Apple Mac mini M9687LL/A > Reviews > MAC MINI 1.42 ghz G4

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Fast
Design	Excellent
Manufacturer Support	Good
Ease of use	Very easy
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	compact, cute, and it is a macintosh !
Disadvantages:	slow under a lot of strain, cost of upgrades(i . e .  memory)

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

i have owned this computer since it was first released, and have been pretty impressed by it.

it is a mac what can i say, nicer OS to use, good software with the ilife package which includes itunes, iphoto, imovie and even a music making software called garageband which i have enjoy playing with.

for general use, word processing, music storage and playback, photo storage and manipulation, watching movies, presentations, internet and downloading it is a brilliant machine , but when you demand too much of it it slows to a snails pace, (but never crashes) for example if you are going to edit video on this machine buy an external hard drive because there is not really enough memory to handle anything over a short home movie.

one of my favorite things with this computer is it is almost completely silent, perfect for home entertainment, you can plug it in to your telly with the right lead so you can use it as your dvd player. (although i haven't done this)

i also take frequent trips abroad and it packs down into it's original box quite nicely and is easy to take with you, although i am usually expected to get it all out and show it to the security and the boarding gate.

points to think about,
if you have a lot of devices that use usb you only have two ports one of which is for the key board, ( if you buy an apple keyboad and mouse there is an extra two on the key board one for your mouse)
for most of my bits i rotate i pod most days printer and scanner when needed and my card reader is always in the back of the keyboard but you might prefer to buy an usb hub.
there is one fire wire, i don't use this much, but it would be used for movies, and an ipod dock, and i think new ipods too (check this though as i am not 100%).

the internal speaker is quiet at most and if you want to enjoy movies and music you need to buy bigger speakers, if you have 5:1 you will need a sound card too.

if you buy this new you will not get keyboard mouse or monitor so will need to spend a bit of extra cash getting it up and running.

the plug supplying to power has the power thing attched to it so you will need to hide this somewhere and it is all too easy to pull out of the back you the computer by accident.

if you are thinking about getting one with extra memery or hard drive get it at the start it will cost you less. because the mac is so small there is more labour charge for doing it later because it is more difficult to take a part.

from my point of view, if you want this as a family computer to store music and photos browse the internet, and general all purpose use including entertainment it is a wonderful computer.

if you want a budget computer to use for photograhic work use i.e photoshop(which i often use) it is a good computer.

if you want a workhorse or a movie editing computer spend a bit more money and get a computer intended for movie editing.

from my point of view and my uses and these days i use it 6-8 hours a day this is a great computer cheap to buy but definately not cheap... a good quality user friendly allrounder worth buying.