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Mac mini advice

M

mizvalorie

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 22, 2010
103
10
I'm thinking about buying the mini 2.26 ghz 160 gb, and adding a 1 TB My Book Studio.

I will mainly be doing school work, web surfing and music downloading.

My question is: Is this a good set up or should I go with the 2.53 320 gb? Why or why not?

The reasoning for buying the 2.26 ghz is because I can buy it sooner, were if I buy the 2.53 ghz I will have to wait a few months.

I'm running a HP Pavilion now, will I notice any difference in speed?
 
The 2.26GHz MM will more than suffice your needs.

Also the HP Pavilion comes in many flavours and is in production for some years, so you need to be more specific.
 
2.26GHz will be great for you. Running iWork/Office, Safari and iTunes is very light stuff, no need for 2.53GHz. If you are fine to upgrade the RAM and HD yourself, go ahead and do it, it's not that hard and saves you some money
 
The 2.26 should be fine. I like the external HD, for storage and for time machine backups.
 
Ditto on the lower end model. Seems good enough, save yourself a few hundred bucks. You can always upgrade it later down the road. I did that myself so I can start submitting apps to the App store.
 
you should also consider the Apple refurbished store, its a great place to save some money. You could probably get the 2.53ghz refurb for close to the same price as the new 2.26ghz. They come with the same 1 year warranty as new machines and they are eligible for AppleCare as well. The only difference between refurbs and new is that the refurbs come in a plain, generic box instead of a glossy cardboard box with pretty pictures on the sides.
Ive bought a refurb mac pro and a refurb mini and ive never had a single problem with either.
 
Thank you all for your replies.

I tried the refurb store to check out prices but they are not selling the mini right now.
 
mizvalorie said:
Thank you all for your replies.

I tried the refurb store to check out prices but they are not selling the mini right now.
Click to expand...

Check back frequently - stock for a particular item will usually rotate into the refurb store within a week. The catch, however, is to snag popular items (like the cheap minis) while they are still in stock. Vigilance, my friend! :D
 
Bonanza!

Go! Run! 5 (count 'em, five!) Mac Minis in stock at the refurb store as of this typing.
 
apple is lame they swap the hard drive with one of their 320GB ones and then dont discount the refurb at all... hardly a deal... then the 2.53ghz model gets a reduction to a 160GB hdd and they give it a 70 dollar discount... other refurbs make sense.. these two dont really... cant they just bring the specs to normal and reduce the price to justify buying a refurb.
 
What I did was order mine from J&R for 579 with 5% cashback from Bing making the total 550. Although it's more than the 500 that's offered for the refurb version, for me, after tax, it would've been 540 bucks. So I paid a 10 dollar premium to get it brand new and have it shipped right away.

Just something for you to consider.
 
I'm looking to buy my first Mac. I'll be doing web dev, using Adobe CS, and develop iPhone/iPad App. Would the low end Mac Mini be good enough?
2.26GHz : 160GB
 
Absolutely.

I had the 1st generation Intel Mini, and ran CS3 on it. I worked in Photoshop with really big files (up to a Gig). My little Mini only had 1 or 2 Gig of memory so saving was really really slow. Well - doing much of anything was slow. Saving a big file gave me time to make coffee and clean the kitchen. I was so worried about losing my work I saved often. I drank a lot of coffee that year. Not once did that little warrior crash on me. Not once. So yes, it will work for you. It may not be fun.... but it will work. Stay away from the haxies, though.

Now I do my work on an octo-core Mac Pro with 12 Gigs. No comparison, of course.... but I miss my little Mini.
 
snberk103 said:
Absolutely.

I had the 1st generation Intel Mini, and ran CS3 on it. I worked in Photoshop with really big files (up to a Gig). My little Mini only had 1 or 2 Gig of memory so saving was really really slow. Well - doing much of anything was slow. Saving a big file gave me time to make coffee and clean the kitchen. I was so worried about losing my work I saved often. I drank a lot of coffee that year. Not once did that little warrior crash on me. Not once. So yes, it will work for you. It may not be fun.... but it will work. Stay away from the haxies, though.

Now I do my work on an octo-core Mac Pro with 12 Gigs. No comparison, of course.... but I miss my little Mini.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. And I assume any of my old USB wired keyboard and mouse from my Windows machine will work on the Mac Mini?
 
Assumptions are always carry a risk, but in theory the USB keyboard and mouse should work. However, if they have some special function keys those bits might not work, or at least not straight out of the box. Though I think there are some key mappers that you can use to map initially unrecognized keys to actions and programs, etc.

I was not kidding, by the way, about the Mini being slow when saving big files. I'm talking 20 to 30 minutes just to save the files sometimes. Keep your files to a more reasonable size, and you should be fine. And I'm serious about the 'haxies' - all those little programs that make the OS faster, smoother, more colourful, etc. Once I cleared them all out I've never had a crash. It's not that all haxies are bad, but it's hard to know... and since they do unofficial alterations under the hood, any updates to OS X may cause instabilities due to a conflict between what the OS is expecting, and what it finds due to a haxie.
 
Hard drives are much faster now than they were a couple of years ago. Even now, Apple puts pretty slow drives in the Mac minis.

If slow opening/saving seems to be an issue, a fast Hitachi 7200 rpm drive should help. It won't turn the mini into a Mac pro but it will make a difference.

And of course if your storage needs aren't big and you have money to burn, a SSD will help even more.
 
mizvalorie said:
I'm thinking about buying the mini 2.26 ghz 160 gb, and adding a 1 TB My Book Studio.

I will mainly be doing school work, web surfing and music downloading.

My question is: Is this a good set up or should I go with the 2.53 320 gb? Why or why not?

The reasoning for buying the 2.26 ghz is because I can buy it sooner, were if I buy the 2.53 ghz I will have to wait a few months.

I'm running a HP Pavilion now, will I notice any difference in speed?
Click to expand...

I went with the refurbished 2.53ghz Mac Mini over the 2.26ghz one. There was a $180 difference, but I had read in a post that taking the RAM up to 4gb (something I definitely would have done on the 2.26ghz) would cost around $100 anyways. So that point, it was just $80 more for 320gb hard drive and a slightly faster processor.
 
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