“Even if you’ve seen pictures of the Mini, it’s hard to get a sense of just how tiny it is until you hold it in your hand or put it beside something else — such as a regular computer, for example. It’s just a little wider and a little thicker than a CD carrying case, something you can get a sense of by noticing how the CD/DVD slot takes up almost the entire width of the unit,” Mathew Ingram writes for The Globe and Mail Update.
“One of the things that drew some critical comments when the Mini was first announced was just how stripped down the unit is, and it’s true that Apple cut a lot of corners to get the cost of the device under the $500 (U.S.) mark ($630 Cdn.). Inside the base model is has a 1.25-gigahertz processor, a 40-gigabyte hard drive, 256 megabytes of RAM, a combined CD-writer and DVD reader and an ATI video processor with 32 megabytes of video RAM. That’s fine if you just want to do e-mail, Web surfing and word processing, but it’s probably not going to be enough if you want to use it for more intensive applications such as photo or movie editing, or build a music library,” Ingram writes.
“In terms of connections, the Mini is also pretty stripped down. On the back of the unit is a standard headphone-style audio jack, a FireWire port, two USB ports, a digital video port, an Ethernet jack, phone jack and power plug — and that’s it,” Ingram writes. ” There is no serial port, no RCA audio jacks and no S-video or composite video jacks.”
“When the Mini was launched there was some criticism of the fact that it didn’t come with a mouse, monitor or keyboard, and Apple fans responded that it was easy to use old hardware — but it’s only easy if you happen to have some USB hardware around. The fact that there are only two USB ports can also cause some headaches, at least for non-Mac types such as myself, because you have to plug a keyboard into one and a mouse in the other (many Mac keyboards have a built-in port for the mouse),” Ingram writes. “That means if you want to plug your iPod Shuffle or camera into the Mini, you have to unplug either your keyboard or mouse, or you have to go the computer store and buy a USB hub with more ports on it. It also means that you can’t use any of the old PC mice or keyboards you might have lying around your house, since they are likely to be PS/2 devices rather than USB (which Apple adopted before Windows PCs did).”
Ingram writes, “As a second or third computer for a household, or a small unit designed for use by a computer novice, however, the Mini has a lot going for it. Provided you can find a keyboard and mouse for it, of course.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Bump the Mac mini’s RAM to 512MB and you can do photo and movie editing, build a music library, and many more things than you would think after reading this review. We’ve found the Mac mini to be surprisingly responsive and quite a bit more speedy than we were initially expecting. Sure, you’re not going to cut feature films with it, but for the vast majority of computer users, the Mac mini packs a lot into a very small and affordable package.
If you’re a Windows user considering the Mac mini, do yourself a favor and spring for an Apple Mac keyboard; you’ll want the Mac keyboard layout and the extra USB ports it offers.
This is a review from a Windows PC user who calls the Mac mini “stripped down” with its a digital video and firewire ports and independent ATI video processor (read: not integrated video) while bemoaning the lack of a serial port (a least he didn’t wish for a floppy drive), so take this review for what it’s worth. Everyone’s entitled to his or her opinion, just keep in mind that Ingram’s doesn’t mesh with nearly anyone else’s Mac mini review.
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