Cool...Looks like this will be my next purchase. Before switching to the mac last November I had been using an HP Windows Home Server to store music, videos and pictures for our household. I've been waiting for a mac mini refresh so that I can do away with the WHS!
It feels that a NAS (possibly with RAID) would be sufficient?
I'm disappointed that an option to include an SSD is not available except in the Server version. A Mac mini with an SSD and 8GB's of memory would be perfect as a desktop machine. Especially with thunderbolt connected storage. Not sure why its only available in the Server version.
Sorry, I jumped the gun. Just noticed it is available in the high end desktop version. For an additional $600!
Why should this be necessary? A card slot in the back is awkward, and having all the cables face the user is even more awkward. Your response just doesn't make any sense unless you're trying to parody an Apple apologist.
No, seriously, why not have the end that you will use facing you? Easy to access the card slot, swap cables, and turn on and off. If it's behind a monitor, who cares? (unless it's in the living room, of course).
Apple is all over the place with Mac repairs and upgrades. You can't upgrade the hard drive in an iMac but you can screw with all the parts in the Mini.
Changing the HD in an iMac is not hard, but it's harder (and first time you do it - scarier) than undoing four screws underneath or at the back and unhooking the drive.
Why should this be necessary? A card slot in the back is awkward, and having all the cables face the user is even more awkward. Your response just doesn't make any sense unless you're trying to parody an Apple apologist.
Yes, the card-slot should be at the front, or side. At the back with the cables is bad, or lazy design.
If they had not ditched the DVD Drive I would get one. I use a 2.0Ghz Mini in a Home entertainment center and still have a larger DVD movie library ( And do not want spend countless hours ripping all of the movies ). I wanted to upgrade the Mini in the entertainment center and use the old one as a small Web/FTP server.
I know that I could add the external super drive, but that would be one more thing cluttering up my system. In fact that is why I got the 2.0Ghz mini to dump the old clunky DVD player and have a much cleaner looking ( i.e. Wife approved ) entertainment system.
P.S. Bought a 2.66Ghz from the refurb store instead. It is a shame that the DVD was not at least an option since it would obviously fit in the case. I guess if you were willing to cut a slot in the case it still would fit....
No, seriously, why not have the end that you will use facing you? Easy to access the card slot, swap cables, and turn on and off. If it's behind a monitor, who cares? (unless it's in the living room, of course).
I think that assumes that you're hiding the mini behind a monitor, which I don't think a lot of owners will do that, they'll have at least the front face visible under the edge of the monitor. And most of the other connectors probably aren't going to be touched nearly as often. Besides, the optical slot used to be on the front, so why not a little SD slot in its place?
If they had not ditched the DVD Drive I would get one. I use a 2.0Ghz Mini in a Home entertainment center and still have a larger DVD movie library ( And do not want spend countless hours ripping all of the movies ). I wanted to upgrade the Mini in the entertainment center and use the old one as a small Web/FTP server.
I know that I could add the external super drive, but that would be one more thing cluttering up my system. In fact that is why I got the 2.0Ghz mini to dump the old clunky DVD player and have a much cleaner looking ( i.e. Wife approved ) entertainment system.
P.S. Bought a 2.66Ghz from the refurb store instead. It is a shame that the DVD was not at least an option since it would obviously fit in the case. I guess if you were willing to cut a slot in the case it still would fit....
They did drop the base price by $100 though. A new mac mini + an external superdrive is still cheaper than the base price of the previous model. I don't think an external drive would really clutter up a media center (just put it on top of the mini and use a short USB cable to connect it).
Congrats of the refurbished mini though. You got a really good deal on it since the removal of the optical drive and $100 price drop led to massive discounts on the previous gen refurb models
As an aside, they redesigned the internals as a result of the DVD drive removal. I doubt it would fit without going back to the old internal design. One of the major benefits of the redesign is that both hard drive slots are easily accessible for upgrading. With the old two drive server models, you have to remove the logic board to get at the second hard drive. That's not the case anymore. There is some reason behind the madness.
If you get the BTO option with both the 256GB SSD and the 7200rpm drive with the SSD as the startup disk, can't the 7200rpm drive still produce an overall slowdown than with just the SSD alone?
I've been using a 2010 Mac Mini with an SSD and would never go back, but my experience has been that whenever I connect an external USB drive, the speed advantages of the SSD almost completely disappear, at least when accessing the Finder. Using the Open File command in an app or opening a new Finder window after a while will cause the whole system to hang for a few seconds as the external USB drive starts to spin. It happens even when I don't even navigate to that drive. I'm assuming it has something to do with indexing or Spotlight or something, and that USB drives are simply just not that fast.
When I disconnect the drive, everything's cool, but of course you can't just disconnect an internal drive. So I wonder if the internal drive will cause a similar slowdown. Does it create any kind bottleneck, however minor, that diminishes the advantage of having a singular SSD alone? Whst about an external Thunderbolt drive?
I had forgotten about that, so it was something of a temporary price increase.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phong
I've been using a 2010 Mac Mini with an SSD and would never go back, but my experience has been that whenever I connect an external USB drive, the speed advantages of the SSD almost completely disappear, at least when accessing the Finder. Using the Open File command in an app or opening a new Finder window after a while will cause the whole system to hang for a few seconds as the external USB drive starts to spin. It happens even when I don't even navigate to that drive. I'm assuming it has something to do with indexing or Spotlight or something, and that USB drives are simply just not that fast.
That's one of the down sides of Finder, if one Finder window is stalled, the whole program stalls.
No, but the problem isn't just the FInder. It's in any program that needs to open a file. I just hit command-O in Movist and waited a full five seconds just for the window to pop open. I wasn't even going to open something on an external drive either. And that was after I added the external volumes to Spotlight's privacy list.
Unplug the external drives, though, and everything is snappy.
No, but the problem isn't just the FInder. It's in any program that needs to open a file. I just hit command-O in Movist and waited a full five seconds just for the window to pop open. I wasn't even going to open something on an external drive either. And that was after I added the external volumes to Spotlight's privacy list.
Unplug the external drives, though, and everything is snappy.
Does it do that even if you aren't opening a file in the external drive?
I think what you were probably seeing is that the software (or maybe OS) is waiting for the drive to wake up, it spins down if it is not accessed often enough.
Personally, I don't understand them ditching the optical drive. Strategically, obviously it has to do with driving everything to digital downloads. Got to hand it to Apple, it can be extremely frustrating but they really don't worry about getting sales from people that they're not likely to get sales from... Blue ocean all the way.
If the drive is recognised by the system, yeah. OS X supports that. You can plug in 2 USB drives and make a RAID out of it, for example... You can play around with OS X's built-in RAID using Disk Utility. https://discussions.apple.com/thread...art=0&tstart=0
Personally, I don't understand them ditching the optical drive. Strategically, obviously it has to do with driving everything to digital downloads. Got to hand it to Apple, it can be extremely frustrating but they really don't worry about getting sales from people that they're not likely to get sales from... Blue ocean all the way.
I don't think it's that big of a deal now.
If that's what they needed to fit the target price, fine with me. I hope to get one to use as a small business server with an attached Drobo or two. Also, it's easier to get inside now. Something like 5 steps to the drive instead of 27 with the previous model. I have another Macs to read from on the occasion it needs to read an optical disc. Most of the software I use has long been available on my local network or an internet download.
I won't give up the drive on my main computer though. I find writing a disc is the most convenient way to hand a fair amount of data to someone, without giving away a USB stick (seriously, who remembers to return them?) or walking them through a computer-to-computer internet data transfer.
Comments
Cool...Looks like this will be my next purchase. Before switching to the mac last November I had been using an HP Windows Home Server to store music, videos and pictures for our household. I've been waiting for a mac mini refresh so that I can do away with the WHS!
It feels that a NAS (possibly with RAID) would be sufficient?
Sorry, I jumped the gun. Just noticed it is available in the high end desktop version. For an additional $600!
Why should this be necessary? A card slot in the back is awkward, and having all the cables face the user is even more awkward. Your response just doesn't make any sense unless you're trying to parody an Apple apologist.
No, seriously, why not have the end that you will use facing you? Easy to access the card slot, swap cables, and turn on and off. If it's behind a monitor, who cares? (unless it's in the living room, of course).
Apple is all over the place with Mac repairs and upgrades. You can't upgrade the hard drive in an iMac but you can screw with all the parts in the Mini.
Changing the HD in an iMac is not hard, but it's harder (and first time you do it - scarier) than undoing four screws underneath or at the back and unhooking the drive.
Why should this be necessary? A card slot in the back is awkward, and having all the cables face the user is even more awkward. Your response just doesn't make any sense unless you're trying to parody an Apple apologist.
Yes, the card-slot should be at the front, or side. At the back with the cables is bad, or lazy design.
I know that I could add the external super drive, but that would be one more thing cluttering up my system. In fact that is why I got the 2.0Ghz mini to dump the old clunky DVD player and have a much cleaner looking ( i.e. Wife approved ) entertainment system.
P.S. Bought a 2.66Ghz from the refurb store instead. It is a shame that the DVD was not at least an option since it would obviously fit in the case. I guess if you were willing to cut a slot in the case it still would fit....
No, seriously, why not have the end that you will use facing you? Easy to access the card slot, swap cables, and turn on and off. If it's behind a monitor, who cares? (unless it's in the living room, of course).
I think that assumes that you're hiding the mini behind a monitor, which I don't think a lot of owners will do that, they'll have at least the front face visible under the edge of the monitor. And most of the other connectors probably aren't going to be touched nearly as often. Besides, the optical slot used to be on the front, so why not a little SD slot in its place?
If you have 2 drives in a mini can you RAID them?
I don't see why not. It would be just the basic software RAID, either kind you pick.
If they had not ditched the DVD Drive I would get one. I use a 2.0Ghz Mini in a Home entertainment center and still have a larger DVD movie library ( And do not want spend countless hours ripping all of the movies ). I wanted to upgrade the Mini in the entertainment center and use the old one as a small Web/FTP server.
I know that I could add the external super drive, but that would be one more thing cluttering up my system. In fact that is why I got the 2.0Ghz mini to dump the old clunky DVD player and have a much cleaner looking ( i.e. Wife approved ) entertainment system.
P.S. Bought a 2.66Ghz from the refurb store instead. It is a shame that the DVD was not at least an option since it would obviously fit in the case. I guess if you were willing to cut a slot in the case it still would fit....
They did drop the base price by $100 though. A new mac mini + an external superdrive is still cheaper than the base price of the previous model. I don't think an external drive would really clutter up a media center (just put it on top of the mini and use a short USB cable to connect it).
Congrats of the refurbished mini though. You got a really good deal on it since the removal of the optical drive and $100 price drop led to massive discounts on the previous gen refurb models
As an aside, they redesigned the internals as a result of the DVD drive removal. I doubt it would fit without going back to the old internal design. One of the major benefits of the redesign is that both hard drive slots are easily accessible for upgrading. With the old two drive server models, you have to remove the logic board to get at the second hard drive. That's not the case anymore. There is some reason behind the madness.
They did drop the base price by $100 though.
What, when? The current base model is $599, the previous base model was $599.
What, when? The current base model is $599, the previous base model was $599.
No, the first gen of the redesign was $699.
What, when? The current base model is $599, the previous base model was $599.
No, the first gen of the redesign was $699.
Indeed, it was $699:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/18/m...d-2010-review/
If you get the BTO option with both the 256GB SSD and the 7200rpm drive with the SSD as the startup disk, can't the 7200rpm drive still produce an overall slowdown than with just the SSD alone?
I've been using a 2010 Mac Mini with an SSD and would never go back, but my experience has been that whenever I connect an external USB drive, the speed advantages of the SSD almost completely disappear, at least when accessing the Finder. Using the Open File command in an app or opening a new Finder window after a while will cause the whole system to hang for a few seconds as the external USB drive starts to spin. It happens even when I don't even navigate to that drive. I'm assuming it has something to do with indexing or Spotlight or something, and that USB drives are simply just not that fast.
When I disconnect the drive, everything's cool, but of course you can't just disconnect an internal drive. So I wonder if the internal drive will cause a similar slowdown. Does it create any kind bottleneck, however minor, that diminishes the advantage of having a singular SSD alone? Whst about an external Thunderbolt drive?
No, the first gen of the redesign was $699.
I had forgotten about that, so it was something of a temporary price increase.
I've been using a 2010 Mac Mini with an SSD and would never go back, but my experience has been that whenever I connect an external USB drive, the speed advantages of the SSD almost completely disappear, at least when accessing the Finder. Using the Open File command in an app or opening a new Finder window after a while will cause the whole system to hang for a few seconds as the external USB drive starts to spin. It happens even when I don't even navigate to that drive. I'm assuming it has something to do with indexing or Spotlight or something, and that USB drives are simply just not that fast.
That's one of the down sides of Finder, if one Finder window is stalled, the whole program stalls.
Have you tried it with Lion yet?
Unplug the external drives, though, and everything is snappy.
No, but the problem isn't just the FInder. It's in any program that needs to open a file. I just hit command-O in Movist and waited a full five seconds just for the window to pop open. I wasn't even going to open something on an external drive either. And that was after I added the external volumes to Spotlight's privacy list.
Unplug the external drives, though, and everything is snappy.
Does it do that even if you aren't opening a file in the external drive?
I think what you were probably seeing is that the software (or maybe OS) is waiting for the drive to wake up, it spins down if it is not accessed often enough.
If you have 2 drives in a mini can you RAID them?
If the drive is recognised by the system, yeah. OS X supports that. You can plug in 2 USB drives and make a RAID out of it, for example... You can play around with OS X's built-in RAID using Disk Utility. https://discussions.apple.com/thread...art=0&tstart=0
Personally, I don't understand them ditching the optical drive. Strategically, obviously it has to do with driving everything to digital downloads. Got to hand it to Apple, it can be extremely frustrating but they really don't worry about getting sales from people that they're not likely to get sales from... Blue ocean all the way.
I don't think it's that big of a deal now.
If that's what they needed to fit the target price, fine with me. I hope to get one to use as a small business server with an attached Drobo or two. Also, it's easier to get inside now. Something like 5 steps to the drive instead of 27 with the previous model. I have another Macs to read from on the occasion it needs to read an optical disc. Most of the software I use has long been available on my local network or an internet download.
I won't give up the drive on my main computer though. I find writing a disc is the most convenient way to hand a fair amount of data to someone, without giving away a USB stick (seriously, who remembers to return them?) or walking them through a computer-to-computer internet data transfer.