I am a big Apple fan and have had more ipods than you can shake a stick at, so when i started my music tech course at college and worked with macs everyday, I couldnt resist having a play with them in the Apple shop.
Two jobs and 4 pay slips later, I ordered my Mac Mini!
Initially I had looked ... Read review
Advantages: Cheaper than iMac, looks really cool, is quiet (great for music production) and small, & Mac OS X! Disadvantages: price (if you don't mind PC's), may get you hooked an Apple as I am and will take all your money
I am a big Apple fan and have had more ipods than you can shake a stick at, so when i started my music tech course at college and worked with macs everyday, I couldnt resist having a play with them in the Apple shop.
Two jobs and 4 pay slips later, I ordered my Mac Mini!
Initially I had looked at iMacs as they seemed to have a lot more feature than the base Mac Mini, but the price was a bit too much for me, so I opted for ... ...complicated so I bought an Apple keyboard.
Now, the Mac Mini...
Straight out the box it worked like a dream. It comes with the VGA monitor, power adaptor, instructions and Apple remote.
The mac runs very fast with all applications and I find if i am ever slowed down it is by my internet connection, not the mac! It comes built in with iLife and Leopard Mac OS X. Straight out the box I was able to do most things ... more
I am a big Apple fan and have had more ipods than you can shake a stick at, so when i started my music tech course at college and worked with macs everyday, I couldnt resist having a play with them in the Apple shop.
Two jobs and 4 pay slips later, I ordered my Mac Mini!
Initially I had looked at iMacs as they seemed to have a lot more feature than the base Mac Mini, but the price was a bit too much for me, so I opted for the 2ghz Mac Mini with 2gb Ram (optional extra) and 120gb hard drive.
First thing is first. It is the coolest looking thing I own without a doubt. It is so small and quiet it takes up virtually no space on my desk. It is only slightly bigger than a CD box!
Obviously the Mac Mini doesn't come with a keyboard, mouse or monitor- so I went on Amazon and got myself a 19" lcd monitor that connected by VGA. The adapter provided by Mac meant this connected easily and there was no difficulty in set up. I then decide that as I only have a small desk I would buy a trackball mouse, but when deciding what keyboard to buy i stumbled upon a major problem.
Most third party keyboards are made for Windows so don't have that Apple/Command key and have the Option/Alt key in a different place so the letters wouldn't match. I am aware of system settings that can swap this however I felt life would be too complicated so I bought an Apple keyboard.
Now, the Mac Mini...
Straight out the box it worked like a dream. It comes with the VGA monitor, power adaptor, instructions and Apple remote.
The mac runs very fast with all applications and I find if i am ever slowed down it is by my internet connection, not the mac! It comes built in with iLife and Leopard Mac OS X. Straight out the box I was able to do most things I wanted to do.
There are some problems with the Mac being so small. To save space the only way to eject a disk is using the keyboard button or dragging the icon to the trash can. This is fine however when I was installing Windows on my Mac using Boot Camp (for a computing course) I had a copy of Windows XP Media Centre Edition which has two disks, so I was unable to eject the first disk to complete the installation. Somehow it still installed without the second disk but this did frustrate me for a number of hours.
4 USB ports may seem enough, however once keyboard and mouse were plugged in as well as webcam and iPod, I had run out so I had to buy a USB hub for memory sticks and usb MIDI keyboards, however for normal use this won't be a problem.
The instruction manual was quite good for the initial setup, however many issues aren't covered, but are readily available on the Apple website in the Support section, so this wasn't a problem.
The Mac Mini for me was a great way of switching from PC to Mac, as it didn't cost too much and was very easy to set up etc. However a similar spec PC would cost me below half the price (i spent £527 inc. student discount). The main reason to buy a Mac is for the outstanding operating system (not available anywhere else) and the prettiness of the thing! To experience these check out the Apple website where the have loads of videos showing features of the OS and giving tutorials. or drop into an Apple shop where you can have a go yourself :) if the salespeople are bugging you just tell em you wanna have a try and to go away and they do!
Ooooo. One other thing. Mac's are very secure. You don't need to buy any anti-virus software like with PC's, its all ready to go without any extras. I haven't had a single threat of a virus or pop ups or anything. I was amazed!
Now you must be very dizzy from me going back and forth in such a disorganized fashion! I'm sure I've missed something so if you have ANY questions just ask :) im more than happy to help outohh thats it
a new mac mini has just come out with a NVIDIA graphics card. Mine only has the Intel 950 which is kinda disappointing for some games, but its irrelevant as you can sort that out now for no extra money :) and to be honest my graphics are still great as I don't play games much.....
Advantages: Sleek looks, miniture size Disadvantages: You may need to upgrade for more speed
...word 'crash' doesn't come under apple vocabulary.
-Macs look sexy. End of.
-Your mates may get jealous.
-There is a huge world of free software ONLY on Mac (freeware). Just take a look at apple downloads section to see what I mean.
-You're part of a computer revolution.
I run Tiger 10.4 on my mac, which is a superb OS although if you buy one now, you'll be running Leapord...the most advanced OS in the world!
==Spending the dough==
If you've ... ...8 processers in total.
Apple do a lovely range of laptops for those who travel.
==The perfect companion for iPod users==
All software on Mac's are designed with the iPod in mind. Most have a 'send to iPod option' when you've made movies or other madia.
Overall, this is a 5-star product...you really MUST buy a Mac mini and you'll be delighted! ...
SimoD 09.05.2008 (10.05.2008)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Apple Mac mini Core 2 Duo 2 GHz
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Advantages: Everything Disadvantages: The mighty mouse takes some getting used to
I have been a Mac user for the last few years, my first plunge was with a Macmini and this allowed me to try the Apple brand without spending too much money.
I loved the Apple product so much that after 12 months of using the MacMini I went out and bought an iMac 20" 2.16Ghzcore2duo.
I love it!
My macmini had OSX Panther installed and now I have OSX Tiger which has so many little improvements over Panther such as Dashboard - I have my calculator, google mail checker, webcam viewer and other little bits and bobs which all pop up as soon as I press F12. Great touch.
The computer itself is a dream to use. It came with a 250GB hard drive which is almost full now and no slowdown in performance is found.
- The monitor is crisp and clean and the speakers quite powerful.
I have added a small program called "shades" which ...
Product Information for "Apple Mac mini Core 2 Duo 2 GHz" »
Mainboard
Data Bus Speed
667 MHz, 1066 MHz
Monitor
Monitor Type
None
Graphics controller
Type
Integrated
Graphics Processor / Vendor
Intel GMA 950 Dynamic Video Memory Technology 3.0, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M Shared Video Memory (UMA)
Max Allocated RAM Size
64 MB
Digital Video Standard
Digital Visual Interface (DVI)
Video Memory
128 MB DDR3 SDRAM, 256 MB DDR3 SDRAM
Audio output
Type
Sound card - integrated
Sound Output Mode
Stereo
Operating system / software
OS Provided
Apple MacOS X 10.5, Apple MacOS X 10.6
Software
Apple QuickTime, Apple Hardware Test, Apple Mac OS X Mail, Apple iCal, Apple DVD Player, Apple Address Book, Apple Safari, Apple iChat AV, Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Test Drive, Apple Dashboard, Apple Spotlight, Apple XCode Developer Tools, iWork (30 days trial), Apple iLife '08, Apple Spaces, Apple Quick Look, Apple Time Machine
Manufacturer's product description
Powered by the Intel Core 2 Duo processor, the new Mac mini is up to 39 percent faster than the previous generation. From across the room, you can browse through all the music, photos, and movies on both your Mac mini and other computers across your network. Turn special times into photo books and slideshows, Hollywood-style movies, and DVDs. And create stunning web pages, blogs, and podcasts. Mac mini makes it easy to upgrade from an older system or set it up side-by-side with another computer. Just BYODKM - bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse.
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