Quote:
Originally Posted by
guinness 
The only real value the Mini has is its size, and the fact that it runs OSX - it terms of actually hardware, it's poor, as it uses slower laptop parts, a non-standard ITX-like board, and charges a silly premium for BTO options, not to mention updating the Intel Mini's are a pain, you basically have to dismantle the entire unit, down to the mobo to replace the RAM.
Apple should either update the Mini with a decent lower-end GPU, or drop the price to $400/500. I guess I could see the value in packaging OSX+iLife, but I think they could still do better.
I agree that the implementation isn't as good as it could be but the concept is great. The Mini *should* have been another cube with a 3.5" drive or two and a decent graphics card and desktop parts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by smee
IMO the mini is the easiest comp I've ever upgraded and the easiest to work with, plus eveything but the GPU and Mobo are upgradable.
It took me 10 minutes to take the mini apart, put a pair of 1GB mem's in there and put it back together. Taking pictures along the way too
And, you only need to take five screws out to completely take everything out of the mini's case. (I did it )
I wouldn't say the easiest by a long way. Two putty knives to open it is retarded from the outset. Then unhook the airport chip and the temperature sensor at the front, take out the 4 screws and then gently flip the optical drive and hard drive over the back of the Mini.
I was not pleased with that design at all. I don't know why they couldn't have simply put two screws at the bottom and a hinge at the back of the base. Then once the two screws are out, you could just fold it in half to get into the Ram. Then just close it back up to put it together again.
But besides that modification, it's still just too small. There's absolutely no room in there for any expansion so a bigger case is a must.
It's not like they don't charge an arm and a leg for RAM already. That's why only extremely unintelligent buy more than the minimum amount of RAM in a Mac.
