Apple Mac mini (M9686LL/A) Desktop

First of all, let me just say that I'm a huge Windows PC fan. My first PC was one that my parents purchased for me for college -- a 386DX/33 with 8MB RAM. Sure it wasnt a speed demon, but the one thing I loved about PCs back then was that you could easily upgrade them. I eventually upgraded the motherboard to a 486DX2/66 with 64MB RAM. Try doing that with a Mac back then!

Up until recently, I've only owned Windows PCs. However, with another baby on the way, my wife and I have to give up our office so we can convert it into another bedroom. This means that we'll have to move the office into our master bedroom. Yikes! More junk and noise? Not good.

The first step was to downsize; we had to buy new smaller desks so that they would both fit against the wall. With no floorspace to put two huge tower systems, and about 1/2 the desk space we had before, what would we do?

Coincidently enough, a little over a week ago Apple released Mac OS X Tiger, and they were having a special launch at the nearby mall. At the door they handed out raffle tickets, and I ended up getting a 10% discount coupon. Hmm... what should I buy? :)

I had read about the mini and was very intrigued, yet skeptical; a G4 with 256MB RAM seemed a little underpowered to me. When I walked up to the demo unit, an Apple employee came by to chat and we discussed the machine in general, given my needs. Although the mini couldn't support some of the more advance visual effects, it seemed that I'd be able to do everything that I want to do, and it came with pretty much all of the software that I needed.

Here's a list of the software that I can recall:
- iLife (iMovieHD, iDVD, iTunes, Garage Band)
- Safari (web browser)
- Quicken 2005
- XCode2 (programming)

I wavered a lot about getting the computer, but eventually my wife told me to just buy it, and obviously I wasn't going to argue. Originally, I wanted to spend as little money as possible; I decided on the 1.25GHz model with the 40GB drive. While waiting at the Genius Bar, my wife said we should just get the other standard configuration, a 1.42GHz G4 with an 80GB hard drive. After all, we were going to be using this machine for 100% of our home videos. So that's what we bought!

Bringing the mini home:

My parents were watching our son that night, and even they couldn't believe its diminutive size! Out of the box, it's about 6.5" x 6.5" x 2". Totally unbelievable... I thought "the mini PCs like the FragBox were small, but this computer is even smaller!". I think that the Apple engineers were able to accomplish this by moving the main power supply outside of the chassis. Where most PCs have it integrated, and just plug into the wall using a standard power cable, the mini has a brick that you can leave on the floor. It's not too bad, though (at least they didn't use a wall wart or something).

Hooking up the mini was extremely simple. First, I plugged my LCD panel in using the included DVI->VGA adapter (very nice of them to do thi). I then plugged my PC keyboard and mouse into my USB 2.0 hub, and plugged the hub into the mini. I then connected the power cord and booted up. It was that easy!

I entered my configuration information, like my username and password, but I couldn't enter my Apple ID because I didn't have a network connection available. But everything else went completely smoothly. Since I wanted to update the OS, I needed to figure out how to hook it up to my home network. I didn't have a network cable long enough to go from the wall to the mini, so I decided to try an old ethernet to wireless adapter that I used to use on my XBox. It's a little box from Linksys that has an RJ45 connector on one end and a wireless antenna on the other. I plugged it in and hoped for the best, and sure enough, it worked! Immediately, I was able to register my mini using my Apple ID and download the updates.

Before customizing the system even more, I figured that I should update the OS to Tiger, which was included with the purchase! I usually cringe when doing major Windows OS upgrades, but was very pleasantly surprised at how easy this upgrade went. I popped the disc in, started the upgrade, and went to bed. The next morning, the system was already up and running Tiger!

Using the Mac mini:

I was going to say some things regarding my opinions of the user interface and other system functions, but these are actually more pertinent to OS Tiger itself; I will leave those comments for a separate review.

Performance:

The size of the mini alone would make anyone think that it's severely underpowered; they are correct -- in the standard configuration, I found it extremely annoying to work with, and very slow. The response time when clicking back and forth between apps was so bad that I had to close applications as soon as I was done with them, rather than leaving them open like I normally do on my Windows PC. After all, waiting 5 seconds or more is a long time to wait when you just want to start using another application.

One piece of software I was interested in playing with was Garage Band. I am not a musician, but have always wanted to tinker around with music and sounds, hoping to someday compose tracks for the video game that I'll never have time to write. Garage Band is pretty simple to use, but on the mini, it's still unusable! If you add a keyboard instrument, you have the ability to compose music by clicking on the notes. However, as the metronome ticks away and records the notes, the keyboard is completely unresponsive due to lack of system resources.

I was already pretty annoyed with the system, so I started to research memory upgrades, as that's the only upgrade you can do to increase the performance. The Apple store charges a ridiculous $500 for 1GB of RAM. On their forums, however, people said that Crucial RAM works, so I went and bought a stick directly from them... and it only cost me $150!

Installation was really simple, once I got past the initial worries of marring the beautiful case. I found a link to a site that has videos for all sorts of Apple upgrades, so I watched the one for the Mac mini.

In a nutshell, all you need to do is flip the case over, using a towel to protect the top of the machine. Then get the thinnest putty knife you can find, and gently work it into the sides of the case where the white plastic and aluminum meet. When you get the putty knife down as far as it will go, gently pry away from the case, and the little plastic tabs will disengage. Do this along both sides of the case, and the plastic base easily separates from the aluminum case.

Now all I had to do was replace the RAM, which is about as easy to do as in a PC, since the slot is readily accessible, and not obstructed by the DVDROM drive.

I have noticed a significant improvement in performance since then, and am now quite happy with the system.

Home movies:

Like I had said before, we want to use the mini for recording our home movies of our son, and it was very painless with the mini. I plugged the camcorder into the mini using the built-in Firewire port (very nice), and then launched iDVD. It recognized my camera right away. I then clicked Import, and it automatically started the camera and captured the video! It was a much better experience than I remember on the PC using Adobe Premiere.

Living with the mini:

As I said before, the mini lives with us in our master bedroom now. One of the problems with such a setup is that computers are usually pretty loud, due to the fans in the power supply, CPU, graphics card, and (sometimes) northbridge. I don't think we'd be able to sleep if we had my wife's old PC in the room. The Mac mini makes so little noise that I can only tell it's running by the white LED in the front of the case!

The graphics abilities should be pretty decent with the ATI Radeon 9200, but I haven't yet tested it with any games. I don't expect to play FPS on this computer, so I don't really care. The only bummer is that the mini can't produce the cool ripple effect when dropping widgets into the Dashboard. I saw the effect on a G5 at the Apple store, and it was really, really cool. Oh well, maybe they'll come out with a new mini in the future with an upgraded video card.

Summary:

All in all, I'm very happy with my Mac mini, but only after the 1GB memory upgrade. I'm sure even 512MB would make the system run acceptably. I can do pretty much everything I want to on the mini, and so far it seems very easy to use. I like the size, the quietness, and the sheer beauty of the case. At $750 for everything, it's not as cheap as I would have liked, but it's so cool that it's worth the money.