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Just joined the mac family :)

M

MikeJett86

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 5, 2005
28
0
Dallas, Tx
Well ... just joined is kinda a loose statement. I bought my new mac mini (yet to be named) two weeks ago sunday. and I love it so. The only issue I have with it is it needs more ram, which i will be putting in it once I pay off the mini as well as a bigger hard drive and a super drive. I bought a base model from CompUSA because they had one and 21 months no interest. I didn't get an iLife 05 CD, iLife 05 is installed though. Did the newer shipments of Mini's not have the CD with them? only the earlier shipments? I'm not too worried- at least not until I have to reinstall everything on my hard drive. Anyway- love the mini- love osx- and I guess it's true: once you go mac, you never go back.

Peace.
Michael

ps- iPhoto is amazing for photo organization. Why doesn't mac have a iLife program for building websites? that would be sweet.
 
Congrats. I would go for the 1GB RAM for the mini. Too bad Apple didn't include 2 dimm slots. 1 is not enough in my opinion.
 
Lacero said:
Congrats. I would go for the 1GB RAM for the mini. Too bad Apple didn't include 2 dimm slots. 1 is not enough in my opinion.
Click to expand...

I think that is the biggest error in the mini, too. But yeah, go for the full gig.

The iLife apps should be on one of the three CD's the mini should have shipped with - normally called "Additonal Software and Hardware Test."
 
iGary said:
The iLife apps should be on one of the three CD's the mini should have shipped with - normally called "Additonal Software and Hardware Test."
Click to expand...

I was a bit disappointed with that when I opened my new Powerbook two days ago, I expected to see a nice iLife 05 disk and a booklet, maybe what I would expect to see in the box if I bought it separately (although I dont know what the separate disk looks like). As it was its a few pages included in the OSX booklet, and on a grey disk which doesnt really stand out. In fact I first thought maybe they had forgotten it :)

Josh
 
yeah ... only two CD's came with my mac- OS X and OS 9. The OS X disk has the hardware tests. but I had proof of purchases for iLife in my "documentation" package. oh well .... but yeah, I'm gonna upgrade to the 1 gig- it's cheaper than getting a mini BTO anyway by a good $100. And if I had BTO I wouldn't be typing this on the mini, so no deal about the upgrade.
 
MikeJett86 said:
yeah ... only two CD's came with my mac- OS X and OS 9. The OS X disk has the hardware tests. but I had proof of purchases for iLife in my "documentation" package. oh well .... but yeah, I'm gonna upgrade to the 1 gig- it's cheaper than getting a mini BTO anyway by a good $100. And if I had BTO I wouldn't be typing this on the mini, so no deal about the upgrade.
Click to expand...

Just to clarify, iLife '05 is on the OS X DVD

-RS
 
quidire said:
Just to clarify, iLife '05 is on the OS X DVD

-RS
Click to expand...

aja- cool.

well- close to two weeks in and i still love my mac- although I have been getting some slowdown and freezing issues but I'm pretty sure the extra ram I plan to drop in will remedy this rather well. I've been using mac's up at work and that's where I fell in love with them and now i have my very own lil slice .... now to clean my car and put an apple sticker on the back window ... lol ...
 
Welcome to the family... ;)

Just an obvious tip: Untill you've upgraded the RAM, be careful with how many Apps you have running at any one time (which is kind of sad, since one of OS X' biggest advantages is its multitasking capabilities) to avoid pageins/pageouts from/to the HD, and don't install any "goodies" like Konfabulator as some of those are RAM hogs (I would also warn agains streaming music using Airtunes, but I guess that's not an issue here...)
 
Mitthrawnuruodo said:
Welcome to the family... ;)

Just an obvious tip: Untill you've upgraded the RAM, be careful with how many Apps you have running at any one time (which is kind of sad, since one of OS X' biggest advantages is its multitasking capabilities) to avoid pageins/pageouts from/to the HD, and don't install any "goodies" like Konfabulator as some of those are RAM hogs (I would also warn agains streaming music using Airtunes, but I guess that's not an issue here...)
Click to expand...

well the sad thing is that I have been watching how many programs I'm running and I get some pretty major slowdowns while I have Firefox, Mozilla and Itunes all running at the same time. Well, it's not everytime I have them open but if I open more than say three tabs in firefox and have thuderbird and itunes going i get slowed down. Makes me want to upgrade more and more everyday.

Mike
 
I've actually read several threads that complained about slowing down and I think all of them had a refrence to firefox. I think Firefox for the Mac still needs some work, possibly a memory leak in it that's causing the slow down. Try using Safari and see if it still happens. Firefox on the PC is the only way to go, but IMHO Safari is a much better browser for the Mac, if not quite as customizeable.
 
Try Camino on the Mozilla website since it is made for Mac OS X (it is still in beta). I have used it for a few months, and I have had Camino only crash once. It is faster than Firefox and Safari and much nicer looking imho.
 
In case your are interested, I just bought 1 GB of RAM for my Mini which should be there when i get home today. I bought a PQI brand stick from Newegg that Many other Mini owners seem to like. It was only $135 shipped! I will let you know how it goes when I get it installed. I would definitely go for the whole gig if you can afford it.
 
So I added the 1 GB last night and I am loving it. The RAM appears to function perfectly even though it is a brand I never heard of. Everything seems much smoother. If I had the following set of apps running: iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, Mail, iChat, Safari; just switching between between apps (especially between iTunes and iPhoto and vice versa) was painful taking as long as a minute or more. Even switching between pages in an iPhot book I was working on could take a while. Now everything is much more responsive. I will try to really put it through it's paces this weekend, but I would definitely recommend the upgrade to any Mini owner.
 
Congratulations on your decision to switch to a Mac. One you upgrade to 1 GB of RAM, think that you will be very pleased. That was a good deal to get the no interest loan from CompUSA. What type of monitor are you using?
 
I wonder if Apple made a mistake in shipping with only 256MB RAM. A lot of new users will be from the PC. They may mistake sluggish performance as a sign Apple computers just plain suck.
 
Lacero said:
I wonder if Apple made a mistake in shipping with only 256MB RAM. A lot of new users will be from the PC. They may mistake sluggish performance as a sign Apple computers just plain suck.
Click to expand...

A smart PC user would upgrade the RAM
A stupid PC user would think its really fast because they have viruses and spyware hogging resources
 
I'm using an old CRT I had hooked up to the docking station for my dell laptop. I also have a KVM switch so that I can switch between the two- but as of late Molly has been hogging my attention. (My mini's name is Molly now.) This summer I hope to invest in a flatscreen monitor. Probably going to go with the dell widescreen that just came out. but before that I have to upgrade the ram, HD and get new iPod. .. it's going to be an expensive summer .. haha ...
 
Does the mini come with the CD or DVD version of iLife - does it have iDVD and Garage Band? Is this related to whether or not you buy the SD option?
 
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