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Refurbished Mac Minis now on UK Store
- Thread starter Aldobot
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They’ve been coming into stock across Europe a little bit. I’m in France and my i5 Mac Mini arrived an hour ago, right after I ordered it on Wednesday it was gone. I got the i3 in January but discovered I needed more power. The refurb prices are great, after selling my i3 I will have paid about £100 to trade up to an i5 with double the storage.
£919 for the i7 - I paid 1,033.20 for a new one (i3 updated to i7) - I did complain to Apple as it was showing as 'new' on the store so I expected a 2020 model. They are refunding me £80 though as a good will gesture.
I got the i5, 8gb Ram and 512GB SSD for £919, I can upgrade the ram to 16 or 32gb easily enough, happy with that
Edit - Got 32gb of DDR4 Memory from Crucial for £130 so total cost £1,050 or £600 less than what Apple would charge for the same spec.
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Mine has been shipped, showing delivery tomorrow which is ahead of schedule.
I've held off getting any extra Ram at the moment as I wanted to see how it goes with 8gb (it's currently much better than my 16gb 2012 quad core - which I only updated to 16gb due to beachballs, which didn't go away with the extra memory!).
Yeah, I wouldn't expect it to, the Beach ball is more often related to CPU/Disk. Having more RAM has many benefits that for me at least 8gb is just too little. Even on my MBP that has 16gb the system still uses it all to improve performance. Might not be that visible but it does make a difference. Aside from that, I use VMs so I need more.
Curious as to what gave you beachballs on your 2012 quad? I have a 2012 2.6ghz quad with 16gb and can't even recall the last time I saw a beachball. I use it with Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro and javascript/webGL development, primarily with Safari. One thing I don't do is have a huge number of tabs open in Safari though.
I have been holding off upgrading, since the 2012 still does what I need. Still using Sierra primarily, booting from a 1TB Samsung T3 SSD, but recently installed Catalina on the internal SSD.
It really could be anything, just from starting up and opening safari (with few tabs) to using Lightroom or Photoshop. I had wondered if the thermal paste might need replacing - but I'm currently restoring the OS back to the original before selling it so it'll be interesting to see what happens with just the base OS.
I think I'll refit the 8gb I took out and sell the 16gb upgrade separately - might get a few more quids back that way!
Seems to me that something must be wrong with yours, these things just never happen on my 2012 quad.
Seems to me that something must be wrong with yours, these things just never happen on my 2012 quad.
Yes...my late 2012 still runs really well and really fast. I don't do really intensive computing and I'm only driving a single 1200p display. I bought a 2018 refurb last week, not because I need it but because the 2012 is 8 years old and seems likely to fail at some point. I want to have a Mini that will run Mojave, which means either a 2018 refurb or a 2020 new. I suppose I could assume that I'll be able to get one or the other if/when the 2012 dies, but I feel better having it in my hands now. The benchmarks are hugely faster on the 2018, but in real life use, side by side, I just don't notice the difference.
Same here, still using my ancient Apple 23" Cinema Display that I bought with a PowerMac G5, so that could be a factor. I also have a Sony production monitor connected to a BlackMagic thunderbolt UltraStudio box for Final Cut Pro however.
Seems to me that something must be wrong with yours, these things just never happen on my 2012 quad.
It's mostly o.k. just has the annoying stop/start every now and then. Mine is the slightly slower 2.3ghz quad, but I don't think that make much difference.
I could live with it, but 0% on a new mini (with employer discount) seemed to be right choice.
Display wise, I'm using a Lenovo 2560x1440 display, but the beachballs happened on my old 1600x1050 monitor.
I am guessing the one that arrived here earlier will soon be on the refurb store. I ordered a 32gig i7 and Apple sent one with 8 gigs. On the phone Apple confirmed it was the wrong serial number.
UPS are picking it up tomorrow and I bet it will be available as a refurb before I receive the replacement.
UPS are picking it up tomorrow and I bet it will be available as a refurb before I receive the replacement.
If it was powered up (?), it probably has to start the refurb checkout process all over again! Very odd and disappointing mistake. Usually those work in the customer's favor.
Yes it was powered up, but in my case it wasn't a refurb. I guess it will be for whoever buys it next.
A whole bunch of refurbs have been showing up in the US refurb store today for some reason. Right now there's a top spec 3.2ghz 6-core i7 with 64gb RAM, 2tb SSD and 10gb ethernet for $2549. I *almost* clicked the "add to bag" button on that. That machine costs about $3000 new.
But it's just a bit hard for me to justify as long as my 2012 quad still gets the job done...
That machine costs about $3000 new.But it's just a bit hard for me to justify as long as my 2012 quad still gets the job done...