I am considering taking the plunge into the world of Mac. I’ll be going for the Mac Mini, mainly because that’s all I can afford.
How are they? Are they pretty much the same as a full sized Mac? one thing I noticed is that they have no DVD drive. Is that something that needs to be purchased separately? I’ve already decided that I’m going to use the monitor, keyboard and mouse I already have.
Any suggestions and/or advise?
Thanks
I have one. No problems or issues at all. I use it with an Acer HD monitor, and a wireless keyboard and trackpad. Works/performs just like any other Apple computer does.
I did buy a DVD drive to go with it, but in all honesty, have never once used it. Before spending the money on the drive, I’d reconsider whether you really need one.
As far as the DVD/CD drive is concerned, how does a person load programs onto the Mini if said program in on a DVD or CD?
The Mini is a slightly infuriating device. Apple are very good at setting the price points across the range so that there is no obvious really good value model, rather simply the model you need or can afford.
Major minuses for the Mini is soldered in memory, so you cannot upgrade RAM once bought. Apple’s memory is extortionate. On the plus side, more recent technological upgrades in the operation system have actually reduced the pressure on memory. But if you have a machine for a long time - and Macs are very good for this, you would reasonably want the max the memory.
Similarly is is close to impossible to upgrade the storage. The performance difference with a SSD is so huge that you would be nuts to use an ordinary drive. But again, Apple’s prices are extortionate. Their hybrid Fusion Drive (actually a 128GB SSD and a conventional spinning rust disk managed by the operating system) is a really good bet. But again, you are being upsold.
A Specced out Mini is not far short of a 21" iMac. It makes life really hard.
Good points about the Mini - really solid - nice size, supports multiple monitors at high res. OSX.
You only need a DVD drive if you think you will need to read or write DVDs. Mostly they are going the way of the floppy. You can use any cheap USB DVD drive, and don’t need to buy the Superdrive - unless you want to play or make movies - the OS only recognises the Superdrive for movie playing - although third party players apparently will work.
I bought one a few months ago. As noted above, you can’t upgrade the storage or memory, so I bit the bullet and went for 16GB of memory and a pure SSD disk, and added an external SSD for more storage as well. I wanted something with a small physical footprint. It’s pretty much silent, and it sits under my monitor stand completely out of the way.
Performance wise, it’s great. I do photo-editing, music production and run various virtual machines on it and it hasn’t missed a beat. The midrange CPU model is identical to the 13" Macbook Pro base specs, or at least it was at the time I bought my Mini.
I wouldn’t recommend it for serious gamimg, because it lacks a dedicated graphics processing unit - although that said I was surprised what I could get away with. There’s a website called Gameagent.com which lists which games will work with a given Mac setup.
I’ll haven’t suffered at all from not having a DVD drive. I can’t remember the last time I wanted to install software which wasn’t available for digital download. Even if you already have software on DVD, it’s likely the company has it available for download as well. Apple also has an App Store on OSX, which offers easy downloads and installs for software - exactly like the App Store on mobile devices.
Like you, I switched to Mac with the Mac Mini. I struggled a bit with key commands, especially with my old PC keyboard - you have to learn which buttons map across (alt / option etc). I ended up replacing it with an Apple wireless keyboard, which made everything a bit more seamless, and a Magic Trackpad (which is awesome).
Hope that helps.
Nice little machines but never as powerful as iMacs. Best way to think of a Mini is as a laptop in a box. Much of the hardware design, CPU, memory and graphics seems to be the same as in laptops.
So far as I know you can indeed upgrade the storage. I certainly did in the one I’m typing this on. It’s a little bit complicated, because you have to use a small putty knife to pry off the cover and carefully remove the Airport antenna and some clips and then reverse the process when you put it back together. But you can find good videos from OWC Computing showing you step by step how to do it.
The Mini’s have changed over time with how easy they are to get into. The latest ones are not impossible to disassemble to upgrade storage, but they are very difficult. Older ones were much easier. Where older means more than about a year. Apple seems to flip flop over ease of access. Whilst some accuse them of deliberate attempts to make the devices difficult, I suspect that they simply don’t take it into consideration, and ease of access is just luck of how they design the next model.
Picking up an older iMac mini may not be a bad idea, especially with an SSD, and as long as he’s not a hard core gamer. I’ve got both a 2010 and 2011 that I use as HTPCs, one of them acting as an all-purpose whole house server.
Both originally had spinning drives, and I’ve upgraded both of them to SSD twice (once to 128 Gb, then just last week to 512 Gb, using old drives from my unneeded Lacie Thunderbolt SSDs). No special tools needed (not even the spudger), and something improvised can pop out the motherboard (I used two of the four long bolts that hold the Lacie housing together; they almost seem purpose-made!).
With SSD, the performance for day to day tasks is pretty damned good. For fun I installed some games to the 2011, but the onboard graphics struggle with some modern 3D games. X-Plane 10 did okay, Portal 2 is okay, but Grim Fandango Remastered (nothing complex!) only stuttered.
Hmmm… I have 2 older Mac Minis. More than adequate, I use the newer one with their cinema display to get 2500x1600 resolution - with Fusion, a virtual XP, and MS Office you can get a lot of spreadsheet data on the screen.
The other I have hooked to my living room TV. I play movies as ISO’s using the DVD Player.
I haven’t looked at the latest model and its restrictions, but both that I have allowed me to upgrade - very much laptop-like. The 2011 model I had to use a putty tool to open the case (from 2GB to 8GB) and carefully pull out various components to get at the RAM. For the newer one, the bottom unscrews to expose the RAM. In both cases, the RAM module looked like a laptop module and snapped in lying down like one.
According to Apple, new Mac Minis do not have user-accessible RAM, even though the older ones did. I don’t like that, but I have liked my Mac Mini. It doesn’t really make sense to me to buy a computer built into a monitor, like the iMac. I see how that would be perfect for some people though.
A Mac Mini is basically the same hardware as in a mid-range to low-end Mac laptop, but without the attached screen/keyboard.
If you really need to, you can buy an external drive. You can get a 3rd party one for like $20. But most people don’t need to.
It isn’t just a question of physical access to the RAM… In the latest version, the RAM chips are actually soldered to the motherboard. Upgrading is impossible.