Looking at a mini, have a few questions.

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mbisonmbison
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Hello! Nice forum you have here. I may become a regular as i am thinking of taking the plunge and buying a mac. The mac i am looking at is a mini, but i have no guide to the kind of power it has or what it is capable of, so im asking people who do.



Will a 1.2 macmini play dvds at fullscreen without any stuttering? Will it be able to play downloaded avi files at fullscreen without any slow down? I play these on my pc, but it is fairly fast so i can be failry sure it will play them, but with a mac i dont know.



How high can the refresh rates be set? Can the graphics chip handle refresh rates of 100hz?



Is there a firewall that can monitor traffic like zonealarm? I like to keep an eye on what is accessing the net.



Thats all i can think of right now, but im sure i will be able to think of some more. Thank you in advance.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    mac writemac write Posts: 289member
    To all your questions yes. You may have some dropped frames on DivX, but just check drop frames on slower systems. As for refresh rate, I am not sure.
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  • Reply 2 of 5
    tacojohntacojohn Posts: 980member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by mbison

    Hello! Nice forum you have here. I may become a regular as i am thinking of taking the plunge and buying a mac. The mac i am looking at is a mini, but i have no guide to the kind of power it has or what it is capable of, so im asking people who do.



    Will a 1.2 macmini play dvds at fullscreen without any stuttering? Will it be able to play downloaded avi files at fullscreen without any slow down? I play these on my pc, but it is fairly fast so i can be failry sure it will play them, but with a mac i dont know.



    How high can the refresh rates be set? Can the graphics chip handle refresh rates of 100hz?



    Is there a firewall that can monitor traffic like zonealarm? I like to keep an eye on what is accessing the net.



    Thats all i can think of right now, but im sure i will be able to think of some more. Thank you in advance.



    DVD's are no problem.



    Mac's seem to have a better time decoding MPEG or MOV files (like MPEG4 or MPEG2) than AVI's. Although there are decoders for just about anything (VLC plays a TON of formats and works great on the Mac). QuickTime is pretty heavily optimized for the G4 processor so the performance is great.



    There is a built in firewall in Mac OS X, and I think there is a log buried in the Unix portion somewhere. But frankly, I don't use the firewall because it causes more problems than it's worth by blocking ports for file transfers and video conferencing and other stuff like that. There isn't any spyware or viruses for Mac OS X so mostly things that are accessing the net are things that you want to be.



    If you're thinking about using the mini for a media server- get bluetooth and get the apple keyboard and mouse. That way you can put the mini in the with the rest of the AV stuff and control it from the couch. It works out nice for quick information and watching movies and listening to music.



    Someone needs to make a good bluetooth remote and we'd be all set. Salling Clicker works great as a remote on your cell phone. You can look up iTunes tracks, cue them up, control the mouse, control the DVD player, basically control your whole mac from your cell phone- it's an impressive piece of software- and the best part is nothing is available like it for windows! It's a good way to impress all of you window's using friends.
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  • Reply 3 of 5
    mbisonmbison Posts: 2member
    Does the built in firewall have outgoing monitoring? I find this is very useful on my pc, as when downloading programs this is one of the ways to tell if it is spyware or not. Are there other third party firewalls that do this too?



    Is there an alternative to itunes? I use winamp, and quite like it, so am looking for something similar to that.



    Is there anyone with a mini who can confirm the refresh rates at different resolutions?



    Thanks.
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  • Reply 4 of 5
    cybermonkeycybermonkey Posts: 604member
    The refresh rate tops at 75hz, If your using a TFT then thats all you need as they also top at 75hz. DVD's, AVI's .mov's and all the regular formats play no problem. As for winamp,well, start using itunes. less cluttered and more powerful, though there is xmms, whcih is a winamp clone for linux and unix systems and can use winamp skins. Though it isn't native, but uses the unix side of OS X through projects like opendarwin and fink. OS X firewall is very good and being a unix system most things are logged or can be logged. Personally i let my router mail me notifications of D.O.S attacks and port scans so i dont bother with OS X logs.
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  • Reply 5 of 5
    gsxrboygsxrboy Posts: 565member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by mbison

    Does the built in firewall have outgoing monitoring? I find this is very useful on my pc, as when downloading programs this is one of the ways to tell if it is spyware or not. Are there other third party firewalls that do this too?



    http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10426



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