Experience on running Windows 8 or 7 on Mac Mini please

[hajime]

Hello. Anybody tried to run Windows 8 or 7 on a Mac mini (2.5GHz i5, 4GB RAM,
AMD Radeon HD 6630M, Apple MacBook Air SuperDrive)? Is this configurations more than sufficient? Microsoft's recommended system requirements seem to be low. Not sure about running the OS on the mini in real world tests. Is the installation straight forward by just using the drivers from Bootcamp? Thanks.

 

[MJL]

Hello. Anybody tried to run Windows 8 or 7 on a Mac mini (2.5GHz i5, 4GB RAM,
AMD Radeon HD 6630M, Apple MacBook Air SuperDrive)? Is this configurations more than sufficient? Microsoft's recommended system requirements seem to be low. Not sure about running the OS on the mini in real world tests. Is the installation straight forward by just using the drivers from Bootcamp? Thanks.

Windows 7 runs fine, it uses less memory than OS X due to different use of the memory.

I have ran only Windows 7 x64 (no OS X ) on both a Mac mini 2.4 Ghz 2010 and a Mac mini 2011 i5 2.5 Ghz. Just download the bootcamp drivers for Lion first (Bootcamp 4) on the i5, save them to a USB stick and then just run Windows install. After everything is finished then run the bootcamp install.

On the 2010 Mac mini windows runs slightly cooler than OS X, on the 2011 Mac mini slightly warmer than OS X (initially it was cooler also under Windows until Apple did an EFI update). I now have a machine with two disks, one HDD with OS X and exFAT and the other a SSD with only windows and I run windows 99% of the time (business) and use OS X with Winclone 3 together with Windows "FBackup" (free) for backup. Then afterwards I run timemachine.

I am finding the Mac mini powerfull enough for what I am doing but then there are those that are only satisfied with the latest, greatest, biggest, whatever takes their fancy..... All depends on your requirements I guess, for me it was quiet and enough grunt to do what I need to do.

 

[hajime]

Windows 7 runs fine, it uses less memory than OS X due to different use of the memory.

I have ran only Windows 7 x64 (no OS X ) on both a Mac mini 2.4 Ghz 2010 and a Mac mini 2011 i5 2.5 Ghz. Just download the bootcamp drivers for Lion first (Bootcamp 4) on the i5, save them to a USB stick and then just run Windows install. After everything is finished then run the bootcamp install.

On the 2010 Mac mini windows runs slightly cooler than OS X, on the 2011 Mac mini slightly warmer than OS X (initially it was cooler also under Windows until Apple did an EFI update). I now have a machine with two disks, one HDD with OS X and exFAT and the other a SSD with only windows and I run windows 99% of the time (business) and use OS X with Winclone 3 together with Windows "FBackup" (free) for backup. Then afterwards I run timemachine.

I am finding the Mac mini powerfull enough for what I am doing but then there are those that are only satisfied with the latest, greatest, biggest, whatever takes their fancy..... All depends on your requirements I guess, for me it was quiet and enough grunt to do what I need to do.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

 

[ioscat]

Windows 7 and 8 works fine for me.

 

[dkub]

yes it does, but...

I am running Windows 7 on a Mac Mini Server 2010. Unfortunatly Windows 7 will see the disk controller as a standard dual channel PCI IDE controller. Which might not be the best performing way to access the disks, but it will work unless it is an SSD. As far as I know, a standard IDE controller does not send DELETE commands to an SSD limiting it servicetime because the wear leveling strategy won't work. This is why I didn't dare buying a Mac Mini 2012. Can anyone confirm if this is still true for the Mini 2012?

Another Problem with Windows on the Mac Mini 2010 is, that it will blue screen about once or twice a month in the nvidia driver and no new drivers have been released. But that could also be one of those hardware problems that Apple fixed in software just like with the Mac Books Pro from that time.

best regards
David