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Price Drops For Mac mini Upgrades

Posted by timothy on from the mac-mini-eats-lunch-film-at-11 dept.

RustNeverSleeps writes "Apple has just lowered prices on certain build-to-order options on the Mac mini. The combination Bluetooth and AirPort Express option has gone down to $99 from $129, 1 GB RAM upgrades have been reduced to $325 from $475 and the price of an upgrade from a 40 GB hard drive to an 80 GB hard drive has been reduced to $50 from $90. Also, the original 4x SuperDrive has been upgraded to an 8x drive for the same price. Interesting that they dropped prices so soon after release. Perhaps Apple actually listened to people complaining about overpriced upgrades."

10 of 886 comments (clear)

  1. Or Apple hears Anandtech's cry by Cougem · · Score: 5, Informative

    Or perhaps they read Anandtechs's review saying it was positively scandelous to sell the unit with 256MB RAM with such expensive upgrades.

    Good review for those who care.

  2. Re:this goes against.... by sgant · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hmmm...

    For 700 bucks I get a DVD burner, 80 Gig HD and the best OS on the planet.

    I would never buy the RAM upgrades form Apple, nor would I do the same from any maker. I buy my RAM from the cheapest source possible, which usually ISN'T the maker. So what are we talking about here, another $125 for a full Gig of RAM now.

    $825 for a killer system. That's only 125 to "bring the Mac Mini up to a reasonable configuration".

    Now, you may think me a Mac zealot, but in fact, I build and maintain computers from scratch running Linux. I haven't owned an Apple product in about 8 years. I've used them quite a bit in my old job, but they were always "overpriced" for me. That's really no longer an excuse.

    --

    "Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
  3. Price Protection. by Luckboy · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Apple Store offers price protection for products ub to ten day AFTER SHIPMENT, not ordering. The policy and the phone number to call can be found here. I called last night and they've credited my card.

    As far as the superdrive goes, I ordered mine the day it was announced, and it arrived two days before the official release date. It came with an 8X Superdrive.

  4. 8X is not 8X DVD write! by pebs · · Score: 5, Informative

    The 8X drive is only for reading DVD, the write speed for DVD is still 4X.

    --
    #!/
  5. I called Apple and this is what they said.... by jerk · · Score: 5, Informative

    I called yesterday after work and they handled it very professionally...I didn't even have to get upset. They credited me the $31.20 difference for the Airport/BT combo and said that no mini's actually shipped with the 4x Superdrives...they just corrected the description on the webpage. I'm not able to verify this since I'm away on business for the week, but I'll take his word for it for the time being. Can anyone with a mini verify the speed of the Superdrive?

    This is part of the reason people love Apple so much, they really do take care of their customers.

  6. Buying generic RAM for mini is dangerous by bonch · · Score: 5, Informative

    On the Apple forums, several people have described random kernel panics and general operating unpleasantness after going with cheap RAM.

    The only place I would get Mac RAM from would be Crucial.com, and they're more or less the price of the Apple RAM, though the 1GB is a hundred less. Crucial is a division of Micron and thoroughly tests their RAM.

    The problem is that some people report issues with using PC2700 RAM in the mini, some report overheating (you need quality RAM because of that cramped airflow in the casing), and so on.

    Make sure you people manually upgrading your minis get high-quality RAM that is up to spec!

  7. It doesn't work that way. by i41Overlord · · Score: 5, Informative

    So to recap, what apple is installing is "better" in terms of stability, and if they use faster-rated RAM (say, PC3000) to build it, the speed lost to ECC and buffering will be negligible compared to normal PC2700.

    It doesn't work that way. SDRAM is synchronous memory and the chipset will attempt to run the memory at the speed of the bus. Faster memory will not make the bus go any faster than the chipset's rated speed.

    For example, I had a KT333 chipset which had a 333 mhz bus speed. It used PC2700 memory, which is 333 mhz memory. I had a power surge and my MB died. So I replaced it with a KT266 motherboard, which only has a 266 mhz bus speed (PC2100 speed). I still used my old PC2700 memory, but the memory now operates at the bus speed, which is 266 mhz. It is not any faster than if I just had PC2100 memory in it, since it can only run as fast as the chipset can drive it.

    The Mac mini's chipset works at 333 mhz, which is PC2700 speed. Putting in PC3000 or faster won't make the memory speed be any faster- it'll always run at 333 mhz.

  8. I've had my mini by bob670 · · Score: 5, Informative

    since last Thursday and it has so far exceeeded my expectations in every way. I contacted Apple last night and they are refunding the price difference to reflect the price drops, I cannot complain. Of course if those prices would have been lower initially I might have ordered more upgrades, but overall I can say this has been an excellent experience with Apple again.

    1. Re:I've had my mini by bob670 · · Score: 5, Informative
      If anyone should care of want details of what life with a mini is like, this is a review I wrote at another forum, maybe you find it helpful....

      I've had my mini since last Thursday so I thought I would post my thoughts for anyone who might be interested....

      Overall the mini is outstanding, right now my list of stuff I run frequently includes....

      Safari

      FireFox

      Mail

      iBlog

      Pages

      KeyNote

      iTunes

      iPhoto

      PhotoShop Elements 2.0

      iSync

      Transmit 2.0

      CandyBar

      Diablo II

      and to a lesser extent...

      iMovie

      GarageBand 2

      Chess

      MacJanitor

      CockTail

      Specs:

      G4 1.42 / 80GB HDD / 512MB RAM / DVD/CD +/-RW combo drive / AE + BT

      NEC LCD1735 NXM w/ DVI cable, Logitech Z3i 2.1 Speakers, Apple Pro Keyboard (wired), Apple Pro Wireless Mouse, D-Link DL-524 Router/WAP, Epson Stylus C80 printer on D-Link 301U ethernet printer server

      Everything opens quickly, usually one bounce on the dock and it's up and usable. I have spent a good deal of time moving my vacation photos (about 800-900) and music (about 3400 tracks) to their repsective apps. Both iTunes and iPhoto still snap right open and are usable pretty quickly, although obviously startup scans of large libraries take a few seconds. Application perfromance is great, very smooth and pretty much what I expect of OS X. Pages and KeyNote are very responsive and stable, PhotoShop Elements 2.0 is the only lagard, as it is on any system.

      A big improvement for me is not having to turn off eye candy and little features to maintain performance. This is my third Mac, I've gone from an iMac G3 700 Snow w/Jag to an iBook G4 800 w/Panther to the mini I am currently running. For the first time I don't have to turn off dock animation or magnification, find a hack around transparency or turn off font smoothing to avoid those occaissional chops that would happen to my other Macs. Finder is smooth and responsive and outside of the occaisional delay with iDisk synching is vastly improved from Jag and even my earlier Panther experiences.

      Browsing my network, mapping drives on my Wintel box and even remote managing my DVR is perfection. I have the AE/BT option. AE immediately finds my Dlink DL-524 and works with it's WPA-PSK settings with no hassle. The Apple wireless mouse was found on first boot and OS X shows you a little 2 step pictogram so the OS can pair the device before it is even compeltely launched. BT performance is overall about the same, although it does not ship with the 1.2 firmware upgrade, which definitely made for smoother mouse tracking. Pairing with my Nokia 3650 is still a little wonky, but this appears to be my phone at fault as it pairs poorly with anything.

      The size is truly impressive and you have to see it in relation to the rest of your hardware to really appreciate it. It runs virtually silent all the time, even under moderate load the fan barely kicks up. The fan is a rotary blower similair to the ones in the new iMacs, although obviously a much lower profile and slighlty different form factor. It does kick up during gaming, and while it makes more noise, it is more of a whoosh of air than anything mechanical or clicky. I think most of the noise is due to the shape of the exhaust vents more than the blower. At higher speeds you can definitely feel it moving some air, so I feel pretty confident the mini gets adequate air flow.

      I am the only one home right now at 7:45a.m., there is very little ambient or background noise to be heard currently, it is probably as close as my place gets to 100% silent and I can barely hear the mini at all, the fan is a whisper at best. I can here thee clock on the wall 20 feet away clicking more than I can hear the mini's fan.

      The hard drive is quiet, I rarely even here it seek. In fact, hard drive noise is so rare when I do hear it I tend to notice it. Hard drive performance has so far proven to be pretty decent, it honestly doesn't feel slow or he

  9. Re:this goes against.... by ALpaca2500 · · Score: 5, Informative

    i priced a Mac Mini with all the upgrades, it came out to $1222.

    i priced this at logic Supply:

    Morex 3677 mini-ITX case Silver $85.00
    VIA EPIA MII12000 Mini-ITX Motherboard $214.00
    Notebook 2.5" Hard Drive 80GB $175.00
    Panasonic Slot Loading CD-RW / DVD $99.00
    PC2100 / DDR266 memory 1024MB $290.00
    Microsoft Windows XP Pro with SP2 $175.00
    Netgear WG511 54 Mbps Wireless PCMCIA Card $49.00
    Combo Keyboard, Mouse and Speakers $21.00
    Sub-Total: $1,108.00

    note that the Mac mini has a slightly faster CPU (and i'm willing to bet the G4 will out-perform the Via Eden in most cases). the Mini has a DVD burner as opposed to a DVD-ROM/CD-RW. the Mini has Apple's wireless keyboard.

    so, the Mac Mini price is at least competitive with other small form factor computers, if not regular full size computers.