On 5/11/05 18:30, Tom Burke wrote:
I've decided that I'm going to buy a Mini when the Meadowhall Applestore
opens.
<snip>
Main use will be general stuff, plus photo-processing - I'm a keen
amateur photographer who has finally moved almost entirely to digital
this year, plus something I don't do at the moment but want to do with
the Mini, which is to run the Tomcat Java server + MySQL.
I agree with Gerard's comments, but I'll add mine since I've had a mini
(1.25GHz 40GB drive) for about 4 months now. Typically it has the
following running:
Thunderbird (lots of email)
Firefox & Safari
iTunes - music & podcasts
AppleWorks
Palm Desktop
Circus Ponies Notebook
TextWrangler
It's great for general use, though with "only" 512MB RAM it can struggle
at times.
OK, questions. My main reservation about the Mini is the disk speed;
officially the HD's supplied are all 4200 rpm. Have other Mini owners
found this to be performance issue? Presumably it's possible to replace
the built-in HD with a faster 2.5 inch disk - is this worth it, either
technically or financially? Also I keep reading stories that some Minis
have been supplied with the faster disks - has anyone with a Mini
actually found that they have a 5400 rpm HD?
System profiler here says that I have a "ST940110A", which apparently is
an OEM version of Seagate's ST94011A (5400RPM / 2MB cache) that a lot of
people have ended up with. I've never found it slow, but there again I
don't think I'm doing anything to really test the drive that doesn't
actually first hit the bottleneck that is my wireless connection.
Final point: I hadn't realised the extent to which graphics memory had
moved on in the rest of the Mac range - I think 128 Mbyte is pretty
standard now. Initially I intend to use an Iiyama 19" CRT monitor with
the Mini. If/when the Iiyama fails (it's about 5 years old) I want to
replace it with an Apple 20" display.
Hey, that's my attitude. Problem is, my Sony 17" CRT refuses to die :-)
Again, has anyone found that the
built-in 32 Mbyte graphics ram is just insufficient for those types of
monitors?
The Apple store seems to indicate that you can use either 20" or 23"
LCDs with the mini, but I've only heard of people using 20" monitors.
What has been reported quite a bit are people having problems with CRT
monitors. Apparently the mini's VGA output is a bit borderline and
people have been getting poor signal output that isn't helped by the
DVI->VGA adapter. Fortunately my Sony CRT has been fine.
It plays Star Wars: Jedi Knight II pretty well with the graphic settings
cranked up quite high :-) Almost finished the game too!
Finally - any 'I wish someone had told me that earlier...'
stories/experiences that anyone has got would be gratefully received.
Most of my niggles have been down to Tiger, not the mini. See other
threads for details ;-) At least if you're going to pick it up in person
you can stress test one in the shop beforehand.
Bear in mind that the DVI->VGA adapter + the VGA cable means that you
need at least two inches of space behind the mini if you're using a CRT
monitor.
Finally...when you get handed the box with the mini...they haven't
forgotten to give you anything. It really is all in there :-)
Neil
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