Sorry if this has been posted before, but Apple is now honoring all purchases for price reduction for the Mac mini, so if you bought one right after Keynote, you are intitled to the refund.
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Apple lowered the prices of Mac Mini upgrades! and now 8x Superdrive!
- Thread starter Superhob
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ScubaDuc said:
Apple. Seriously. Buying parts from different sources means you end up with finger pointing instead of warranty service. "The system works fine until I put in this memory module, then it crashes while booting," "Okay, we'll replace the memory module." Three weeks pass. "The system works fine until I put in this memory module, then it crashes while booting." "It's unlikely that two memory modules are both bad. Replace your logic board."
dazj said:UK prices have been dropped now:
1GB Ram: £220
Superdrive: £70
APE & BT: £69.99
Puts my specced 1.42GHz mini under £600
Of course I've not bought it yet...
Oh, and looked at the US Store where the mention of an 8x Superdrive has been put back to 4x, so looks as though 8x burning is off the cards...
Unless they are firmware locked...
UK Store prices seem to have settled down this evening. My order (to be placed on Friday... payday and my birthday!) has gone from £603 to £589 --
Mac Mini 1.42GHz
512MB RAM
Superdrive
Bluetooth + AirPort
so that's good! But the bad news is the 3-4 week delay.
Now if only they would make the hard drive 5400 RPM by default and make the upgrade option 7200 RPM. The glacially slow HD is the deal breaker for me. Apple could make the 1GB RAM option $150 and still make a profit. As sold, the mini is basically unusable unless all you do is run Calculator, and even then you better not try any division or multiplication. Just imagine a switcher trying to run VPC so they can make use of all their windows programs in only 256MB RAM and a slow HD. It will feel like running XP on a 386! This is not the way to win converts.
rog said:
VPC is slow on a G5 and this machine wasn't designed to be a VPC monster. Lets be serious here though. Granted the 5400 RPM HD isn't blazing but useless unless you run Calculator? My 1.33 Ghz Powerbook with 5400 RPM hard drive handles the iLife apps fine as well as photoshop etc. Early reviews of the 1.25 mini with 512 of RAM are saying the machine is a dream to use. Don't get carried away with the calculator comments. People out there are still running B&W G3s and 450 - 500 Mhz G4s...
I noticed that they dropped the 8x superdrive. I am wondering if this was a mistake or if there are some people who ordered in this timeframe and got lucky with the faster drive.
bpd115 said:
complete agreement ...
i have an athlon XP 2000+ 1GB ram, 80 gb HD with 7200 rpm and itunes imports at 10-11x speed without correction
as far as i rember somebody state that itunes imports at 15x speed with an 256 mb ram 1,25 ghz mac mini earlier this thread
sure from theoretically point not a good benchmark but for the end user a lot more important than xbench etc.
end less face it..outside of video editing, gaming/massive 3d apps, and perhaps things like audio recording+pro software there are few apps were the _user_ has to wait for the computer... (well except java programms
)
bpd115 said:
The HD is 4200rpm in the Mac mini. It is a deal-breaker for me too. The rest of the machine is great in my opinion, but everyone knows that the hard disk is one serious bottleneck. Sure, you should be able to upgrade to a faster disk yourself, but then the price gets ever closer to an iMac G5. For performance I don't think you can beat the iMac for value. That's why a friend of mine and I picked up a nearly-new iMac G5 1.8GHz the other day instead of a Mac mini. Am going over to install a 250GB 7200rpm SATA drive tomorrow
advocate said:
I hear you; I have been through it with memory that was installed by the Apple dealer as BTO and Applecare did not want to cover it.
However, you get warranty service for one year or pay 200 Eurobucks for Applecare, in which case you get 3 years. But who is going to spend one third of the purchase price in the case of the Mini for 2 yrs of extra warranty?
After that, you are on your own. If your DDR fries, it is a net loss. Others, like crucial, offer lifetime warranty on RAM; Apple does not. Lastly, I am not impressed with Apple service: they lost my monitor and took 7 weeks to replace it.
drlunanerd said:The HD is 4200rpm in the Mac mini. It is a deal-breaker for me too. The rest of the machine is great in my opinion, but everyone knows that the hard disk is one serious bottleneck. Sure, you should be able to upgrade to a faster disk yourself, but then the price gets ever closer to an iMac G5. For performance I don't think you can beat the iMac for value. That's why a friend of mine and I picked up a nearly-new iMac G5 1.8GHz the other day instead of a Mac mini. Am going over to install a 250GB 7200rpm SATA drive tomorrow
well it all depends what you want to do with your pc, personally the included screen on the imac/emac ,design,size and price was 'dealbraking' for me ..if i had the money for a iMacG5 i would have bought the basic powermac
after all it's all about preferences,need _and_ money
(i've saved up money for 1,5 years... including literally picking up cent-coins from the floors of dirty bars/clubsGet your money back
I placed a Day 1 order for a BTO Mac mini, and would have saved a couple of bucks on these lowered prices. I called customer service this morning, and they were very nice and immediately credited the price difference back to my account.
I placed a Day 1 order for a BTO Mac mini, and would have saved a couple of bucks on these lowered prices. I called customer service this morning, and they were very nice and immediately credited the price difference back to my account.
swissmann said:
Mistake.
'...but the 8x upgrade was nothing more than a typographical error, according to Apple.'
http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/01/26/macminisuperdrive/index.php
sockgap said:
Dual layer laptop drives have just recently started to surface and none of them are slot loading. Dual layer is great for a year from now when the media is actually affordable as opposed to $10-$12 per disc it is now compared to 40 cents or less per single layer disc. The market that the mini is going after doesn't have a big need for dual layer either.
Sorry if this has been posted, but I am glad to see the price drop for the 1GB RAM option..... it was overpriced, and it was a little embarassing trying to get my PC friends to finally get a Mac, and they would balk at the price of the 1GB RAM option. I personally thought it was out of line myself!
I'm no marketing genius, but it usually comes down to a statistical breakdown... You encourage incremental upgrade options until the buyer over pays, but feels like they should over pay to get the best value in the long run... ie. Well for just another $99 I can get twice the amount of <widgets>, For only $20 more I can get a larger <whatever>. Pretty soon their up +$300. Dell is great at that. A base system is cheap, until you start adding little extras. People still think they are buying at the original price because thats what sticks in their head.
Back to the stats - you make estimates on the number of buyers who are likely to choose various options based upon price. I bet the 1GB option just wasn't appealing to enough people.
I'm sure whomever made the pricepoint for the 1GB option is hanging their head now...
slo
I'm no marketing genius, but it usually comes down to a statistical breakdown... You encourage incremental upgrade options until the buyer over pays, but feels like they should over pay to get the best value in the long run... ie. Well for just another $99 I can get twice the amount of <widgets>, For only $20 more I can get a larger <whatever>. Pretty soon their up +$300. Dell is great at that. A base system is cheap, until you start adding little extras. People still think they are buying at the original price because thats what sticks in their head.
Back to the stats - you make estimates on the number of buyers who are likely to choose various options based upon price. I bet the 1GB option just wasn't appealing to enough people.
I'm sure whomever made the pricepoint for the 1GB option is hanging their head now...
slo
drlunanerd said:The HD is 4200rpm in the Mac mini. It is a deal-breaker for me too. The rest of the machine is great in my opinion, but everyone knows that the hard disk is one serious bottleneck. Sure, you should be able to upgrade to a faster disk yourself, but then the price gets ever closer to an iMac G5. For performance I don't think you can beat the iMac for value. That's why a friend of mine and I picked up a nearly-new iMac G5 1.8GHz the other day instead of a Mac mini. Am going over to install a 250GB 7200rpm SATA drive tomorrow
People have been getting 5400 RPM Drives in the Mini. Apple does not state on their site what the RPM rating for the drive is. My fiance will be getting her Mini 'on or before' the 11th so I'll check it out myself.
SWC said:
Sorry, I did quickly flick through this thread before posting, but obviously I didn't look hard enough.
I see then that the AirPort + Bluetooth option has been reduced then, as it was £84 I think, now £69.99.
Has anyone reported the typos to Apple, a new user might we look at the 1.25 GHz model and think Apple is still expensive despite the £339 price tag.
I cannot find a contact email relevant, or at all, on the UK Store.
Lately I have been configuring a 12 inch iBook Combo on the edu store. I upgrade the HD to 80 GB and add bluetooth. Last week it came out to 1129, today it came out to 1106. Not much of a drop, but a drop nontheless. Is this common for Apple to do?
bpd115 said:
Really? I didn't know that. It's been widely reported that the drives are 4200rpm, but I'd be very interested if your fiancee's has a faster model installed. Thanks for mentioning this.
NB fiance = male, fiancee = female. I assume you are a heterosexual male, in which case you need to use the latter!
Chip NoVaMac said:
Ok fine, it is a 4x Superdrive.
BUT is it a DVD+-RW or just a DVD-RW like the old Superdrive? Anyone know if it does EVERYTHING but dual layer burning?
From the following section on MacWorld, the guy says the mini he opened had a 5,400 rpm drive in it.
http://www.macworld.com/2005/01/news/macminifaq/index.php
http://www.macworld.com/2005/01/news/macminifaq/index.php
drlunanerd said:Really? I didn't know that. It's been widely reported that the drives are 4200rpm, but I'd be very interested if your fiancee's has a faster model installed. Thanks for mentioning this.
NB fiance = male, fiancee = female. I assume you are a heterosexual male, in which case you need to use the latter!
I'll report back..hopefully she'll get the 5400 RPM drive...and thanks for the tip..I'm not that big on French words