How do you use your mini?
I am having a gig stick installed tomorrow and I was wondering about the experiences of those actually using a mini for real work. Do you find the performance adequate? I will be using it as the basis of my DAW. GB is horrible to the point of being unusable with the stock ram. I use a fast external FW drive. I am hoping that the infusion of decent ram does the trick. For anyone who is curious, I will update this thread from time to time. For anyone in the know, share your first-hand experience. For anyone using the mini for something other than their primary computer, how is it working out for you?
Comments
I use the mini at home for multimedia and, shortly, for development purposes.
The performance is ok, but I think my pc and notebook are a little faster.
What I value most is the stability of the operating system, which is far superior to windows. It also has a nicer GUI, and still got the underlying BSD available to the user, which makes it as powerfull as linux.
Still got to get some software..
David
Originally posted by Mac Voyer
I am having a gig stick installed tomorrow
Sorry to crash your post but will any PC2700 (333MHz) DDR SRAM chip will work? When I bought the compueter I only specified 256mb because of Apple's horrendous costs.
TIA
Simon
Originally posted by SimonC
Sorry to crash your post but will any PC2700 (333MHz) DDR SRAM chip will work? When I bought the compueter I only specified 256mb because of Apple's horrendous costs.
TIA
Simon
No problem, on either issue. I had to research that question myself. What I found from talking to Apple salesmen who wanted to sell me $300 ram is that any ram would do. There is nothing special about the size or type of ram. Feel free to use DDR 400 3200 ram if it is cheaper. After all, that is what Apple is currently using. There is, however, a difference between the cheap ram and the expensive ram. The generic ram is slower. The more expensive ram has a higher response time and lower latency. This is important for my uses. He also explained that the high performance ram is almost like having 50% more ram in your system. I did not go with the the highest performing ram simply because of cost. I went with the mid-range ram instead. I will let you know how it performs when I have it installed and test it out. Stay tuned.
Originally posted by Mac Voyer
There is, however, a difference between the cheap ram and the expensive ram.
Thanks for the info.
So what, in terms of brand names and your opinion, is cheap, middling and expensive?
Cheers
Simon
Originally posted by SimonC
So will 512Mb PC3200 184pin DDR 400 DIMM Memory work in the Mini?
DOH! Should've read your reply properly
Originally posted by ipodandimac
slightly off topic, but why are people doing "real work" (professionals) using mac minis? or for that matter even considering mac minis? all the ram and processing power in the world cant make up for a 4200rpm hard drive. but whatever...
It depends on what work you are doing. I am a software designer, and it would work fine for me. All of my CPU intensive work (compiling and linking, mainly) is already offloaded to servers - my desktop is just for editing (I use a DELL linux box).
I doubt that he meant people doing "real work" in advertising , graphics or video.
Originally posted by Mac Voyer
The more expensive ram has a higher response time and lower latency. This is important for my uses. He also explained that the high performance ram is almost like having 50% more ram in your system.
Well, more expensive RAM may have lower latencies and be faster, but you dont actually know what you are getting from Apple, I doubt they are selling low latency RAM - lower profit margin on a machine that cant use it.
Getting higher latency RAM is of very little use ( you do want to get the fastest RAM your system can use, PC2700, PC3200 etc ). You would be lucky to get a couple of percent speed increase from it, and it sure as hell isnt like having 50% more RAM.
Pay a sales droid minimum wage...and you get an idiot.
If you dont know how you are affected by RAM latencies and speed then you dont need to know. There are two key factors for the average user, cost and size.
Buying a system that uses really old RAM, or really new RAM ( my eMac uses PC133, and my Dell uses DDR2 ) will cost you more.
If you dont have enough RAM then your system will use disk space as a RAM substitute ( because applications ask for memory that you dont have ). Unlike the percentage differences between RAM speeds, disk access is orders of magnitudes slower than RAM accesses. This is really noticable. Given a choice between cheap slow RAM and fast expensive RAM get the cheap slow RAM, but buy more. The extra RAM will be much more effective than the faster RAM.
Originally posted by ipodandimac
slightly off topic, but why are people doing "real work" (professionals) using mac minis? or for that matter even considering mac minis? all the ram and processing power in the world cant make up for a 4200rpm hard drive. but whatever...
Admittedly the 4200 rpm drive is a slight bottleneck. Except for that, the mini is as fast as the fastest Power Mac of a few years ago. What makes you think you can't do "real work" on a G4 1.25Ghz anymore? Apple's recent sales numbers demonstrate that most people just don't need "pro" towers. Fast enough is fast enough. I'm a graphics professional and can still get a lot of work done on a Blue & White G3 350.
Originally posted by ipodandimac
slightly off topic, but why are people doing "real work" (professionals) using mac minis? or for that matter even considering mac minis? all the ram and processing power in the world cant make up for a 4200rpm hard drive. but whatever...
Goes to show what some of you guys know. Remeber all the "Oh, it's too slow. Only for new users and beginners. Anything more than web and Word lite, you need an iMac or PowerMac."
By all means, it is better to have a lot of cheap ram than a little good ram. Quantity is king. Just get the best you can afford if you are doing real work.
Yes! Real work is very doable on this machine. In fact, I can't imagine anything I couldn't do on this computer as currently equipped. It is the conceit of every generation that they are the smartest and the best. They just can't imagine how anything got done before they came along. The same is true in the tech realm. Whenever someone buys the latest and greatest technology, they wonder how anyone could possibly get anything done with the old stuff. Believe it or not, real work is not narrowly defined as that which can only be done on a dual G5. Pro Tools can still be competently handled on a lowly G3 iBook. Apple was demoing PS on 500 MHz G4s when that was actually a big deal. Those were "super computers". Trust me. A 1.25 GHz G4 with a gig of ram flies. Perhaps I will change my opinion as I spend more time with it. But at the moment, I can't imagine how day to day computing can get any faster. For work that needs it, I use a fast, external HD. The PB is certainly intended for real work. It surpasses the specs of the mini only by a little and not long ago, was exactly the same. Perspective. Never underestimate the power of ram to infuse new life into a system.
Originally posted by ipodandimac
slightly off topic, but why are people doing "real work" (professionals) using mac minis? or for that matter even considering mac minis? all the ram and processing power in the world cant make up for a 4200rpm hard drive. but whatever...
plug in a firewire drive and you have a system that is has very good disk performance and who's storage is portable. very attractive.
the mini is a pretty sweet little deal for a lot of people. i wish apple had made some different decisions (2 ram slots, 3.5 inch HD) but what are you going to do.
Originally posted by Mac Voyer
By all means, it is better to have a lot of cheap ram than a little good ram. Quantity is king. Just get the best you can afford if you are doing real work.
Im not talking about cheap, Im talking about the value of fast ram, which is more expensive.
eg: any ram you buy from kingston is 'good'. Its not cheapo generic ram, it is well designed ( high quality boards ) backed by a well respected company.
You can buy a PC2700 1 gig dimm for $169. That is by no means the cheapest ram around. You can also get their hyperx PC3200 1gb dimm for $324. It wont make any difference in a mini, and even in a machine that could take advantage of the extra speed you will only see a few percent points speed increase. You are better off getting 2 of the cheaper dimms and having twice as much ram.
This is of course, just a rule of thumb, some users will benefit more from having faster ram.
Originally posted by iDave
Admittedly the 4200 rpm drive is a slight bottleneck. Except for that, the mini is as fast as the fastest Power Mac of a few years ago. What makes you think you can't do "real work" on a G4 1.25Ghz anymore? Apple's recent sales numbers demonstrate that most people just don't need "pro" towers. Fast enough is fast enough. I'm a graphics professional and can still get a lot of work done on a Blue & White G3 350.
So true. I recall some years ago reading a rumor on macosrumors.com about the possibility of future releases of G3s at up to 300MHz speeds. At the time that sounded unimaginably fast. At the time no one had even a 1GB HD. Now people want to pooh-pooh a 1.25GHz G4 with a 40GB HD. What a hoot!