Six-and-a-half Inches of Fun
http://digitalsandbox.us/wp-content/macmini.jpg” alt=“Mac Mini” />I have been meaning to write this post for a while now. In fact I wrote an extremely long post about it which I have erased sinced it was getting out of hand. That and I have been so busy with school and everything lately that I hve not had time. But, I always figure better late than never so here it is.
About a month ago, I made a small purchase. When I say a small purchase I mean that the item was small, not the price. Although the price was very small comparatively speaking, $600 is never easy to part with as a student. As you may have guessed by now, I have indeed purchased a brand new Mac mini and I love it.
Impressions
I was actually surprised by the size of this thing. Everything about it is small. the unit is small, the price is small, the box is small. I couldn’t believe how small the box was. It was like carrying one of those lunch boxes we used to haul around elementary school (whatever happened to those?). It even had a handle on it. I couldn’t wait to get home and tear into it. Alas, I am a working man and would have to wait until after work.
So fast-forward about 5 hrs and I am now home and itching to get it setup. I open the box and there it is. sitting snuggly in it’s packaging and beckoning me with it’s siren song. The mini is really small. Really. Small. To compare it to something most of can relate to, it is about the size of a CD jewel case. If you could shave off a little of one end and place it on the top to make a jewel case a true square, it would be a near perfect match. Stack up about 5 CDs and you have something about the same size as the mini. Now you see what I mean by small.
Did I mention that this thing is silent. Not just quiet. Quiet is the other night when I was using Compressor to render a Final Cut Pro sequence to MPEG 2. That was strenuous enough to get the fans running at full power. And it still wasn’t anywhere near loud. Most of the time this beast is silent. In fact, I have a hard drive I installed in a generic Firewire case with a fan that was so loud I actually disconnected it the fan to maintain a silent computing experience.
Performance
After I got the thing setup I booted up for the first time. The performance is fine. The 256 MB of RAM is definitely a bottleneck that needs clearing up. I had already anticipated this though and decided to purchase a 1 GB stick soon. Now that is not to say the mini is unusable with 256 MB of RAM. The machine is nice and responsive except on large applications (think iDVD) and when you run several applications at the same time (like I do nearly constantly). If all you do is run one or two apps at a time and then quit them you will be fine.
Once I recieved and installed (maybe I will post on that process some time) my 1 GB of RAM things are moving along nicely. I would not say that this is a powerhouse machine, but the performance is high enough that you don’t spend time waiting for it to do every small task. The only things that take time are the things that take time on any computer (Photoshop filters, Final Cut Pro filters, etc.) These will always take time, It just takes more of it on a mini.
If you’re in the market for a new computer, but are on a pretty tight budget, don’t be afraid to consider the mini. Just make sure you budget for the extra RAM. I really like my 1 GB, but have seen many posts on forums and such that suggest the performance from 256 MB to 512 MB is more significant than the boost from 512 MB to 1 GB.