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2011 Mini refurb...still a good buy?

thatappleguytoday

thatappleguytoday

macrumors 601
Original poster
Feb 9, 2006
4,162
9,072
Jacksonville, FL
Apple has 2011 refurbs for under $500 on there website. Was thinking about buying one (the base model) and just upgrading the RAM to minimum of 8GB. I am just going to be using the machine for basic computer needs and probably the only RAM hungry app would be LightRoom. I'm not a gamer at all.

Is this 2011 still a good buy? I would also look into installing a SSD a few months later.

Would like to hear opinions
TIA
 
map1978 said:
Apple has 2011 refurbs for under $500 on there website. Was thinking about buying one (the base model) and just upgrading the RAM to minimum of 8GB. I am just going to be using the machine for basic computer needs and probably the only RAM hungry app would be LightRoom. I'm not a gamer at all.

Is this 2011 still a good buy? I would also look into installing a SSD a few months later.

Would like to hear opinions
TIA
Click to expand...

at 469 it is a good deal. if you have a discover card and link from the discover site 5% off. I think it its a good machine once you drop in some ram. 8gb is enough for most of us.
 
I'm also thinking if I find a good priced 2011 Mini...is it still a good buy? That's my main question really. It doesn't have to be a refurb.

Just looking for a Mini to do simple computing and like I mentioned, Lightroom would be the only RAM hungry app I'd be using. I would also be upgrading the RAM to 8GB minimum
 
if you can get one for 400 used with a bit of the 1 year warranty left

(gives you the choice to add applecare) craigslist maybe.

or grab the refurb for 469 gives you a 1 year warranty. it is a good machine. I just grabbed a refurb for myself about 2 weeks ago.
 

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Or buy a new one from BHPhoto and get applecare for $54 ... they have two 2011 models in stock as of 1/2/2013 - one with the GPU.
 
I bought a Mac mini 2011 on clearance at Currys for just £299 about 2 months ago and it's the first Mac I've ever owned. Biought it on impulse really just to see what all the fuss was about. it came with a full 12 months warranty.

I've always been a Win/Intel person and for the first few days I found the Mac very frustrating. I then bought a couple of books from Amazon about the Mac OS 10.8.2 and I'm now a lot happier as I understand how it works more.

I had a spare 24" monitor, keyboard and mouse so was good to go. Then at Xmas my wife bought me the wired Apple keyboard and my daughter the bluetooth trackpad. Whilst the keyboard is awesome I'm struggling a bit with the trackpad but I'm sure I'll get there. I also upgraded the memory to 8gb as it was way too slow with only 2gb. I also bought Office for the Mac for £9.00 through a home user programme at work.

If I wasn't a gamer I'd definately only use the Mac as everything just works without needing drivers, it's so quiet and relatively easy to use. The only minor let down is the crappy Intel HD3000 graphics which just about copes with HD video but I knew this when I bought it and I'm not interested in gaming on this machine. I leave that to my PC which has an i5 2600k over clocked at 4.4 ghtz and AMD 7950 overcloed at 1025/1375.

Overall I'm very happy with my Mac mini purchase and would recommend it to everyone.
 
LordHawkwind said:
I bought a Mac mini 2011 on clearance at Currys for just £299 about 2 months ago and it's the first Mac I've ever owned. Biought it on impulse really just to see what all the fuss was about. it came with a full 12 months warranty.

I've always been a Win/Intel person and for the first few days I found the Mac very frustrating. I then bought a couple of books from Amazon about the Mac OS 10.8.2 and I'm now a lot happier as I understand how it works more.

I had a spare 24" monitor, keyboard and mouse so was good to go. Then at Xmas my wife bought me the wired Apple keyboard and my daughter the bluetooth trackpad. Whilst the keyboard is awesome I'm struggling a bit with the trackpad but I'm sure I'll get there. I also upgraded the memory to 8gb as it was way too slow with only 2gb. I also bought Office for the Mac for £9.00 through a home user programme at work.

If I wasn't a gamer I'd definately only use the Mac as everything just works without needing drivers, it's so quiet and relatively easy to use. The only minor let down is the crappy Intel HD3000 graphics which just about copes with HD video but I knew this when I bought it and I'm not interested in gaming on this machine. I leave that to my PC which has an i5 2600k over clocked at 4.4 ghtz and AMD 7950 overcloed at 1025/1375.

Overall I'm very happy with my Mac mini purchase and would recommend it to everyone.
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thank you i have lots of friends who are certain that win is better than mac but its just different and once you get used to it its so much easier for everything other than gaming which is a bit of a let down but thats what bootcamp is for :D

i have the mid 2011 version of mac mini and i love it
 
I bought a mid -11 2.5G mini in May of 2012.

I recently upgraded the RAM to 8G, and will pop in an SSD.

These machines are still fine little grinders. That dual core i5 is holding up great running both Handbrake and MakeMKV simultaneously while browsing, moving files, mail etc.

Meanwhile my W7 Phenom x4 955 3.2G (with 4G RAM) is sluggish while doing the same things, I dont attempt browsing on it. While running both those apps, and if I try to move files from external to the HDD, it takes forever. It is insane the difference in performance between the Win7/AMD/Gigabyte 890 MB combo and the MacMini.
 
This is the route we went when we got my grandparents their first machine since an 10 year old Dell running XP (if you even want to call that running…it was going so slow it was moving backwards).

The 2011 is a solid machine for many many activities.
 
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