Can A Mac Mini Run Heavy iTunes Smoothly?

[trevpimp]

Heres The Specs For The Mac Mini:
2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 1x1GB
120GB Serial ATA Drive
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
User's Guide (English)
+A 500GB External HDD

-Im basically just gonna use it for music (iTunes). Lots of music. I would like it to run smooth and fast. Im not going to use the Mini for stuff like Vid editing or real heavy stuff. Just iTunes. Is it good enough?

Thanks for the help

 

[spinnerlys]

If you don't want to play all music at once, even an old G4 Mac Mini would suffice.

It all depends on the speed of the hard drive (the bitrate the music is encoded with) and a little bit of CPU (to decode).

So, to answer your question, yes the Mac you choose will do just fine.

 

[Cabbit]

have you considered a ipod + speakers with a dock.

 

[trevpimp]

If you don't want to play all music at once, even an old G4 Mac Mini would suffice.

It all depends on the speed of the hard drive (the bitrate the music is encoded with) and a little bit of CPU (to decode).

So, to answer your question, yes the Mac you choose will do just fine.

What do you mean "play all music at once" [Im a newbie on these things]

So if I put my itunes library to my external HDD, as long as the external HDD is fast my itunes will be fast?

Thanks man

 

[ChrisA]

If you don't want to play all music at once, even an old G4 Mac Mini would suffice.

It all depends on the speed of the hard drive (the bitrate the music is encoded with) and a little bit of CPU (to decode).

I'll second that. I have a 1.25Ghz G4 Mac Mini and it runs iTunes without effort. The new Intel Mini is way faster than needed for iTunes. After all the little ARM computer inside an iPod can run iTunes.

For that matter I've used the G4 Mini for video editing and as long as we are talking about "SD" the G4 runs Final Cut Express well enough, except that rendering/compressing is slow but you can let that part run while you are away from the computer.

What do you mean "play all music at once" [Im a newbie on these things]

So if I put my itunes library to my external HDD, as long as the external HDD is fast my itunes will be fast?

Thanks man

By "all at once" Well there are ways to play several songs at the same time.

1) You log in to the Mac and start iTunes then and tell it to share your library over the network. Then you use "fast user switching" to log in as a second user and run another copy of iTunes on that second user's library. You can have as many users and as many iTunes libraies as you like. In theory hundreds but I'd gues the Mini would only handle a half dozen at the same time.

2) If a user has his iTunes library shared then anyone on the local network can play any of the shared songs on his computer. So if you live in a dorm there could be 100 computers all trying to play your music. The mini would likely only handle a half dozen or so.

I think "all at once" as meant to mean "dozens at once" or "a whole bunch at once". or something like that.

 

[trevpimp]

I'll second that. I have a 1.25Ghz G4 Mac Mini and it runs iTunes without effort. The new Intel Mini is way faster than needed for iTunes. After all the little ARM computer inside an iPod can run iTunes.

For that matter I've used the G4 Mini for video editing and as long as we are talking about "SD" the G4 runs Final Cut Express well enough, except that rendering/compressing is slow but you can let that part run while you are away from the computer.

oooooo..........

Looks like Apple just got another Switcher. Thanks

 

[MTI]

Interesting question since an iPod, which does stream those digital files quite smoothly . . . generally uses a double digit processor, 70-80Mhz . . . versus the Ghz processors used since the G4.

iTunes audio (video is different) is not going to stress even a G3 running at 233Mhz. 😉