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Mar 04, 09 - 01:26 am Comment from: Derek in Milan

I have never considered being the first poster.
As I type this, I know someone else will beat me to it.

Mar 04, 09 - 01:27 am Comment from: Derek in Milan

Its not all they said it would be......

Mar 04, 09 - 01:33 am Comment from: drz

Even though it's a worthy update, I was still hoping for an "office Mac" / "MacPC" version of the Mini - no optical drive, small form factor (like ATV) and a sub $500 price tag. Our school computer lab needs a refresh, but compared to the cheapo pc's available, the Mini at the current price level is a tough sell.

Mar 04, 09 - 01:34 am Comment from: Mr. Reeee

Ooooh! Mac porn!

FINALLY... a real video card.
The $599 model does it for me.
Bump it to 4GB of RAM and swap the internal hard drive for a 7200 rpm drive. Done.

BUT, with FireWire 800, it's not even necessary to swap out the internal drive.

Excellent upgrade!

Yay! I put in my order at Amazon. I wonder when they will be able to ship them out.

Mar 04, 09 - 01:41 am Comment from: TowerTone

Derek
Sorry it wasn't a bigger story.....

Also, $66.00 for 4 GBs of RAM at Crucial is unreal.
Let's get the putty started!

It's a ridiculous ripoff in Canada. The top range mini costs nearly $1000. That is just theft.

Mar 04, 09 - 03:18 am Comment from: ken1w

> a sub $500 price tag. Our school computer lab needs a refresh

The education price is $549.

http://store.apple.com/us_edu_325885/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_mini?mco=MTE3MDI

Maybe Apple can even make that lower if purchased in volume.

Mar 04, 09 - 04:24 am Comment from: almux

All aluminium would have been geener and much more Apple Design-like! This little box is probably a good tool for what it is meant for... But it also is tremendously ugly with these frames bordes along a milky plastic top! A disapointing look for an Apple product.

Sez you, almux.

"All aluminium would have been geener and much more Apple Design-like"

Really? Aluminum takes a vast amount of enery to produce. With the Macbooks being carved from a solid block, there's a lot of scrap which must be transported and recycled (probably not into another Macbook) using even more energy.

It makes sense for cans because the turnover rate is very high and producing the recycled cans is much more energy effective than refining aluminum watering down that very nasty impact of producing the can from virgin stock the first time. as an example a can uses perhaps 20 times less energy to recycle than create from scratch and can be re-used almost infinitely and gets recycled perhaps 6 times per year per can or 60x a decade. So the costs to the environment are (x+60x/20)/61or an average of 6.7% the original energy use per can over a decade.

But with a Macbook, it might be recycled a few times a decade at best that's (x + 2x/20)/3 or 37% of the original energy use per macbook over a decade. A plastic casing, especially a recycled plastic one would be much better for the environment.

It wouldn't look as nice though. But it's really then up to you to decide how much you value looks over environmental friendliness.

How would that airport reception be with 100 percent aluminum?

@ Larry:

How much did the top-end mini used to cost up here? I don't recall . . .

Mar 04, 09 - 07:25 am Comment from: jackdawsson

I think the £150 more for the high-end Mini in the UK represents poor value. For £150 we get an extra 1GB RAM & bigger HD. The Minis should have 2GB & 4GB respectively & a faster processor for the high-end £649 Mini. Still, I'll probably buy the low-end one to attach to a matte monitor when SL's out.

Would world of warcraft perform better on this or my old 1.8ghz imac G5 ?

Mar 04, 09 - 08:22 am Comment from: Ray

It is not what i would consider "perfect" because the video memory is still tied to system memory. None the less, I am trying to figure out how to buy one... My fiance needs to finally switch to Mac.

Just my $0.02

Mar 04, 09 - 08:59 am Comment from: Sarasota

the general consensus from the boys on MacBreak Weekly was to get the $600 model and upgrade it on your own. As was said, the memory is cheap and an external FW800 hard drive will do it for you. That or a NAS.

They should put two ethernet ports in instead of an extra usb...

Mar 04, 09 - 10:28 am Comment from: Big Als MBP

@ Better Analysis,

"Aluminum takes a vast amount of energy to produce."

You echo freaks really piss me off. Yes, it takes a lot of energy to turn aluminum oxide into aluminum metal. That is why every aluminum smelter on the planet has it's own hydro electric power plant. Green electricity from a dam on a river.

Silver aluminum is a green metal. They don't get any greener.

Go peddle your echo bullsh!t elsewhere.

The external power supply appears half the size of the Mini itself. So the "sleek, compact" Mini isn't quite so sleek or compact after all. Why the heck can't Apple engineering put that brick inside like it does with Apple TV and Time Machine?

And, speaking as one who spent a few years doing desktop support, a putty knife is not part of our standard toolkit. Those who need to do repairs and upgrades want a system that's easier to maintain. This is not the Mac business wants.

"That is why every aluminum smelter on the planet has it's own hydro electric power plant."

And those countries of course have a surplus of electricity and never ever use fossil fuels to fill in demand when hydro isn't enough and couldn't be putting the power from that dam to another use reducing fossil fuel usage elsewhere in the system.

Dams are green - Unless you're a migrating salmon or an animal whose habitat is now underwater.

re: eddy - it's pretty likely that the mini would be quite a bit faster. the 9400m is roughly between an 8400 and 8600 in performance. the 1.8ghz imac g5 has a radeon 9600 if i recall, which was an excellent card in its time but is kind of slow nowadays. the dual core intel CPU would annihilate a single g5 as well, not to mention ddr3 1066mhz ram as opposed to ddr 400mhz in the g5. the new mini would wipe the floor with any imac g5 for most purposes.

re: those who are saying the mini is ugly - are you KIDDING me? those are the coolest looking SFF desktops ever! yeah, even cooler than the cube, even though that was pretty awesome as well.

man, if i had some money right now (between jobs, you know how the economy is), i'd happily plunk down $600 for one of those machines. this is the mini update i've been waiting for!

The public prices shouldn't of been anymore than $549 and $699! Guess Apple is no longer interested in switchers.

Mar 04, 09 - 01:11 pm Comment from: Tommyr

THANK YOU APPLE for upgrading and keeping the Mini alive!!!

I will be buying one soon! This PPC Mini still runs great after 5 years!

I brought my brand new mini home with me today. Opted for the large drive and 4gig from Apple. I had my older mini upgraded by an independent certified repair company. I figured it was easier to pay the apple tax and be done with it because I always wind up hotrodding my boxes anyway. I will need to wait until next week to set everything up. I plan to retire my 2001 iBook and move my older mini to take its place. My next item is to get the backup equipment and a monitor. I also got the new small wired keyboard.

Mar 04, 09 - 08:27 pm Comment from: Big Als MBP

@ Better Analysis,

If you walk to the back 40 to pick your groceries off the vine, sleep in a tree or a cave in the tropics and sell your art or handicrafts at the roadside to buy incidentals at the store you ride your bike to, then you're livin' the green life and I admire you.

One question though, how the hell did you post on MDN?

Methinks you are as big a part of the problem as Aluminum. If your local power plant is coal or gas fired, you're a bigger part of the problem.

If you can't make a computer out of green powered metal, what he hell can you use? Wood from windfall trees?

Mar 04, 09 - 08:47 pm Comment from: Big Als MBP

Aluminum smelters were built where the rivers were and the people weren't. You can only transmit electricity a finite distance. It bleeds off the transmission lines.

The Aluminum companies built their smelters next to their power plants. They own both. Their carbon footprint is less than yours, I'll bet.

Let's draw a line somewhere. Windmills are green but they kill millions of birds and bats. Hydro Electric Dams are green but they kill millions of fish and animals. Nuclear Power plants are green but they kill millions of animals and humans with leaks and fallout. Solar power plants kill all the plants and animals that used to live under the arrays.

Oil, coal and natural gas have huge carbon footprints and are killing the planet.

Humans, horses and oxen fart methane into the atmosphere. How can we ever get from A to B?

Every animal and human exhales carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and causes global warming.

Where do we draw the line? What do we turn off first?

Who do we terminate last?

Get real Better Analysis.

Mar 04, 09 - 09:04 pm Comment from: Big Als MBP

One other thing, when aluminum smelters reduce aluminum ore to aluminum metal they spew millions of tonnes of byproduct into the atmosphere.

Oh the humanity! What are we going to do about all of that Oxygen they release?

Mar 05, 09 - 03:46 am Comment from: Larry

@LTD:

I just checked Futureshop and the last gen Mac Minis are $649.99 and $849.99. Not much better I guess, but nevertheless, $1000 can get you a quad core with double the RAM and double the HDD space these days. I guess we're paying for the small form factor now since it seems like Apple doesn't care about sharing the Mac experience with the masses. Steve said they can't make a computer under $500 that's not junk--well, if they made this computer $500 I would buy more than one!

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