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

I just ordered 2012 base model from BH for $499, a good deal i think. The deal includes Parallels desktop 10* at no additional cost! wich is sold alone for $59-$75 .. and 6 months of parallels Access 2.0 free subscription ($20).

* you have to add Parallels 10 to your cart.

Finally gone and done it!!! Had to be a 2012 one though

well after a couple of years running a core 2 duo hackintosh the mrs finally gave in and let me buy a mac mini, have been waiting for the new 2014 mac mini but now that it's released I must say I'm very disappointed with Apple. Can't upgrade RAM and need a special security tool to even get into it. Bought a new 2012 Mac mini 2.5GHz i5 for £374 delivered, i have 8GB of the exact RAM I need for it in my spares cupboard, I have a 2TB hdd spare and ordered a 256GB Crucial SSD for £74.99 for it aswell as a 2nd HDD upgrade kit.

And sold the hackintosh tower to a friend for £100.....RESULT!!

If I would've known the 2014 Mac Mini was going to be as bad as it is I would've ordered a 2012 one weeks ago. I have no problems with HD4000 gfx as it's only used for browsing and as a plex server. Apple have really messed up there. There was no reason for them to solder the RAM on when they haven't even changed the design.

So for a;
2012 Mac Mini i5 2.5GHz
2TB HDD
256GB SSD
8GB RAM
it has cost me the grand total of £348.99....BARGAIN!

Pulled the trigger

Finally after a lot of hard thinking i just ordered the 2.6GHz Mac mini, 8GB ram with Fusion Drive.
I will use it for everyday tasking , occasional light photo editing and i movie.
I hope i did the right thing and 8Gb ram is enough.....

skopelos said:

Finally after a lot of hard thinking i just ordered the 2.6GHz Mac mini, 8GB ram with Fusion Drive.
I will use it for everyday tasking , occasional light photo editing and i movie.
I hope i did the right thing and 8Gb ram is enough.....

Click to expand...

I pulled the trigger on the same thing but with 16 gig ram. Total was $1039 with a student discount. But since that is kind of an odd configuration it won't arrive until Oct 30 - Nov 1.

I think they expect people that want fusion drive and 16 gig ram to get the 4308U @ 2.8 GHz. Doing my research though and factoring in the tax and cost difference that was like a $130-$150 upgrade from the 4278U @ 2.6 GHz. It just wasn't worth it.

My rationale for the 16 gig of ram was that 16 gig's of good quality mobile ram on Newegg was about $30 cheaper than what apple was charging for the upgrade (with student discount). So I bite the bullet knowing that I have a bunch of virtual machines I'd like to have on it.

Also I got the 2014 model over the 2012 because there are some games on steam that I'd like to play cross platform with my PC master race friends. Nothing extreme, I think they are into insurgency and some others and the Iris 5100 is going to be FAR better for that than the HD 4000. Lastly I run three monitors and with the 2014 mac mini I can retire my triplehead2go. I've been using it since 2006 and it works well but its analog so I sacrifice some sharpness and proper window management (OSX only gives one top bar and each screen will get one with the new mini)

My existing questions on the purchase are, can I find a passable HDMI switch? I'll use the port for my third display 98% of the time but its next to my TV so I'd like to run it to my receiver too if I want to play a blu ray rip. If its not blu ray quality I'll just stream it to my non theater setup tv over airplay and apple TV.

If I buy a big USB 3.0 external drive and leave it plugged in all the time, will the fusion drive write to SSD before copying it over to USB 3.0? I doubt it but that would be amazing!

Waiting for my 1.4Ghz mini with 16GB of RAM and the 500GB disk to move out of Processing Items

Waited for the new 'ahem' upgraded mac mini and its a complete miss for me.

So I've picked up a nice brand new cheap 2012 Mid 2.3 i7. Its going to run VMs, transcode and Plex for the house so the new one isn't going to cut it.

I'm going to add a Crucial MX100 512Gb drive and 16Gb of memory so will come in at about £700. To get the new one direct from the Apple store would have been £1359 and offered lower performance for my usage.

Should be here in a few days.

A couple of days ago I ordered a 2012 2.6 with 8GB RAM from B&H. The order was cancelled due to being discontinued by the manufacturer. At that point only three minis were on their Web site, the basic i5, the 2.3 i7 and a 2014.

Today I was surprised to see a 2012 2.6 basic model reappear for $839. Needless to say I ordered one. My existing 2012 2.3 become a Windows-only machine. Its 16GB RAM goes into the new one as does an M500 SSD that used to be in my Mac Pro.

Now I have a pair of 2012 minis. That sounds really old the but having paid $739 for the 2.3 and $839 for the 2.6 that beats the living hell out of any mini that Apple is currently selling by performance, price and future value as fits my needs!

MadCar said:

Waited for the new 'ahem' upgraded mac mini and its a complete miss for me.

So I've picked up a nice brand new cheap 2012 Mid 2.3 i7. Its going to run VMs, transcode and Plex for the house so the new one isn't going to cut it.

I'm going to add a Crucial MX100 512Gb drive and 16Gb of memory so will come in at about £700. To get the new one direct from the Apple store would have been £1359 and offered lower performance for my usage.

Should be here in a few days.

Click to expand...

Where'd you pick the 2012 up from and how much did you pay for the Mini itself?

I wanted to say No Ridley but then I remembered...

Ridley said:

If I buy a big USB 3.0 external drive and leave it plugged in all the time, will the fusion drive write to SSD before copying it over to USB 3.0? I doubt it but that would be amazing!

Click to expand...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4512936

Understand that the critical reason to "leave it plugged in all the time" is the unitary nature of a Fusion Drive. If you create a Fusion Drive with an external USB 3.0 component, then it will be a single volume that spans two drives. If one drive is missing or otherwise unavailable then the volume won't work!

Do your homework on this form of storage. Despite the external drive workarounds, many users recommend internal storage for Fusion Drives.

Celerondon said:

Do your homework on this form of storage. Despite the external drive workarounds, many users recommend internal storage for Fusion Drives.

Click to expand...

FWIW, I think the poster was asking if the SSD portion of the Fusion drive would act as a cache layer for their random external drives. The answer to which is no. Only if you explicitly make a fusion drive that includes the USB drive, and IMO you would be *mad* to do so

Celerondon said:

Do your homework on this form of storage. Despite the external drive workarounds, many users recommend internal storage for Fusion Drives.

Click to expand...

cmsj said:

FWIW, I think the poster was asking if the SSD portion of the Fusion drive would act as a cache layer for their random external drives. The answer to which is no. Only if you explicitly make a fusion drive that includes the USB drive, and IMO you would be *mad* to do so

Click to expand...

Thanks cmsj, that is was I was referring to. If the ssd portion of the fusion drive would cache writes to the external drive. Thinking about it more that is sort of madness so I understand why it doesn't work.

Side note, I got notice that my custom built mac mini shipped today and will arrive Monday. 2.6 GHz, 16 gig ram, 1 TB Fusion drive

Skibba said:

Where'd you pick the 2012 up from and how much did you pay for the Mini itself?

Click to expand...

Apple shop, it was showing as a legacy price of £569 and I can get 6% off that via a work agreed discount. Just waiting for the bits to arrive now.

Loads of places have it for a similar price.

I've spent the last five days refreshing the UK refurb store to no avail, and when I phoned my local Apple store they told me that all of their 2012 models had been sent back to the main warehouse, so I decided to stop dedicating my life to finding a bargain and ordered a 2014 mini.

2.6GHz, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD. Compared to what I'm typing this on (2006 1.66GHz Core Duo) it's going to fly. At least the educational discount helped ease the pain of not getting hold of a 2012 model.

Our first Mac!

I've been a DOS/Windows lifer since our first IBM PC in the early 80's. Grew up in a Windows environment and didn't really see the attraction of a Mac. That is until I got my first iPhone in 2008, and since then, have expanded to an iPad and an iPad Mini. Now, our household has 3 iPhones, an iPad 3rd gen and an iPad Mini 2, with 2 aging Windows desktops running Win7 & win8.1. The desktop running Win7 (my wife's computer) was on its last legs, so sooner or later we would have to get a new one for her. We struggled with whether to finally get a Mac, or to just replace it with another Windows desktop.

Anyway, when the new retina iMac and new Mac Mini's got announced last week, we decided to take the plunge. Struggled between the retina iMac or just a Mac Mini for a short time. But because this was to replace my wife's system, and she's a light user, I thought a retina iMac would be a waste. Then I found out about the limitations of the new Mac Minis with respect to RAM upgrade, and that made up my mind to try to grab a refurbished late-2012 Mac Mini that was still available at the time. And it was a good thing we made up our minds because soon after ordering, stock was depleted.

So yesterday, I unboxed our first Mac in the family, and got it set up and upgraded to OSX Yosemite. Being a long time Windows user, the Mac environment is definitely foreign and I'll need to do a lot of researching and reading to learn even the basics (for example, I was trying to map to a shared folder on my Windows Server and I struggled to do it on the Mac, because there's really no drive hierarchy and no network drive mounting function.)

Anyway, this forum looks to be the go-to place for questions like this, so I'll just end my first mac-related post on that note.

rvs007 said:

I've been a DOS/Windows lifer since our first IBM PC in the early 80's. Grew up in a Windows environment and didn't really see the attraction of a Mac. That is until I got my first iPhone in 2008, and since then, have expanded to an iPad and an iPad Mini. Now, our household has 3 iPhones, an iPad 3rd gen and an iPad Mini 2, with 2 aging Windows desktops running Win7 & win8.1. The desktop running Win7 (my wife's computer) was on its last legs, so sooner or later we would have to get a new one for her. We struggled with whether to finally get a Mac, or to just replace it with another Windows desktop.

Anyway, when the new retina iMac and new Mac Mini's got announced last week, we decided to take the plunge. Struggled between the retina iMac or just a Mac Mini for a short time. But because this was to replace my wife's system, and she's a light user, I thought a retina iMac would be a waste. Then I found out about the limitations of the new Mac Minis with respect to RAM upgrade, and that made up my mind to try to grab a refurbished late-2012 Mac Mini that was still available at the time. And it was a good thing we made up our minds because soon after ordering, stock was depleted.

So yesterday, I unboxed our first Mac in the family, and got it set up and upgraded to OSX Yosemite. Being a long time Windows user, the Mac environment is definitely foreign and I'll need to do a lot of researching and reading to learn even the basics (for example, I was trying to map to a shared folder on my Windows Server and I struggled to do it on the Mac, because there's really no drive hierarchy and no network drive mounting function.)

Anyway, this forum looks to be the go-to place for questions like this, so I'll just end my first mac-related post on that note.

Click to expand...

There is a app called Parallels 10 you can get that will run one of your windows licenses at the same time as the Mac OS X . You can find it on sale at B&H Photo for around $80. It will also run in coherence mode in which it will run in the background of OS X . It may help you deal with files until you understand the Mac environment which is an easy and simplistic OS.

rvs007 said:

So yesterday, I unboxed our first Mac in the family, and got it set up and upgraded to OSX Yosemite. Being a long time Windows user, the Mac environment is definitely foreign and I'll need to do a lot of researching and reading to learn even the basics (for example, I was trying to map to a shared folder on my Windows Server and I struggled to do it on the Mac, because there's really no drive hierarchy and no network drive mounting function.)

Anyway, this forum looks to be the go-to place for questions like this, so I'll just end my first mac-related post on that note.

Click to expand...

You are right, but don't forget that along with the Mini you get a year's worth of Apple Care, and a free "orientation" class at an Apple store. They will migrate your data over from your old computer for free, and walk you through the basics, they have regular classes in-store on how to do things, and the "Genius Bar" is available for tough problems. Although, I have found that the only time I had to resort to Genius bar it turned out to be a bug in the operating system and not operator error at all. This is all free, and you will learn lots of tricks and shortcuts, so take advantage of it if you are anywhere near a store ..

skopelos said:

Finally after a lot of hard thinking i just ordered the 2.6GHz Mac mini, 8GB ram with Fusion Drive.
I will use it for everyday tasking , occasional light photo editing and i movie.
I hope i did the right thing and 8Gb ram is enough.....

Click to expand...

Canceled my order for the 8Gb ram Mini and ordered the 16Gb ram with Fusion drive instead.The price difference was worth the upgrade...But it will take some time to be delivered ...

I got cold feet and thought maybe 8gb was too low ....for the future..

skopelos said:

Canceled my order for the 8Gb ram Mini and ordered the 16Gb ram with Fusion drive instead.The price difference was worth the upgrade...But it will take some time to be delivered ...

I got cold feet and thought maybe 8gb was too low ....for the future..

Click to expand...

Smart. Also, it will be relatively easy to swap out that spinner for an SSD. Having both drive ports being used by fast SSDs is a nice way to go.

my 2014 mini just shipped. Now to play the watch-UPS-Tracking-like-a-hawk as it wends its merry way from Shenzen

Oracle1729 said:

Any future mac mini will have soldered memory, so it's not an issue for me. Unless Apple does a major reversal of direction, this is the last mac I will ever consider buying. So at this point my only decision is to buy the i7 quad now and switch to windows in a few years or switch to windows now.

Click to expand...

The primary reason mac users prefer a mac is for the Mac OS and the Mac applications and not the hardware.

The beauty of the Mac is in the OS. The Hardware is icing on the cake. If I had the Windows with the most coolest looking hardware like the Mac Pro or better designed hardware, I still would not be happy being a Windows user because I would be miserably missing the OS experience.

The sad thing is recently Apple is providing some disappointing hardware (Mac mini) for the great Mac OS.

2012 Mac Mini i7 2.3

After some thought and research I picked up a 2012 Mac Mini with the 2.3 GHz quad-core i7 from Best Buy over the new 2014 model. Also ordered 16GB Ram from Amazon today (which will be here on Monday) to put in it.

Refurbished Mac mini 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 with OS X Server in stock NOW.

Just bought a base 2012 refurb from apple site~$419~like others disappointed in new release but not ready to give up OS X altogether..thought about the quadcore mentioned above but just don't need that much computer so left it for someone else...long overdue to replace my old '06 mini even though it still runs pretty great

Any ideas to which version OS X will be installed?

Florals said:

I've spent the last five days refreshing the UK refurb store to no avail, and when I phoned my local Apple store they told me that all of their 2012 models had been sent back to the main warehouse, so I decided to stop dedicating my life to finding a bargain and ordered a 2014 mini.

2.6GHz, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD. Compared to what I'm typing this on (2006 1.66GHz Core Duo) it's going to fly. At least the educational discount helped ease the pain of not getting hold of a 2012 model.

Click to expand...

So, I got cold feet and sent off a return request as soon as this arrived; just put in a new order for 2.6GHz/16GB RAM/256GB SSD, which I'm much happier about. I'm not sure I would've ever been happy knowing I hadn't maxed out the RAM.

Also picked up a 2012 i5 on the refurb store for my boyfriend. £339 is a ridiculously good deal, and even when I've upgraded the RAM to 16GB it'll still only have cost about £450.

I have entered the world of Apple

Greetings Programs!!

I have lurked here for better part of this year, reading all things Apple and getting smarter as it pertains to Mac OS X 10.9. My company got me a Retina MacBook Pro 13 inch eariler this year as we have plans to roll out a network that will include a number of Apple products.

Last Wednesday, after attending both the Mavericks 101 and 201 training eariler and then reading all the buzz on the Mac Mini 2012's and the somewhat dissapointment in the newer 2014 Mini's I pulled the trigger and bought a new Mac Mini 2012, 2.5Ghz base model at Best Buy.

I paid $549.99($50 off retail.) for it at the time and then yesterday I was reading that Best Buy had dropped the price. So I went back to my Best Buy store and they price matched it at the $399.99 ($200.00 off when all was said and done.) price. MAJOR SCORE for me.

I already have ordered 16Gb of memory and a 2Tb second drive, with the ifixit drive kit coming today and the memory and the hard drive being delivered tomorrow.

Right now I am using both the rMBP and the 2012 Mac Mini for training so I can prep for the Mavericks 101 and 201 certifications tests. Once I finish those tests, and pass, I plan on using my Mac Mini for something.....probably mostly music as my wife I also have iPad Air's.

But enough about me.

Thanks to all for many insightful posts on many different topics here!