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fetopher · Jan 14, 2005, 02:58 AM

Speaking of thinking different, I created a flow chart for my planned iHome using the Mac mini I've placed on order. Moderators locked the thread that specifically covered this subject, so I'm not sure where to post it. I'll just go ahead and put it here and it can be moved if need be. Let me know what you think of the chart, and if y'all have any additional ideas.

Thanks!

(Click image)

Simon · Jan 14, 2005, 04:48 AM

Originally posted by dannyillusion:
This is so cool... more and more office companies will start to buy the Mini.

Very true. I don't know how long I've been begging Apple for a cheap office mac that acts mainly as a terminal client for Mail/Web/Office. This is it. It's got 100Mb Ethernet, DVI out and a 1.42GHz G4. That's just perfect!

I could see many companies buying these for their offices. Have a big fat Xserve to store and serve the data and then put these little boxes on the desks. Cheap and effective.

You have no idea how many G3 and G4 PowerMacs are in use at universities like the one where I work. Tons of them are secretary machines or belong to old professors that use them for nothing else than to write emails and papers. The mini is the perfect upgrade. People can continue to use their TFT screens and KB/mice, but the university can buy them a great performance upgrade for well below $1000. Awesome.

This little box should help Apple a lot in the office world.

rebop888 · Jan 14, 2005, 05:00 AM

Not sure if this is where this question should be..
I am the proud owner of an original Bondi-blue iMac,bought originally for my daughter, ordered pre-release, now returned to me and a huge upgrade to my old beige performa..
Yes, I know it sounds like the dark ages..
The mini sounds like a great upgrade to me, especially being able to put it in a coat pocket and move it from home to work.

O.K. Now the question..
Can the old i-Mac serve as a monitor for the mini??

Regards,

rebop

Simon · Jan 14, 2005, 05:14 AM

Somebody just mentioned this a couple of posts further above.

There a thread about the possibility here: http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=240192

Eriamjh · Jan 14, 2005, 08:49 AM

Originally posted by rebop888:
O.K. Now the question..
Can the old i-Mac serve as a monitor for the mini??

Regards,

rebop

Yes, it might be possible. With an adapter (VGA to 15-pin old-mac-style VGA) you can connect to the internal VGA cable that drives the CRT. I don't know how you would power up the iMac display though.

JHromadka · Jan 14, 2005, 11:23 AM

Not sure if this was posted above, but Macnews.de has some great pictures of the inside of the mini. I may be able to upgrade the RAM after all.

greenmeanie · Jan 14, 2005, 11:26 AM

the school i work at still has alot of old g3 and g4's. i can see them upgrading with these cheaper units.

FLYBOi · 02:20 PM

[NO SPAM]

slider · Jan 14, 2005, 11:44 AM

I have been the unofficial IT guy at my office for about 4 years now. We have a real mix for machines. Dominantly Mac, some PCs out of necessity (XP, home, pro, and Win98), running mac os 9 on most of the iMacs in the office, these iMacs are 233 for the most part. I have a G4 PB and my bosses had bought a couple for themselves. I have been slowly moving the company into OS X, the first thing I did was upgrade the G4 file server to it and started to utilize some of the built in features like iCal and SSH. One of my bosses had switch to a PC after really disappointing results while web surfing with IE in OS 9. I brought him back from the dark side after showing him the power and speed of X.

The point I am trying to get to. The mini is, as is being suggested, perfect for office like ours. When your primary purpose of the machine is Word, some Excel, email, and web, well, you just don't need a 1200 dollar box, hence the old iMacs, they are still great word processors (Mac Office 98), although it would be nice if there where some faster browser for it. Anyways the mini looks like the machine that will be replacing these old machines, and yes, it's all about the price point. Oh, and one more convert, the bosses wife is using a PC and has gotten all frustrated with it (big surprise), guess what she is getting.

FLYBOi · 02:20 PM

[NO SPAM]

typoon · Jan 14, 2005, 01:06 PM

This is a great little Machine. I know several people who are going to get one. I'm going to be replacing my upgraded Sawtooth with one of these little guys. Right now I have a sawtooth upgrade to 800 MHz with a superdrive and 768 megs of RAM. I'll unfortunately not have as much RAM but that Sawtooth is now my OS X server box so I'm thinking of doing the same with this little guy. Making it my Webserver. I Have a Dual 800 Quicksilver for my other machine so it's not an issue. who knows. I might make it my main machine and use the Dual 800 as my webserver. Not sure yet. The Mini will also free up TONS of space on my desk.

Link · 06:04 AM

HEY COOL! My post got edited into this crappy thread. Okay, screw wasting my bandwidth on those cool pictures I had up!

Hi I'm Ben · Jan 15, 2005, 02:57 PM

Originally posted by Link:
HEY COOL! My post got edited into this crappy thread. Okay, screw wasting my bandwidth on those cool pictures I had up!

Well... this is the MacMini picture thread...and those were pictures of the MacMini... i'm not really sure why you're upset.

Lateralus · Jan 15, 2005, 03:06 PM

Because he thinks that being a green star entitles him to his own thread on already-being-discussed subjects.

osxisfun · Jan 15, 2005, 03:20 PM

The mini needs its own top level forum. Just like the powermac and ipod...

(just my 2 cents..as the number of threads about the mini WILL increase once these babies start to ship...)

Simon · Jan 15, 2005, 03:25 PM

Originally posted by Link:
HEY COOL! My post got edited into this crappy thread. Okay, screw wasting my bandwidth on those cool pictures I had up!

If you're worried about bandwidth just put the images on imageshack.us - no need to get into a childish fit over not getting your own thread.

chrisutley · Jan 15, 2005, 06:35 PM

You can have a refurb 20" iMac G5 for $1700, an a new one for not too much more. If you don't have the money, wait a month or two and save it. This is a no-brainer, you'd be a fool for going with the mini.

Originally posted by RoRo:
So what does everyone think of this configuration?

Mac mini 1.42GHz
Part Number: Z0B8
Accessory kit
Internal Bluetooth + AirPort Extreme Card
80GB Ultra ATA drive
SuperDrive
56K v.92 Modem
512MB DDR333 SDRAM - 1 DIMM
Mac OS X - U.S. English 903.00

BlueTooth Key board and Mouse 99.00

APP for Mac mini 149.00

Dell UltraSharp 2001FP 20.1-inch Flat Panel 599.00 (right now)

Total package of 1,750.

I am looking for a computer to store Music and Photos, to surf the web, and misc projects like photoshop and word processing, but I do not want to get the iMac because once you are done with the computer...bye bye monitor.

What do you guys think?

velodev · Jan 16, 2005, 01:08 AM

Originally posted by osxisfun:
The mini needs its own top level forum. Just like the powermac and ipod...

(just my 2 cents..as the number of threads about the mini WILL increase once these babies start to ship...)

psst... I know where you can find one.

|
|
V

osxisfun · Jan 16, 2005, 02:02 AM

thank you.

Disgruntled Head of C-3PO · Jan 16, 2005, 03:44 AM

Originally posted by velodev:
psst... I know where you can find one.

|
|
V

You're border-lining on spamming now.

SouthPaW1227 · Jan 16, 2005, 04:04 AM

Spamming? No way, that's just cool man. I dig it, it'll be real helpful to Mini owners.

msuper69 · Jan 16, 2005, 11:19 AM

Originally posted by ChadC:
Well, I would definatly be buying one if it had a better video card.

32mb is just not nearly good enough for 3D rendering.

Guess I'll just have to wait till someone cracks one open and figures out a way to put in some other card!

Unlikely as it's highly probable that the graphics chip is soldered to the mini's logic board.

ApeInTheShell · Jan 16, 2005, 11:22 PM

Have Apple considered adding the Anti-Whine software onto their computers to deter jaded mac users?

teknopimp · Jan 17, 2005, 12:06 AM

Originally posted by Disgruntled Head of C-3PO:
You're border-lining on spamming now.

easy there, fem-bot. no harm in passing along helpful information.

BrettOZ · Jan 17, 2005, 02:50 AM

Originally posted by JHromadka:
Not sure if this was posted above, but Macnews.de has some great pictures of the inside of the mini. I may be able to upgrade the RAM after all.

I see the memory slot, but what is the slot that runs parallel with the ports across the back in those photos??

:dragonflypro: · Jan 17, 2005, 03:06 AM

A word on AppleCare and the Mac mini.

FWIW, I am not sure the 149, 20-25% of the total cost, to extend a non upgradeable box is the best sound fiscal policy. The 1 year standard out to do it.

IMO,

T

Simon · Jan 17, 2005, 03:50 AM

Originally posted by BrettOZ:
I see the memory slot, but what is the slot that runs parallel with the ports across the back in those photos??

If you mean the port next to the DVI and USB ports, I'd say it's the ATA connector.

On the left side (which is the front of the Mac mini) there is another wide slot with a round plug above it. I think that slot is the connector to Apple's proprietary APX/BT combo daughter board.

pcd2k · Jan 17, 2005, 04:04 AM

Hey check out this dude, it looks to me as if he is using the mac mini as a mouse

http://architecture.openflows.org/principles/

macmad · Jan 17, 2005, 04:12 AM

My favorite pic (from http://android8.users.whitehat.dk/wo...ndex.php?p=301):

velodev · Jan 17, 2005, 06:04 AM

Originally posted by Disgruntled Head of C-3PO:
You're border-lining on spamming now.

Sorry to bother you, but it wasn't unsolicited. It was a response.

You know, dropping $$/day on Google Adwords and buying banner space is going to bring some stray traffic but most of the prime users are right here. People know me, they know I visit here as a primary Mac forum. And I support MacNN as much as I can. I'm not trying to compete with MacNN. If you take a moment to visit you'll notice I really give the mini a better opportunity for discussion.

But if I don't spread word of mouth when someone is asking... I might as well as take all the money I am paying to run that forum and throw it out. I can't sit on my hands when someone is specifically asking.

Lancer409 · 07:34 AM

velodev... your sig is a "bit" on the large side.

anyways .. here's a huge mess o' pix that i took at macworld.

BTW, it appears i cant post 'em all in one post so i'll have to split it up

if you ever wanted to see the bottom or read the text etc, it'll be here. also, the machines at macworld were the 600 dollar ones with 1.4ghz, and 1gb ram.

Lancer409 · 07:43 AM

more ... more more more

Lancer409 · Jan 17, 2005, 07:36 AM

ok, that's the last of 'em. all 640x480 or smaller, so no banstick please. just posting these because i havent seen anyone post pictures of the bottom, or screenshots, or other such things, so i went through the trouble of resizing 'em all and uploading and then copying/pasting the img link so they'd show up. hope you guys like it (and hope the mods dont put the hurt'n on my .. backside)

oh yeah, i met a guy who was passing out macnn cards. i think he's about 5'6-5'7'ish. possibly indian? i mean, he's either that or very tanned (was night time though). he said he owns .. or runs macnn ... forgot which. short conversation. wondering if you guys know who he is?

zenatek · Jan 17, 2005, 01:43 PM

Hi,

I am a diehard windows/pc user and have been for a long time and I am now recently thinking about switching my wife and me over to Apple products, something I swore I would never do. I was the biggest Anti-Apple out there.

But lately there have been a lot of things coming out of Apple that really caught my attention like the Mac Mini, Tiger, iPod Shuffle...just to name a few.

Price has always bothered me until the Mac Mini came out, and while I am mentioning it...everyone who thinks that not including a kb/mouse is a huge failure your absolutly wrong. I have been talking with many people about the macmini and it has never even been an issue we all own kb's and to say that will stop a switch is well just wrong.

Anyway I am most likely going to be getting an iMac G5 and getting the mac mini for my wife. My one question is....

The back of the Mac mini has 2 usb ports and if you plug in your kb/mouse how do you plug in a camera...I mean I know that if you have the genuine apple kb they have usb ports but its very rare for a PC kb to have that. WHY DIDNT APPLE PUT A THIRD USB PORT!?!?!?!

Just something I noticed and I didnt think anyone had brought it up.

typoon · Jan 17, 2005, 01:50 PM

Originally posted by zenatek:
Hi,

I am a diehard windows/pc user and have been for a long time and I am now recently thinking about switching my wife and me over to Apple products, something I swore I would never do. I was the biggest Anti-Apple out there.

But lately there have been a lot of things coming out of Apple that really caught my attention like the Mac Mini, Tiger, iPod Shuffle...just to name a few.

Price has always bothered me until the Mac Mini came out, and while I am mentioning it...everyone who thinks that not including a kb/mouse is a huge failure your absolutly wrong. I have been talking with many people about the macmini and it has never even been an issue we all own kb's and to say that will stop a switch is well just wrong.

Anyway I am most likely going to be getting an iMac G5 and getting the mac mini for my wife. My one question is....

The back of the Mac mini has 2 usb ports and if you plug in your kb/mouse how do you plug in a camera...I mean I know that if you have the genuine apple kb they have usb ports but its very rare for a PC kb to have that. WHY DIDNT APPLE PUT A THIRD USB PORT!?!?!?!

Just something I noticed and I didnt think anyone had brought it up.

Yes it has been mentioned quite a bit. Hopefully in the next iteration they will add at least a third USB port.

starman · Jan 17, 2005, 02:28 PM

Originally posted by typoon:
Yes it has been mentioned quite a bit. Hopefully in the next iteration they will add at least a third USB port.

And/or a second FW port and a Gigabit Ethernet port.

Mike

Scarpad · Jan 17, 2005, 02:33 PM

I picked up a 4 Port USB hub for $17 so no biggie.

velodev · Jan 17, 2005, 02:37 PM

Originally posted by Lancer409:
velodev... your sig is a "bit" on the large side.

200x50, have you looked at yours?

velodev · Jan 17, 2005, 02:38 PM

Originally posted by typoon:
Yes it has been mentioned quite a bit. Hopefully in the next iteration they will add at least a third USB port.

But Apple keyboards come with USB ports on them. The may not be high powered but it will usually take care of a mouse and maybe your digital camera imports. At least my Pro (black keys) does this for me.

WhalinWilly · Jan 17, 2005, 02:41 PM

Mac Mini and your friends..
Here it is folks the perfect opportunity for you to take a "MAC MINI" over to your not so sure friend and let him look and use a Macintosh Computer. Your in-laws, brother or sister in-law, your sister, brother, mother, father, boss etc.
All you little clubs of MAC faithful, or an individual who has enough money go out and buy one of these units and take it out and let all these p.c. users try it. Take them through a free trial of all the apps like iPhoto, iMovie, or Garage Band anything you feel comfortable with. Let go with Mail, Address Book, Garage Band, Safari, etc.
Just maybe we could get Apple to sell at cost some of these Mac Mini's to clubs to go out and sell the Greatest Operating system available. Myself I am going to buy one of the Mini's just so I can finally go out and show some these "WIN-DOZE" people what a Mac can do.
Now maybe I am blowing steam here but I truly believe this is our greatest opportunity to finally show p.c. users what we really have in our Apple Products!!!

Bill Lewis

pliny · Jan 17, 2005, 02:43 PM

The mini is so compact it's unbelievable, it's really something.

ApeInTheShell · Jan 17, 2005, 03:52 PM

It is kinda silly to have a thread that is dedicated to pictures of the Mac Mini when the entire thread is about people discusssing whether it is worth the buy, usefulness, and complaints. I have yet to see one Mac Mini picture of someone taking it out of the box which is somewhat dissapointing if I need the MM.

People may scoff at the Mac Mini for not having more than 32mb VRAM for games but FPS are not the only genre available to play. In fact, The Sims 2 and Sim City 4 have had more of an impact in the last year. If I was to compare this to a game console I would say the new thin PS2. Now if only Rockstar made their version for Mac.

Oh yeah, all I would need is a monitor

but I have decided in favor of the iMac.

fhoubi · Jan 17, 2005, 05:24 PM

Lancer, thx!

MilkmanDan · Jan 17, 2005, 07:32 PM

Someone said something about the graphics card needing to be removable to bring gamers to the Mac. That is most certainly not the case.

1) New Mac Graphics cards cost twice as much as the PC brand.
2) You need a G5 to get great results in the newest games. Such as Doom 3.
3) Games would need to be coming out in greater frequency and sooner for Macs.

Thats what would need to happen. Blah.

Lancer409 · Jan 17, 2005, 08:31 PM

Originally posted by fhoubi:
Lancer, thx!

glad you enjoy'ed em ... looks like it killed my photobucket bandwith. i'll try to get it back up soon, if i can make another photobucket account... anyone wanna host 'em for me instead?

velodev · Jan 18, 2005, 12:12 AM

Originally posted by Lancer409:
glad you enjoy'ed em ... looks like it killed my photobucket bandwith. i'll try to get it back up soon, if i can make another photobucket account... anyone wanna host 'em for me instead?

Sent them over... I have more than enough bandwidth to go around.

Lancer409 · Jan 18, 2005, 02:51 AM

Originally posted by velodev:
200x50, have you looked at yours?

it wasnt before. it used to be a message in bigger font. was just letting you know it was over the guideline and you might get in trouble is all. now that you changed the sig, no point talking about it.

i'll try to get another account going so i can re upload those pictures...

that being said, i'm going to start school tomorrow, so it might be a few days. hopefully i get on this ...

barang · Jan 18, 2005, 10:15 AM

This whole debate over the lack of KB/mouse is a moot.

Think of the firestorm that the original iMac caused by Apple's decision not to include a floppy; that was a huge issue in 1998, but now we realize that people were able to forgo a floppy or buy an external, and Apple ended up selling six million iMacs in spite of that.

In light of that FD controversy, this whole KB thing seems a little less of an issue. People aren't going to reject the Mini soley because of no bundled keyboard.

I have several old USB keyboards and mice lying around at home, along with a 17" CRT that still looks fine. For 499$, I can be set with a decent (cheap) Mac.

SmileyDude · Jan 18, 2005, 12:08 PM

Originally posted by Simon:
If you mean the port next to the DVI and USB ports, I'd say it's the ATA connector.

On the left side (which is the front of the Mac mini) there is another wide slot with a round plug above it. I think that slot is the connector to Apple's proprietary APX/BT combo daughter board.

I'm not so convinced that's the ATA connector -- the connector on the upper left in that photo looks more like a ATA size connector, but I could be wrong.

There is one more connector on that board as well -- there is a small connector in the middle. That looks very much like the BT module connector that I've seen on the iMac G5.

BTW -- does the mini use Serial ATA or is it the older ATA standard? Seems to me that Serial ATA would've been a perfect fit for the small form factor of the mini.

macaddict0001 · Jan 18, 2005, 09:34 PM

I'd say that it uses ultra ata given its a low cost mac and no g4 ever has used sata.