, that if a mac mini suits my needs, by the time I would decide to upgrade it, I might as well just buy a new one for $500.
In fact, for the first time, my computer would actualy be a disposable product. Something that I could (theoreticaly) just discard and buy a new one when it no longer served my needs, and it would be roughly price equivilant to upgrading the system.
So in the end, having PCI slots and an accessable case on the mac mini would seem to be more of a waste than a benefit.
Of course, you can always argue that hard core gamers and power users have other things and upgrade more frequently, but I argue that no hardcore gamer/power user is buying a $500 computer.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I had this video for awhile because I am training to be a Apple Portable / Desktop Tech, If you purchuse the $299 Apple Service Training you get this and any other Take apart video for free. THe person that leaked this could be in some serious trouble..
keanmarine.com
What would you do with the PC Card slot though? While what I quote from another post of mine below applies to PCI slots, it's almost equaly applicable to PC Card slots as well:
Untill you get to thinking about the slots and what you need them for. Example, my PC sitting here has 5 PCI slots and 1 AGP slot.
The AGP slot is occupied by a video card, which I just recently replaced for the first time in 5 years. On the mac mini, that's already built onto the board with an ATI chipset.
1 PCI slot is used by my Soudblaster card, which I just recently upgraded, again for the first time in 5 years, and that was because the card never worked right in the first place and this happened to be the time I was upgrading things. On the mac mini, this is built into the system
1 PCI slot is occupied by an ethernet card, un upgraded in 5 years. Gigabit is built into the mac mini
1 slot contains a USB/Firewire card, again, un upgraded, and built into the mac mini.
The other two slots remain unused, and for the forseeable future, I have no use for them. In the end, they're actualy a waste.
So when I look at the mac mini, it has everything I would use PCI/AGP slots for built in.
So then the question becomes well what if you want to upgrade?
Well, when I did my mass upgrade for the first time in 5 years (until now, I had only added RAM), I bought a new motherboard, a new processor, new graphics card, new soundcard and new RAM. My total cost came out to about $600 after rebates.
After reflecting on this, it occurs to me, that if a mac mini suits my needs, by the time I would decide to upgrade it, I might as well just buy a new one for $500.
In fact, for the first time, my computer would actualy be a disposable product. Something that I could (theoreticaly) just discard and buy a new one when it no longer served my needs, and it would be roughly price equivilant to upgrading the system.
So in the end, having PCI slots and an accessable case on the mac mini would seem to be more of a waste than a benefit.
Of course, you can always argue that hard core gamers and power users have other things and upgrade more frequently, but I argue that no hardcore gamer/power user is buying a $500 computer.
And to end, I should note, I have a PC Card slot on my powerbook. In 5 years of ownership, I have used it ONCE, and that was to see if the new Nextel broadband wireless cards would work with a mac even without special drivers (it didn't BTW).
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Here's a crazy, mixed-up suggestion.
Howzabout you buy a computer instead of hand-carving your own microchips?
People love to talk about how you can build a top-flight desktop computer for $3.25 plus two subway tokens and some kind of weird-ass coin that you dug out of your sofa that's got "Røølï" written on it, but what they curiously omit is the fact that if you took all the time you'd spend gathering parts and assembling them and worked a minimum-wage job at some fast food place instead, you'd earn hundreds of dollars. So the real cost of this "It's Shake-n-Bake, and I helped!" special is, in fact, several times higher than the sum of the price tags on the hundreds of inscrutable parts that went into it.
People who say "I can build that for less" are either not bothering to account for their time or just flat-out lying, because the plain truth of the matter is that if they could, somebody already would have, and you'd be able to just go out to a 7-11 and buy the damn thing for half off with the purchase of a medium or large fountain drink.
you know the X stands for 10 right? What you want me to say Windows XP eXPerience too? Or Kernel 2.6 version 2.6.4mk1
I call BS. You show me a a complete amd64 you can build for $500. I know I spent over 900 building mine last month.
mac mini wins because it has no free agp slot, no free pci slots, no free hd slots, no free ddr slots
The EMS USB2 adapter will add two slots for DDR to any machine with USB ports.
Umm...
A composite video/svideo adapter for the mac mini costs $20 from apple.
It has a v.92 56k modem built in
It is Airport Extreme Ready(ie 802.11g capable)
I've seen lots and lots of PowerBooks in my line of work. Practically everybody I encounter, professionally, has one.
Know how many PC cards I've seen? Zero. Nary a one.
Since you're going to put the necessary ports on the machine anyway, and since you're going to build wireless antennas in anyway, what possible use is there for a PC card slot? Leave it out and keep costs down.
Nevertheless, I do wonder if there's some sort of sticker or seal on the inside to let Apple know you've opened the case.
:)
Yeah, 'cause the apple repair technicians are just going to open the case and inspect the sticker and, oh, wait...
And no, stickers on the outside of the case arent an option. Nothing can uglify that beautiful case.
Had a gateway once with a void warranty sticker on the case. Before I knew anything about hardware and how to build my own computers of course. How did I learn to build computers? Went to my first LAN party with said Gateway, cracked the case and installed a NIC. I was support after that.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
"they have the same weight and size as the iMAc mini. Only the videocard is better in the iMac mini, otherwise ePC-2-3 are better, more ports (e-PC3-2 firewire, 4Highspeed USB, serial, parallel,video out AND A PC CARD SLOT. IN ADDITION USERS ARE ALLOWED TO OPEN THE BOX"
Well, that's all well and good if you only want ports, but lets look at the facts.
EZ-GO ePC-2 (Base System)
Processor: 1.1Ghz intel celeron
memory: 128 MB SDRAM
video: integrated video (11.8MB max shared)
HD: 40GB
Optical Drive: 24x CD-ROM
Price: $589
mac mini (Base System)
Processor 1.25Ghz Power PC G4
memory: 256 MB
Video: Radeon 9200 w/ 32MB memory
HD: 40GB
Optical Drive: DVD ROM/CD-RW
Price: $499
It looks to me like the mac mini is a superior system in almost every way, and costs $90 less.
I have been thinking of picking up one of these mostly for it's size. And the fact I miss having a mac in my pc room.
Once you start having 4 or 5+ pc's they start to take up a lot of space. And as far as upgrading things goes once your on a giga bit lan and have a TB+ disk storage you tend to slow down how much you open cases on anything other than a gaming rig.
Let's see there is the Gamming rig, 2nd pc (as in your upgrading fast enough that your leftovers tend to make a PC), Server 1 (Mostly web stuff but it can handle games for lan party's now and then.), Sever 2 Disk Space (5x 250gig in rad 5 for storage and a 60 gig drive for the OS), Old SUN box from ebay, iMac for MP3's in the living room, Laptop, and then the old junk that's now powered up but still takes up space...
Starting to wonder if I am ever going to go under 200$ electric bill again... probably not.
The Mac mini HAS a traditional v.92 modem. Go here, and look right next to the ethernet port.
I'm actually considering getting one of these (If enough suckers^W^W^W^W^W^W^Wpeople sign up with my sig!). I normally hate Macs, but since I've wanted just an extra machine to store stuff and occasionally mess around with, this suits my needs perfectly, plus it hides well, and It's cheap!
Ah crap, I said I hate Macs... there goes my karma!
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
Here's every computer Apple has ever made. http://www.apple-history.com/frames/?
Well, I guess it's about that time. We're coming up on another release of Mac OS X, so it's time to blow the dust off the old "here's the difference between the name and the version number" lecture.
...there are like six point two billion people on this planet. You're the only one left who doesn't get this.
Frankly, after the sheer number of recitations this particular lesson got back in the roll-up to Panther in 2003, I'm kind of amazed that there's anybody left who doesn't understand this oh-so-simple concept. But apparently there's always another idiot out there, so here we go again.
The name of the software is "Mac OS X." That's its name. It's pronounced "Mac OS Ten," because we all learned back in elementary school that the Romans used letters instead of numbers. Remember how they made us do arithmetic, how we all learned that L + L = C and M + M = MM and all that? You thought that was just useless make-work, but no! It was, in fact, vitally important for your future understanding of product names. Well the future is now, friends. Buckle up and enjoy the ride.
In addition to a name, the software has a version number. That version number, as of tonight, is 10.3.7. Every time Apple releases another version of the software, the version number changes. Sometimes the changes are small, from 10.3.6 to 10.3.7. Sometimes they're big, like from 10.2 to 10.3.
So there are two parts, okay? There's the name -- Mac OS X --and the version number. Two separate things.
So when you wrote, "X.4," you were demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between a name and a number. You were, in short, being an idiot.
Now, before you get all whiney and complain that my harsh words have made your vagina hurt, let me reassure you: I empathize, I really do. Apple is the one to blame here. It's their fault for creating such a skull-twistingly confusing product with a number in its name, and a Roman numeral at that. What, are we all speaking Latin again? Are we all sitting around going "Quo vadimus?" at each other? Just who the hell do Apple think they are, making things all hard like that? Arrogant little pricks.
However, in Apple's defense
So, just in the future, you might want to think about extracting your head from your rectum and getting with the program, huh, chief?
There's a good boy.
At http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2005/01/mi niapplesandoranges/index.php I read this:
"""
But it was only a matter of time before someone would argue, "It's still not price-competitive with the cheapest Dell." And within days we've got our first such columns and articles, all of which leave me scratching my head, wondering if these guys are as bad at comparing products when they shop for themselves as they apparently are when comparing products for their columns.
"""
I agree. I'm a really recent switcher. I had a second hand mac kicking around years ago (and despised the OS - I ran Be on it), but bought an iBook laptop last Friday. It's my first mac and my first laptop. My justification was that it was cheap, runs unix, has full driver support, especially for wireless networking. I've held off for about two years waiting for a laptop that can deliver that for less than two grand Australian. That's a really compelling formula, and a far better geek computer than a PC.
To get a happy unix experience on a PC laptop you either pay a lot more money or roll the dice on linux drivers and winmodems. Or you can try and run Windows and put up with the limitations of cygwin or the speed hit of vmware. Yuck.
Not that it's always been this way. Until recently, Apples sucked. But OS X has become usable and the hardware has a better reputation than it used to - laptops in particular.
If I were Apple I'd be a bit concerned at the powerbook line - the iBooks deliver so much for so little now the powerbooks don't look very attractive.
Believe with me, my saplings.
The goal in designing the Mini was never to make the cheapest possible machine, it was to make a low-cost Macintosh that Apple wouldn't have to be ashamed of.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Oh snap! That took me five minutes dude, you've got to come up with a better argument.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Everybody making comparisons seems to forget the fact that you get loads of *useful* software out of the box with *all* Macs.
OS X Panther and iLife '05 allows you to do useful things with your machine out of the box. Not only that, but the software is *good* and it all works together.
There is nothing comparable to a Mac in the PC world. Apple build the machine from the ground up, including the operating system and utilities. It all works nicely.
I only realised that when I bought my iBook, so I don't expect people who haven't owned a Mac to understand.
-- The doctor said I wouldn't get so many nose bleeds if I just kept my finger out of there!
2.5 x 8.5 x 10.25
2 x 6.5 x 6.5
Same size my ass.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Speak for yourself. "Most people" are not Slashdot techies who spend hours faffing around with their machines.
I have a car and I certainly do not spend half of my life messing around with the engine to squeeze 5% out of the thing. I use it to drive around. Same for most people and computers.
Besides, I am by this time sick and tired of having to maintain a lot of half-assed home-built computers. The waste of time is not really worth it.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
http://tofslie.com/files/evolution_apple.jpg
I would say that depends, firstly I am a geek and yet I value the aesthetics of Apple, plus it helps to 'sell the idea' to the wife (no obv jokes please - I am not self delusional) in this case small and quiet are good points.
If the box is in your bedroom then quiet is certaibnly a good point as no doubt it will be on 24/7 either searching for ET or folding or rendering or whatever. Plus it is the perfect size for a media centre another plus point and if you want to get ubergeeky it is the perfect size to make a damn big cluster without needing an airplane hangar to house all the nodes in. Imagine 16 Dell boxes stacked up on top of each other - urrghh sorry bad mental imagine, my brain now needs a clean.
'By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes'
Why on earth would you want to put Mandrake on it when you've already got a beautiful unix based OS with it. And why on earth would you want a PowerPC box to put linux on? Bob
So, you claim that we will basically require Gigabit Ethernet in just few yeas? Funny, this workstation I'm currently on is hooked to a 10MB hub, and I can use it just fine. Yes, that includes accessing files on the server. Are you one of those who think that "Gigabit Ehternet makes my internet faster"?
100BaseT is more than enough for intended uses of the Mini. You can find gigabit in higher-end models and on servers. Mini has no real need for it.
Seriously: have you even looked at the specs of the Mini? it says in plain English: "One FireWire 400 port; two USB 2.0 ports"!. Yes, the Firewire is only 400. But how many PC's have 800? How many low-end PC's have Firewire at all? How many devices/apps require Firewire 800?
If the Mini had those two slots, you would just find some other flaw in it. Seriously, you cannot satisfy everyone.
Instead of upgrading your machine every two years, you can simply buy a new Mini every two years. End-result is more or less the same, as is the expense.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Sure I would waste 7 hours finding my parts, coming home putting them together etc... but ITS FUN!!! and a learning experience.
If you want to be a dull dumb boy and just BUY everything in this world, do it, become a robot consumer slave where in your view, NO ONE should have any skills apart from the job you do and be 100% a clueless idiot for anything else.
Dude, people love to spend 5 hours preparing a super uber dinner too, sure they could work for 5 hrs, then go to a resteraunt and get the same, but why?? To support your macro economic consumer engine? So more people spend and buy , more money rotates and makes more taxes? Screw the banking money elite system, do it your self, reduce the govts taxes, become a better person for it.
Simply 'outsourcing' everything might create more jobs, but you become a duller useless human being.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I believe that the parent was trying to simply state that for the AVERAGE user, a $500 computer replaced every two years is still more convienent than a computer that they have to upgrade. Yes, power users who want to run on Windows will inevitably say that they can upgrade for cheap b/c they can do it themselves, but the target audience isn't those power users, but rather the person who knows little about computers and would thus have to take it in to get upgraded in a computer shop for an extra $100 plus parts, which will be more than they really need, but they will get scammed into getting it. Considering I still don't have an internet connection that I can download from at 10-baseT, I don't see the need for a HOME computer needing anything more than 100 baseT within the estimated product lifetime. True there are some bad points to the mini, but to the target audience, this computer will be ideal! I work phone tech support for Cox communications, and guess what, we almost NEVER get a call about internet not working on a mac. The only mac calls we get are people setting up their accounts for the first time (which has actualluy been increasing). This computer is targeted to those who don't want ot worry about virii, spy ware, etc (I know they exist for the mac, but on a much smaller scale) and don't want to worry abotu driver conflicts b/c they now have an OS that is designed around/with the hardware.
just my two cents.
I came, I saw, She conquered.
Heh. Just because you can plug in a GbE or FW800 into a PC doesn't mean you should. Try doing that on a PC with 32-bit PCI slots and see your bandwidth disappear once you use your GbE, FW, and sound (if you have a card) together. Do it only if you have 66MHz, PCI-X, or PCIe. And if you get a cheap mobo where its GbE is run through the PCI bus, you'd really be crying for more bandwidth. The mini has USB 2.0 high speed (or was that full speed, well, it's the faster speed) ports.
I've been using PC's since the 80286 (my first one actually had a 8088 in it, but it was old by then). I don't even want to start counting how many PC's I've owned since then. Suffice to say that currently I have six Windows machines and a dual G4 Mac.
FWIW, with the exception of hard disks, never ever have I had only one component fail on me. And believe me, after 20 years and god-knows how many systems later I've had my fair share of failures. Last time some broke, I lost a mobo, a processor, two network cards, a hard drive and a video card. I have no idea which one went first, they were all fried.
while true;do echo -e -n "\033[s\n\033[u\134_\033[B";done
If today you can edit on a uber $2000 mac, and its 'professional quality' then if in 18months time, the same spec mac comes out for $500, will you stupidly claim that its "cheap junk, good for web/email only" ????
You want fast DV editing? plug a FIREWIRE 400gig drive into it, then you cannot claim its a hookey pooky cheapass mac.
Todays $300 PC was $1000 in the year 2000, ie with the same specs if it was available. I could edit fine in the year 2000, though not as fast as a $5000 RAID scsi PC of today, its not as bad as a 1995 AVID system.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
The mac mini is a "decent" game system.
Sorry, you're wrong here - Macs are just not gaming machines, unfortunately. Many games are never ported to the Mac platform (e.g. Halflife), most are ported months or years after the initial x86 release, new games require faster Macs than what us mortals can afford, and old games aren't Mac OS X native so they run (poorly) under emulation.
And I say this as a long-time Mac lover, typing this on my iBook G4 which I love dearly, but on which Warcraft 3 is slow, UT runs in Classic (which doesn't seem to support multiple mouse buttons), Quake 3 also runs in Classic because the native port is even worse, and the UT2k4 demo doesn't even render the title screen correctly. Granted, this machine is nearly a year old now; perhaps a Mac mini would fare better with newer games (and the Classic issue should now be moot). Even still, Counterstrike isn't going to happen. I've been using Macs seriously since System 6, but I can't recommend them as a gaming platform until more game developers take the platform seriously, doing side-by-side development and releasing dual-platform hybrid CDs (a few do this already, of course).
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
What concerns me is the MAC Mini Power supply. As a European my wall plugs give me 220V at 50Hz. I have some American contacts who will be travelling here shortly and can bring me a mac mini. Mac mini sells here at about EUR 500, which is about 25-30% more expensive than $500.
7 50 99 doesn't give me any info. (yet?)
Does anyone know whether
- The power supply sold with the Mac Mini's in the US support 220V
- The power cable is easily replacable with one that fits European wall outlets?
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=
Why should he not?
Linux rocks. Mac Mini rocks. The two together obviously rock twice as hard.
Are you seriously suggesting that nobody could possibly prefer Linux once they've used MacOS X? Think again, buddy.
Hokay...
First, let's set the hardware spec target:
Mac Mini:
CPU: 1.25ghz G4 RAM: 256MB of PC2700
Video: ATI Radeon 9200, 32mb DDR, 4x AGP
Drive: 40GB Ultra ATA Drive: DVD/CD-RW
1394: 1 USB2: 2 Ethernet: 10/100
Modem: v.92 Audio: yes
amd64 system:
CPU: 1.8ghz amd64 - $114
Heatsink/Fan: Zalman 7000 - $39.99
RAM: 256MB of PC2700 - $30.75
Video: ATI Radeon 9200, 64mb DDR, 8x AGP - $47.50
Drive: Maxtor 40GB 7200RPM - $45.89
Drive: DVD/CD-RW - $30.50
FOXCONN "755A01-6EKRS" SiS755 Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket 754 CPU -RETAIL - $77.00
1394: 2 USB2: 8
Ethernet: 10/100/1000 Audio: yes
Modem: v.92 - $11.49
Case: Antec mid tower, 300w PS - $52.00
Total: 449.12
You have ~$50 to blow on better parts if you like. That $50 can go a long way. Keep in mind most of the hardware spec'd (video, drive, ethernet, audio, etc) is already superior to the mac mini.
Also, the amd64 system is 64 bit. The mac mini isn't.
For over $900 you can build a totally killer amd64 pc.
Compare the Mac Mini with Hoojum products. Coincidence? Engaged made made the same comparison.
1. With fedora core does the bundled software with the motherboard work?
Answer: Nope.
Now you're deliberately misquoting me. The previous question had to do with Antivirus software being bundled with the mobo. Of course it won't work under Fedora Core, but it's not like it's really needed under Fedora Core either.
How much value is gained from knowing that if you want to take up a new hobby you have some quality tools available to you?
Answer: To me, absolutely none. If I am not interested in something, I won't use it. If I am interested in something, I will buy it to use it.
If you look at something like this and go "Hm. Video editing. That might be cool. GarageBand. Sound editing. That might be useful to me" then this is possible added value. I looked at it and went "Hm. Don't own a video camera, and have no intention of buying one. I don't have a band, or much musical talent, and no time to bother anyway." Those bundled packages are a pointless waste for me. Would you buy a more expensive PC if the dealer was throwing in a MIG welder on the off chance you might like to learn to weld? And don't go off on how that's not software. There's a larger chance I'll use a MIG welder in the next few years than video editing software.
. The grandparent forgot to mention you'll need to buy and equivalent for xcode
Really? What the hell for? Am I developing software? Do I plan to develop software? Do 97% of people who buy a home computer develop software? NO. And in case you missed the part where I mentioned Fedora Core, I'll clue you in: It's got a huge amount of software development tools in there that I'll never use either.
So because all your appliances are getting smaller they are easier to rip off?
Yes. This should be self explanatory. If it's at a front desk at a company it's small enough to take if the secretary is distracted for a minute. It's smaller than a laptop and easier to conceal, and those go missing from companies all the time. If it's at home and someone busts in to your house, they want to take small, easily portable items. Cash and small electronics. The mini-mac is now in the "small electronics" category. A plasma TV still weighs over 100 pounds and does not fit the "small electronics" category.
The mini has more style.
Style is in the eye of the beholder. How else do you explain the AMC Gremlin ever seeing the light of day?
You get things done more easily in fedora? What type of things?
My job. Systems administraton. Reading and answering mail. Browsing the web. Writing documents and spreadsheets. Shell scripting. Works fine for me.
I like linux but it isn't ready for the desktop.
Funny. I've been using it as a desktop for 4 years. I wish someone would have told me it wasn't ready for the desktop. Oh wait...
OSX IS... you get the power user shortcuts that advanced users delight in. But you can do pretty much everything with the single button mouse most of us have. Can you do that in Fedora?
Do I want to? 80% of what I do doesn't even involve a mouse. And there's that lovely phrase that sets my teeth on edge. "Power user". After almost 20 years of doing this for a living, "power user" to me brings to mind the computer equivelant of a four year old with a chainsaw. Every person I've met who called themselves a "power user" managed in some way to cause untold mayhem and then expected me to bail them out.
...a higher wattage CPU...
/. here so why do you use wattage? Of course you mean power
consumption. To any half clued techie, Wattage sounds just as silly
as Ampereage, Faradage, Ohmage and Voltage. (current, capacitance,
resistance and potential)
We're om
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
You are wrong. The Morex case doesn't have an internal power supply. It has an internal DC-DC power supply, which means that it has an external wall-wart to convert AC to DC.
For what it's worth - I currently run Warcraft III, Quake III: Arena in native and Unreal Tournament 2004 on an emac 1.25 which is virtually identical to the mac mini. With a gig of RAM loaded up, the emac handles all 3 superbly. I would recommend upgrading your UT2004 demo to the latest (there were several major ATI bugs in the first release which caused those terrible screen renders you are referring to). Also, stuff as much RAM into your ibook as possible. I swear, the jump from 256 to 1 gig is like doing a CPU upgrade in UT2004
They're not trying to prove that Macs are cheaper than shitty PCs - they simply released a Mac that is cheaper than other Macs.
From the outset it was clear that you could build/buy a PC for less money than a Mac mini, but that's just not the point.
It's a Mac, in a box the size of a few CD cases, with a full OS, CD burning, DVD playing, wireless etc.
Just outta curiousity, was there *any* left over screws?
Dosen't matter how many things I've taken apart, there always seems to be atleast one extra screw!
/. is good for you.
I will second the post claiming major perceivable changes when going from 4200 to 7200rpm. OSX is heavily disk dependent -- for example most menu operation require going to the disk and reading some file or worse like enumerating some files, or even worse like running some code that needs to read in from the disk. Think contextual menus for example. History menu in Safari. Sick of it already?
4200 is barely acceptable.
some considerations when upgrading hard drives.
Power - little change when going from 4200 to 7200, within 10% most. No problem here.
Latency - typically 7ms, 5.5ms amd 4.2 for 4200/5400/7200 rpm respectively. 7200 is almost twice as good as 4200.
Seek time - 12ms for 4200/5400, 10ms for the lone 7200 available. Nice but not earth shattering.
Buffers - 8GB in better drives. Unrelated to rpm.
Noise - slower is better. 7200RPM is roughly 2 time louder.
Reliability - who knows, specs are unhelpful here.
Obviously you slept through the lesson in 4th grade where they taught Roman Hexadecimal Numerals.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
There hasn't been a difference between "PC RAM" and "Mac RAM" for decades now. The Mac Mini takes standard PC2700 333MHz DDR SRAM.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Well, this is going to be modded as redundant, but, please, remember that you get an amazing operating system (XP and Linux do not come close wrt usability, despite progress) and a lot of software bundled with it. And great software, that really increases your productivity. Coming from Linux, I used Thunderbird and its address book for some time on the mac. But then I saw the sinergy of the OS X Address Book with Mail.app and other apps (like Adium), because friends used those. It was simply astounding. You cannot come close to that on XP unless you do everything INSIDE Office, and still there's a big gap. I miss only NNTP in Mail... Note that Office does not come bundled with the under-$500 cheapo Dells.
Of course the mac mini does not have 5 PCI slots. Of course it does not have an AGP 8x slot. Of course thereì's no room in it for two 10000 rpm 160Gb S-ATA Hard drives. Of course it does not come with 2 2.5Ghz IBM PowerPC 970fx processors. That would be a completely different machine (which in fact, except for the number of PCI slots, Apple also offers).
Wow!
I didn't know Cartman was a Mac-version naming snob!
He even posts on slashdot!
.
"You have liberated me from thought."
I'm no Mac fanboy; I've got plenty of x86 machines running Linux and XP (it does have its uses) all over the place at work and at home. But, the very next machine on my list to buy is the Mac Mini. Seems to me that the whole point of the Mac Mini (and indeed of all Macs in general) is this:
1. You bring it home.
2. You turn it on.
3. It just fucking works.
Constrast with the proceedure for x86 machines:
1. You bring it home.
2. You install all your expansion cards.
3. You install the operating system. We all do that ourselves, right?
4. You configure the operating system for the devices you have installed
5. You shut down and rearrange the expansion devices and pray that it clears up interrupt conflicts.
6. Probably go to step 4. Eventually fall out of this loop.
7. Tweek. Repeat.
8. Futz. Repeat.
I've wasted many, many hours of my precious life installing, configuring, tweeking, twiddling, rearranging, futzing, prodding, farting around with, etc., all these x86 machines. I want at least one computer that I don't have to dick with. Here's my checklist for justifying my buying one:
1. Runs Quicken? Check.
2. Runs TurboTax? Check.
3. Mozilla products? Check.
4. Runs MS Office (sorry, gotta use it)? Check.
5. Runs Photoshop? Check.
6. Runs iTunes? Check.
7. Unix-based? Check. X11? Check. ('tho I'm no big fan of BSD-ish installations, I'll get used to it).
8. Upgradable? Who gives a shit?
What this means for me is that I can dump two machines that I have at home (one Linux, one XP), and replace it with a smaller, no-muss-no-fuss, machine.
Geeze, how can I resist?
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
we all learned back in elementary school that the Romans used letters instead of numbers
And they had no zero. That's why when the Romans wanted to get some math done, they kidnapped an Arab.
Or at least, that's what my high school calc teacher told me.
For what it's worth - I currently run Warcraft III, Quake III: Arena in native and Unreal Tournament 2004 on an emac 1.25 which is virtually identical to the mac mini. With a gig of RAM loaded up, the emac handles all 3 superbly.
I played Warcraft III, Quake III: Arena, Halo, Diablo II, and Civ III with no problems on my 800MHz Flat Panel iMac. I think I had to tone down some of the screen effects in Halo, but otherwise everything worked suprisingly well.
Agreed, 1GB ram is necessary. It shocks me that Apple sells machines with less than 512 preloaded. Fortunately ram is somewhat cheap, just don't buy it from Apple.
Finkployd
I was pretty disappointed that it didn't come with a 16 port 232 serial card myself. I mean, come on Apple, you didn't even include and 8" floppy - who's gonna buy one of these?
That was classic intercourse!
Secondly, the Athlon system has a 300W PSU, while the Mac uses 85W (almost the power consumption of the CPU alone in an Athlon system). This equates to around 0.6/hour more to operate the Athlon than the Mac Mini. Not much, but assuming the system is on for 10 hours a day this is over $20/year. Again, not a huge amount, but worth considering. Not to mention the fact that the Mac Mini will be much quieter as a result.
Thirdly, you didn't include the cost of software. Perhaps you are going to run Linux/BSD/ReactOS on the system. Perhaps you can find some open source equivalents of iMovie, and friends.
Finally, the AMD system is a lot larger in terms of physical space. I have recently got rid of all of the desktop systems I own because their noise and space requirements were too irritating. I may invest in a Mac Mini once Tiger is released, because it has none of these disadvantages.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
i was addressing the parent poster's question ("impossible to build a sub $500 amd64").
i was addressing the parent post, which claimed it was impossible to build a sub $500 amd64 pc. it isn't.
Would I tolerate a refridgerator that was cold enough to make liquid nitrogen if it also kicked out a 90dB whine? No. Would I ever use a toaster that was 5x larger than it needed to be and so ugly that I had to hide it under a desk? No. Do I want my toilet to blue-screen-of-death on me? Not particularly.
It's VERY important that those of you who need PCI slots and super fast processors DO NOT BUY a mac mini.
You are ABSOLUTELY right. The DELLs come WITH PCI slots, a SUPER FAST intel processor, and BEST OF ALL.....WINDOWS!!!
If you start MESING WITH WINTEL SUCCESS by thinking of trying a mac now you will only DELAY the arrival of MY mac-mini which I will be ordering soon.
It is OBVIOUS that any computer that doesn't sound like a 707 when you turn it on is NO COMPUTER at all.
There is CLEARLY NO VALUE in reducing the size and audible noise of a PC. In fact, if anything, telling the world you have a little cabinet is BAD BAD BAD!!!
The mac-mini is NOT for you. Please continue to purchase DELLs and whatnot so you have something to show off to your friends while you drone on about expandability, oh, and stop picking your nose.
1. Produce an iPod that runs Keynote and outputs video to a projector.
2. Incorporate an integrated reference/bibliography manager into Pages.
Macmall is giving you a free keyboard and mouse if you order from them... Free shipping as well. http://www.macmall.com/macmall/families/macmini/ Much Love!
Actually the lack of Firewire 800 is a deal-breaker for me. Without it, there is no way to get any kind of high-speed mass storage connected to the thing. It uses a laptop-grade (ie; slow) HD and has no gigabit for connecting to a shared RAID.
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
First off: Fedora runs just dandy with *pretty much* any motherboard on the market today. Bundled software be damned, it's all crap anyway. Second off: Pretty much any *nix oss application you can think of compiles and installes under OSX with little or no modification. There are even automated tools to do this with such as Fink and darwinports. Often times it is even easier than that. Just simply download Gimp, Wings3d, Blender, or dozens of other oss .apps that work perfectly, installing them by just dragging to the desktop / hdd. (for those that don't already know, .app "files" are actually folders containing the main executable and other required data files. This is what makes it so easy to install (drag to HDD) and dis-install (drag to trash) software on a mac.
Third off: There are Pros and cons to every operating system. I use my Powerbook 17" for image processing, colour critical work (properly calibrated 23" Cinema display HD), high end 3d, and lots of other stuff. I use my windows box for games (just about all it's good for). I use my Linux box as a raid fileserver, xmms, xvid encoding, and rendering.
Fourth off: All three of these operating systems have different target audiences while all three try to cator (sometimes badly) to all three audiences. Linux takes patience, time, but allows extreme custimization and speed. Windows... well windows plays games well sometimes. OSX does everything but (many) games very well.
Well that's my take on this for what it's worth.