The "I just ordered / bought / got my new/refurb Mac Mini" threads, merged

You're not alone. We ordered our first Mac mini last Tuesday, to replace our two MBAs. (We decided to share a Mac mini at home, after both finding that the new iPad minis serve at least 90% of our personal needs, in the living room EZ chair).

If we end up fighting over it, we'll buy another copy. At least I'm done with dragging cords to work and back daily. The ipad mini is there when I need it, and not in the way when I don't. Suhweet. Hopefully the Mac mini experience is as pleasant.

Should be here on Thursday, which is good. We miss our MBAs, sometimes, temporarily.

Dyn-tec said:

Total cost??

Click to expand...

Mac Mini 2.6 GHz i7 $1,119.96

Dell 24" U2412M monitor $279.99

StarTech 10' Mini DP to DP Cable $10.00

$1,425.14 in total

Congrats you guys! Always exciting to get new stuff!

Great merge mods. There were almost 8 of us interested in reading something besides differing opinions on what Apple MIGHT do next year. Great grasp on the contemporary.

Ordered mine on Black Friday, after living with an 2007 24" iMac for the past 5 years. The iMac is on it's last legs, and even after doing a fresh install of ML it still becomes painfully slow to use after it's been on for a few days. Decided never to go with another all in one as they are just too hard to upgrade / service.

Mac Mini 2.3Ghz i7, 1TB $773.99

Dell U2412M monitor $279.99

Sandisk Extreme 240GB SSD $139.99

Crucial 16GB memory $71.99

OWC Data Doubler kit $52.98

All prices include shipping / tax if applicable. Everything will be delivered this Tuesday. Total price is $1,318.94, which is less than I paid for the iMac all those years ago and should pound it performance wise. Hopefully now I can just upgrade a specific part when needed vs having to "throw away" the system like my iMac. Now my big debate is to whether I make the drives into a Fusion drive or keep them separate...

Congrats! And keep the drives separate...

OdT22 said:

You're not alone. We ordered our first Mac mini last Tuesday, to replace our two MBAs. (We decided to share a Mac mini at home, after both finding that the new iPad minis serve at least 90% of our personal needs, in the living room EZ chair).

If we end up fighting over it, we'll buy another copy. At least I'm done with dragging cords to work and back daily. The ipad mini is there when I need it, and not in the way when I don't. Suhweet. Hopefully the Mac mini experience is as pleasant.

Should be here on Thursday, which is good. We miss our MBAs, sometimes, temporarily.

Click to expand...

I was planning on replacing my ageing MBP with a Mini and Macbook Air 11" solution. Bought the base Mini, popped in 16gb of RAM. I either use it with the cinema display or move it to the 32" LCD when I want to laze around with my feet up on the sofa and a wireless KB/trackpad.

Am now starting to wonder if I actually need the MBA - the Mini is such a fast and brilliant little workhorse.

I've had the 2.6 Ghz i7 with Fusion drive for a couple of weeks now. It's brilliant. I was waiting for a new iMac, but I was cheesed off with the new models and further delay.

I'll be interested to see how much a Fusion drive and 16Gb of RAM (and an i7) adds to the 21.5 iMac; I suspect it'll be considerable, so I'm happy I made the right decision.

I've had no problems with the HDMI port/cable: I have two monitors, one of the TB port and the other on the HDMI (Both Apple 20" Displays).

For me, the inclusion of FireWire and audio in (which the iMacs lack) and their price made them unbeatable.

I'm already spilling files over onto the Hard drive portion of the Fusion drive: but I really can't tell which it's using: it's all fast.

I ordered the mini and its coming on Monday. I'm super excited. I got it to replace my 2010 21.5" iMac. I ordered it with the Thunderbolt display. That came already and is awesomely gigantic. Too bad I have nothing to plug into it yet so right now its a $999 iPhone and 2010 MB Air charger.

I decided to go with the mini because the theory is that I'd upgrade that every few years and keep the monitor. Getting a new iMac every few years would get expensive. I might switch to a Macbook Pro in the future and the TB display would work sweet with that. I also wasn't a fan of the new iMac. Looks super sweet, but I'm scared about the display. I also don't like how you can't upgrade anything in it now. It will be interesting to see the iFixit teardown of the new iMac. Guess we'll find out Friday!

Just ordered mine 2.3 i7 with the fusion drive and 8gigs of ram. I plan to use with a 46" Phillips TV. Am very nervous about display quality not looking good with the issues reported on the boards, but I am crossing fingers. I wanted it here before Xmas so here's hoping it works!

Katieg-fm said:

Just ordered mine 2.3 i7 with the fusion drive and 8gigs of ram. I plan to use with a 46" Phillips TV. Am very nervous about display quality not looking good with the issues reported on the boards, but I am crossing fingers. I wanted it here before Xmas so here's hoping it works!

Click to expand...

I think the problem is just with the HDMI port until a driver update is released. I think if you get a mini-displayport-to-whatever-you-need adapter, you'll be fine. Note that the DVI adapter that comes with it is for the HDMI port so that probably won't help.

Have had the 2.5 i5 on my office desk for the past week or so. It replaces a two year old Asus gaming i7 laptop that was losing the race in keeping up with the newer programs.

In a perfect world, after doing some of my day to day stuff, I should/could go to the mid i7 version, but as this will be replacing my aging home server at some point in time, I don't feel too rushed to swap.



Many, many thanks to the posters that gave tips elsewhere for replacing the HDD and RAM ... now rocking an Intel SSD and 16 gigs RAM (overkill for me but what the heck ...) If the @#@$@ black screens and snow don't get patched soon, I might just see about trying out the one stick RAM hack.

Glad to be here.

Mac Mini Powerhouse

Just wanted to share how impressed I am with the Mac mini server dual ssd. I'm getting read and write speeds in excess of 800 mb/s with ssd's set in Raid 0. Best read speed I ever got was 828. Best write about 775.

Boot time is absurdly fast it's literally like 10 seconds sometimes it feels faster because it gets me quicker to my desktop than my 27 ips monitor turns on.

I have a fully specced to the max mini 2.6 ghz i7, dual ssds with 16 gb ram. The performance has been very nice so far. It's safe to say it can handle a fair amount of abuse and for the money I think it has to be one of the most affordable best bang for the buck options out there.

I was someone who was going to get the new imac and saw the potential in the mini. Ive always loved an underdog. Thats my style.

My 5 year old Mac mini has been my favorite Mac computer. It's going to be joined by yet another mini this month which will be my home server.

It's a great computer platform.

Just ordered my first Mac Mini! Went for the standard factory 2.3 GHz i7 model and ordered 16GB of RAM from Crucial. Hopefully they'll both arrive at the same time.

I've just realised this is my first "component" desktop Mac - everything I've owned has either been an all-in-one (Performa, a few iMacs) or a laptop. Currently I use a Macbook Air and a Thunderbolt Display, but I'm looking forward to having a more permanent desktop setup when the Mini arrives. Unplugging the MBA all the time (and ejecting external drives, etc) is a bit of a drag.

Love it

I am a long time pc user but have been making the gradual move to apple since I bought my iPod touch 1st gen. I was originally going for the iMac but like lots of other people I was fed up waiting and the added expense just pushed me towards the mini.

I've had my 2012 2.3 i7 mini for a couple of days now and bought it stock. I have added 16 gb crucial ram today and managed to boot camp it without too much hassle.

I have had 2 separate occasions where the blank screen/snow issue has happened but I had anticipated this. I ordered a tb>dvi for about £5 from amazon and swapped to this today. although its early days the couloirs look so much better. I am using a Samsung sync master 22" which is around 6 years old.

I plan to add a ssd when I have the spare cash and maybe a tb display when I win the lottery!

All in all I am very happy with my mini.

And... the courier stole my Mac mini. It was due to be delivered today, and I've been waiting and checking the delivery status. Then it clicked over to delivered... and was signed by someone who isn't me. There is only me here, I've been here all day, my neighbours are out, and the name of the signatory isn't mine or anyone I recognise.

WTF?

And now it's going to take 2 working days for the courier to get back to me on where the parcel is, and who signed for it.

I hate courier companies.

Sorry to hear that Zen.

Turned out it was courier error - the machine arrived late in the evening! I told the courier it was marked as delivered and signed for and she had no idea what was going on. Several other deliveries she had made the same day had the same problem.

So, anyway:

Mac mini is here! Everything has been shifted over from my Time Machine backup and I'm now just sorting out my external drives before I slip this baby underneath my Thunderbolt display.

It's actually a little larger than I expected. But I love the easy access to the memory - I put in 16GB from Crucial, and it was the easiest installation I've ever done.

"I'm now just sorting out my external drives before I slip this baby underneath my Thunderbolt display."

I trust that means that you are NOT going to put the display -onto the top of- the Mini case, correct?

You really don't want any weight on there...

today i got a base model mac mini i5, im considering on selling my early 2011 mbp 13 and keeping my samsung 830 ssd and putting it in the mini, for those who swapped out the hd, how would you rate the difficulty? also looking for a better monitor to use, right now im using a lg 26 led tv with hdmi cable but havent had the black screen, looking to get the dell 24 ultra, any other recommendations? thanks

Fishrrman said:

"I'm now just sorting out my external drives before I slip this baby underneath my Thunderbolt display."

I trust that means that you are NOT going to put the display -onto the top of- the Mini case, correct?

You really don't want any weight on there...

Click to expand...

Oh no, I meant just underneath the display, on the left-hand side next to the pedestal.

2011 MAC Mini

Just ordered a refurb 2011 MAC Mini. Ordered additional 8GB ram, comes with 500GB drive.
Primary use will be HTPC, I plan to connect it to a Vizio 55" 3d TV.
I'll be running VLC & XBMC mostly loading .mkv files - I don't expect to see any video lagging or stuttering like I experienced from my MacBook Pro Thunderbolt out to HDMI onto my tv.

Did I make the right choice?

I was maybe foolish--I waited until the firmware update was released, then pulled the trigger on my order before finding out whether the update worked or not! It seems it may not have worked for everyone, according to some posters here. Oh well, if the video output problems are bad, I will simply return the unit. I ordered the mid-level mini with processor boost to 2.6 MHz, along with 16 GB of RAM from Crucial and two 250GB Samsung 840 pro SSDs, which I'll wait to install until I've tested the hdmi port, as I plan to use two monitors that I already own. This is going to be my main desktop, with a specialty as an audio workstation for my music, which uses large sample libraries. It's an upgrade from my 2009 MacBook Pro, and I can't wait.

you guys have definately sold me on the mac mini with all these deals on hard drives and memory i was considering a 2007 mac pro. But with these simple upgrades I think im gonna go with i5 or i7.. It does run quiet guys?