Mac Mini out for Delivery!

surbahns · January 20, 2005 8:21AM

My mac mini is 15 minutes from me as I type this. I'll take pictures of the box, and contents and post them in this tread one I can. I'm very excited. This is my first mac, and my first experience with OS X.

(I used macs before, but never running OS X)

(prays its not a doa)

-Stuart

surbahns · January 20, 2005 9:10AM

Pictures of Mac Mini

ragex · January 20, 2005 9:29AM

Awesome pics, can't wait for more!

ibook911 · January 20, 2005 10:00AM

Fantastic. I can't wait to hear how you like your Mac Mini!

surbahns · January 20, 2005 10:53AM

I am now replying to this forum on my Mac mini.

I've installed Firefox and now have my bookmarks syncing between my two computers. (Mac Mini, Windows XP)

I've just finished installing iLife. Pretty neat. (One thing I do note though is how loud this CDROM drive is when spinning, but I guess that?s okay since it copies really fast).

I'm trying to figure out now how to connect to my laptop to get all the data off it from say my iTunes folder and pictures. I haven?t figured out how to directly connect to a pc share on a Mac without using the finder and navigating to the pc. (This is a problem since the share is hidden on my pc, and on windows I would go start, run, \\\\computername\\photos$) If anyone can clue me in on how to do a direct connect to the share name that would be great for me to know.

Bottom line, everything?s run great. Only had 1 speed issue, but that?s because I download Microsoft Office 2004 trail and it opened all the apps at once. (word,excel,powerpoint, the email app, etc) Needless to say it took about 2 minutes before everything opened so I could start closing them.

gene clean · January 20, 2005 11:10AM

Enable SMB (Samba) sharing. That is, if you have a network. Then you can download your iTunes folder through your internet connection. Unhide your PC share and when you're done hide it again.

I currently have WinXP, Ubuntu Hoary, Mac OS X 10.3.7 in a network and they all behave fine.

The pics look very cool. Post some more if you have them, together with your display and all...

..and if you could tell us how fast it feel on real world tasks..

Much appreciated.

chrisg · January 20, 2005 11:16AM

You can navigate to the hidden share no problem, just go tothe Go menu in the Finder and select Connect to Server. then type smb://machinename/share$/

surbahns · January 20, 2005 11:24AM

It takes approxmatly 50 seconds to boot from me pressing the power button before I can start running applications.

It takes less then a second to open iTunes.

Ms Word 2004 Demo takes 4 seconds before it opens.

Firefox is up as soon as I take my finger off the button. (Less then 1 sec.)

So far the speed is pretty impressive. I just started copying my 7 gig of music from my PC to the mac. I'll see how it turns out.

gene clean · January 20, 2005 11:46AM

That seems to be pretty good. How much RAM you got?

surbahns · January 20, 2005 12:11PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Gene Clean

That seems to be pretty good. How much RAM you got?

I'm running the 1.42ghz model with 512 meg of RAM.

If someone can clue me in on where I can find how much memory is free I can tell you.

Also, is there a keyboard shortcut on launch a shell prompt? Apple somthing?

squash · January 20, 2005 12:14PM

look in applications/utilities/Activity Monitor..it will list the apps and memory used at any given time

clonenode · January 20, 2005 12:32PM

surbahns,

Don't "Shut Down". Consider allowing your Mac mini to sleep when not in use. You'll love walking over to it and just tapping a key on the keyboard to wake it up.

surbahns · January 20, 2005 12:47PM

Quote:

Originally posted by clonenode

surbahns,

Don't "Shut Down". Consider allowing your Mac mini to sleep when not in use. You'll love walking over to it and just tapping a key on the keyboard to wake it up.

Here is my memory usage. It doesn't look like I have much left, but to be honest. I didn't "feel" like I was low in memory like you can on my Windows PC.

Thanks again for all the help everyone in telling me where/how I can do things. I'm really enjoying the mac so far.

guartho · January 20, 2005 12:56PM

Is that white USB cable in the middle just an extension cable or does it do more?

surbahns · January 20, 2005 12:59PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Guartho

Is that white USB cable in the middle just an extension cable or does it do more?

Thats not a usb cable. Thats the power cable coming off the brick. The cable then to the left connects to the brick (simular to laptops) that then goes to the electric outlet.

One other issue I reliezed I had was the DVI to VGA Adapter doesn't really lock in. (You can't screw it in). So I had to make sure the cable was firmly connected to the mac mini or the monitor wasn't working, or not all the colors would show.

guartho · January 20, 2005 1:17PM

Quote:

Originally posted by surbahns

Thats not a usb cable. Thats the power cable coming off the brick. The cable then to the left connects to the brick (simular to laptops) that then goes to the electric outlet.

of course! I completely forgot about the external power brick!

surbahns · January 20, 2005 1:31PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Guartho

of course! I completely forgot about the external power brick!

Its okay. Also, until Apple has it posted on their website. Here is a copy of the Macmini manual:

http://www.urbahns.info/macmini/minimanual.pdf

oldcodger73 · January 20, 2005 2:08PM

Serbahns, which version of iLife did it come with, 4 or 5?

Thanks for posting the manual.

squash · January 20, 2005 2:18PM

FIVE..read Apples site...plain as day

surbahns · January 20, 2005 2:37PM

It came with iLife ’05. Its on a DVD disc, and includes iPhoto 5, iMovie HD, IDVD, GarageBand 2, iTune 4.7

surbahns · January 20, 2005 3:39PM

Welp. I have not had my first major problem with that Mac mini. The adapter they provided to convert the DVI to VGA just died. (Yes Died) The video signal won't go through it any more. Lucky I work in a IT Dept and these kind of adapters are very common place in my organization so I swapped it out with one we had gotten with some Dell systems and it is working fine. (And actually better then the previous model. OS X now sees my monitor supporting more Refresh rates other then 60 and 75.

Hopefully this was just limited to me, and not a big problem. And hopefully this will be my last hardware failure. It?s nearing the end of the workday and for my first day of being a Mac user I've been rather satisfied with the experience.

Mac Mini out for Delivery!

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