- 499 mac mini review how to#
- 499 mac mini review install#
- 499 mac mini review upgrade#
- 499 mac mini review Pc#
And in the coming weeks we’ll no doubt be seeing an avalanche of Mac mini-related products. Of course Macworld will bring you more in-depth coverage of the Mac mini once we get a few of our own, including reviews, lab reports, and the rest.
499 mac mini review Pc#
(To get an idea of the mini’s PC competition and what some of the PC press’s pundits have to say, check out Dan Frakes’s Comparing Apples and Oranges analysis.) The future
499 mac mini review how to#
It was, to paraphrase one Apple executive, to solve the problem of how to make a $499 computer without it being a piece of junk. But to hear Apple representatives tell it, the company’s real goal was not just to make a tiny Mac, or a low-cost Mac. It’s clear that Apple used the design and engineering skills that have crammed lots of computer power into the iMac G5, Apple’s laptops, and the iPod to make the Mac mini a solid block of a system. Above the ports are a series of air vents, straddled by the power button and a Kensington-style security slot. (If you want to connect to a TV via RCA or S-Video cables, you’ll need to buy a $19 adapter.) Also on the back is a 10/100 Base-T ethernet jack, a 56K modem, two USB 2.0 ports, a single FireWire 400 port, and an audio-out jack that can handle both line-out and headphone-out levels (yes, there’s also an internal speaker).
On the back of the Mac Mini there’s a DVI connector if you need to use a VGA display, the computer comes with a small plastic DVI-to-VGA adapter block. We’ll have more on the Mac mini’s noise when we get one into the Macworld Lab. We had a hard time hearing any noise coming from the Mac mini’s fan, but then, no room at Macworld Expo is quiet in the way that a truly quiet home or office setting would be. According to Apple, the fan runs at 22 decibels, essentially whisper-quiet. True to Apple’s recent hardware-design history, the Mac mini has an independently-controlled fan that turns on and off and adjusts its speed based on the Mac mini’s cooling needs.
499 mac mini review install#
According to Apple, this means you’ll be able to have an authorized dealer install the internal Bluetooth module later if you don’t feel that you need it right away. But that’s not the case with the Mac mini: the Bluetooth module attaches to the same special connector coming off the motherboard. In previous Mac models, internal Bluetooth support has been an option that’s available only when you order the machine: if you don’t opt for internal Bluetooth, you can never add it later.
499 mac mini review upgrade#
Keep in mind there’s only a single RAM slot, so if you want to upgrade your RAM after buying a Mac mini, you’ll need to yank the pre-installed module first. However, the RAM slot on the Mac mini seems to be pretty accessible if it turns out to be fairly easy to crack a Mac mini open, it seems that more RAM would be the easiest thing to install. The most widely criticized aspect of the Mac mini is its meager base 256MB of RAM. The Mac mini uses materials we’ve all come to expect from Apple’s latest designs: its top is a white polycarbonate plastic, as you’d find on the iMac G5 or iBook the sides are a ring of anodized aluminum, just like a PowerBook or iPod mini and the bottom is the skid-resistant rubbery material you’ll find on the bottom of an iPod dock. However, the Mac mini’s hard drive is the same kind you’d find in a laptop: it’s a 2.5-inch, 4200 rpm drive. Apple could have saved some space by using laptop RAM, but it wouldn’t have helped much, given the size of that pesky optical drive. That’s because the Mac mini uses full-size PC2700 RAM. The Mac mini’s diminutive motherboard is exactly the width of its RAM slot. Since there seems to be no end to the reign of five-inch CD and DVD platters, this will probably be the smallest Mac for a good long while.
The Mac mini could be smaller, we suppose, but only if you did away with the optical drive. It’s so small that you would have to stack five of them to equal the volume of the Power Mac G4 Cube, a system which sure seemed amazingly small at the time.
0 kommentar(er)
