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Dont like the mini

N

nagasing

macrumors member
Original poster
I don't know about you, but I don't like minis. They are slow and underpowered. That's why mine is about sold by now. I'm doing the thing in my sig, although not everything will be upgraded at once because I don't really have any cash.
 
Sure the mini is by no means a speed demon. But at $500 it is a capable machine that should do well at simple tasks such as Office, Internet/E-mail, etc...

Maxing out the ram in a mini and swopping in a faster (7,200rpm) hard drive should give the mini a nice performance boost. But for those who want break-neck performance the mini is not for you. If you you just need a Mac to do basic tasks or to try Mac OS X out for the 1st time then the mini is a great system to choose.

Hopefully Apple gives the next revision of minis a nice performance overhaul.
 
If you upgraded the ram to something like 768mb (or, better yet, max it out) and upgrade the HD (not necessary), I'm sure you'd notice at least a little bit of a difference.

I had an iBook G4 running at 1ghz with 768mb of RAM and for the most part the machine ran like a gem. I only sold it to upgrade to an iMac G5.

But again, you can't expect outstanding performance from a machine that starts at $499.
 
gregorydanger said:
But again, you can't expect outstanding performance from a machine that starts at $499.
Click to expand...

Very true. You hit the nail on the head. A $499 peecee is gonna be just as slow. At least with the mini you get Mac OS X and iLife '05!
 
If you put a 1 GB RAM stick in there, the B&W you seem to be dreaming about will only be minimally faster, if at all. Programs will startup faster due to the faster HD, but that's all.
 
It seems to me that the G4 in your sig is not really faster than a Mac mini, what with the slower processor and all. Of course, the big fast hard drive will be somewhat nice, but everything else is going to be worse I believe. You can put 1 GB of RAM in the mini if you want a very noticeable speed boost. Even 512 MB will help a lot.
 
I wouldn't mind a rev.b Mac mini that came in a slightly larger enclosure to support to RAM sticks and a 3.5" HD that can hold up to 400GB. Seems Apple really crippled this machine to fit it as small as they did. Ah well, here's to hoping.
 
Lacero said:
I wouldn't mind a rev.b Mac mini that came in a slightly larger enclosure to support to RAM sticks and a 3.5" HD that can hold up to 400GB. Seems Apple really crippled this machine to fit it as small as they did. Ah well, here's to hoping.
Click to expand...

Ye i agree mac mini's would be sweet if they could fit regular HD's in there as they are becoming so cheap these days for big storage....Also another RAM slot would be nice....

Thats why i am waiting for a REV. B before even considering buying one...

SHadOW 🙂
 
For what it is, the mini is a good machine, but when you try to make it something it isn't, then you run into problems. It isn't the power machine, that's why there are iMac G5s and Powermacs. While we all want more for less, you usually get what you pay for...

Max the RAM 😱

Woof, Woof - Dawg
ga_helmet.gif
 
I hated mine with 256 ram, like throw it out the window hate, but, I upgraded it to 1 gig and it is a completely different machine. My last mac was a 2.0 imac. I can honestly say that the mini feels almost as fast for my everyday needs, web, iphoto, itunes, ical, etc... Obviously the imac is faster, but, I am very happy with the mini.
 
256MB will indeed makes the Mini look bad. I got 512MB in mine and I'm just holding out for a price drop on 1GB sticks (will then give the 512MB to my brother, who's still running with only 256MB).

At the same time, I'll probably order a 7200RPM HD (to give my Mac mini an even bigger boost).
 
Just buy the 1 gig stick of ram and like everyone has said what a difference you'll have. I had a big difference once my 1 gig stick came in and I put it in my iBook. Now it handles everything very nice 😛
 
i love the blue and white I used to have one and it was better than this mini. plus i wont have money for ram till i sell to friend.
 
echoing what others have said...

OS X needs more than 256 RAM. I personally think apple is very foolish to sell machines with so little base RAM because then people like the original poster in this thread buy the computer and are dissatisfied, thinking the computer as a whole is bad. When my mom got a 1 Ghz emac 2 summers ago, it came with 128 RAM and was literally unusable until the 512 upgrade arrived. Now it's been running perfectly, and relatively quickly, for 2 years.

By selling computers with so little base RAM apple implies that current machines can run OS X decently with 256 MB, and that's just not true. 512 is a bare minimum at this point, and I wish apple would make that clear so people didn't buy the base model and get frustrated when it doesn't run as it should.
 
nagasing said:
I don't know about you, but I don't like minis. They are slow and underpowered. That's why mine is about sold by now. I'm doing the thing in my sig, although not everything will be upgraded at once because I don't really have any cash.
Click to expand...

wow. no offence but you really have no clue. you have 256mb ram and are planning to move to a B&W G3 upgraded to a G4 1ghz?

first off the mini has a 167mhz bus, vs the 66mhz bus your B&W will have with a 1GHz G4. those sonnet G4 1ghz have to underclock the B&W bus from 100mhz down to 66 so that they can run stable. no way to change this either. so its 1ghz on 66mhz bus vs. 1.25ghz on a 167mhz bus. do the math. plus the ram will operate MUCH MUCH faster on the mini. a B&W with a G4 1ghz gets a memory score on xbench of about 30-35 vs. a mini that gets up to 145. here is a B&W w/G41ghz vs. a mini 1.25:http://ladd.dyndns.org/xbench/merge.xhtml?doc2=111594
some tests are many times faster.

for MUCH less money you could keep the mini and add a 7200rpm hd and up the ram to 1gb. that config will be MUCH faster than the upgraded B&W. i'm so confident of this that I swear my life on the fact.

wake up to the real world and stop thinking in a way thats going to cost you more $ and leave you with a slower system.
 
All macs will be sluggish with only 256 RAM but that B&W you're looking at is going to be a good bit slower than the mini. A 1ghz G4 in a B&W would proably be slower than my computer since most G4 upgrades (ones 700mhz and faster) have a bad issue of dropping the system bus to 66mhz from the orginal 100mhz so that will give you a major performance hit id say keep the mini and increase the RAM.
 
zen.state said:
wow. no offence but you really have no clue. you have 256mb ram and are planning to move to a B&W G3 upgraded to a G4 1ghz?

first off the mini has a 167mhz bus, vs the 66mhz bus your B&W will have with a 1GHz G4. those sonnet G4 1ghz have to underclock the B&W bus from 100mhz down to 66 so that they can run stable. no way to change this either. so its 1ghz on 66mhz bus vs. 1.25ghz on a 167mhz bus. do the math. plus the ram will operate MUCH MUCH faster on the mini. a B&W with a G4 1ghz gets a memory score on xbench of about 30-35 vs. a mini that gets up to 145. here is a B&W w/G41ghz vs. a mini 1.25:http://ladd.dyndns.org/xbench/merge.xhtml?doc2=111594
some tests are many times faster.

for MUCH less money you could keep the mini and add a 7200rpm hd and up the ram to 1gb. that config will be MUCH faster than the upgraded B&W. i'm so confident of this that I swear my life on the fact.

wake up to the real world and stop thinking in a way thats going to cost you more $ and leave you with a slower system.
Click to expand...

This man speaketh the truth.
 
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