I still see that people are occasionally curious about how the mini performs, so I thought i'd write a small review and answer any questions people might have.
I picked up a stock 2.0ghz 09 Mini. Its 100% untouched so far, with the original HDD and 1gb of RAM.
The first thing I noticed was the smell. It hit me like a brick when I opened the packaging. It reminded me a lot like some kind of glue - not your ordinary "electronics" smell like one would find on a new CRT. The smell increased in intensity when the unit was turned on. After a day or two, its now completely gone, so its no big deal really.
The first thing you notice when turning the Mini on (besides its small size!) is just how quiet it is. The fans rev up briefly when activated, but then slows down to the point of being inaudible. So just how quiet is this guy? I don't have a decibel meter, but I can say with assurance that its quieter than my fanless G4 Cube. You can hear a very slight "sssssssh" sound with your ear next to it. In the dead of night with it running 24/7 you can just about hear it, but it not annoying. Its by far the quietest computer i've ever come across, and thats saying a lot considering i'm a quiet nut. Its not SILENT, but its about as close as you can come considering there is a fan and a HDD spinning inside.
My guess is a good deal of the silence has to do with the HDD. Its the default 120gb 5400rpm drive, which OSX identifies as a Hitachi. I'm actually hesitant to swap the drive out, because i'm almost positive anything else I would stick in there would be louder. Even the seeks are inaudible.
I've tried running the mini with the CPU pegged at 100% for an hour. After that time, it does warm up slightly, and you can feel warm air blowing out the rear. However, not once did the fan speed up. Impressive. The mini supposedly only uses 12-14w when idle, so its the perfect setup to have running 24/7. Just make sure to set your screensaver to "computer name". Any of the fancier 3d ones take up CPU and GPU power, and heats up the system and wastes electricity.
The next big topic would be performance. Considering the "slow" 5400rpm drive in the machine, i'm surprised how fast it boots. I don't even get to see the OS X loading bar. It goes straight from the grey Apple screen to the desktop in just a few seconds. Apps load quickly (1-2 bouches) though I haven't tried anything really intensive like photoshop.
Everything runs rather quickly. Not quite as fast as running Windows XP on a Core2 chip, but certainly better than Vista. Considering all this is with only 1gb of RAM, i'm impressed. Occasionally the system will "stall" for a split second (probably due to swapping ram), but not once have I seen a beach ball.
I've tried several 1080p trailers off of Apple's site and they all run perfectly, using up about 50% of the CPU (or approx 100% of a single core). My biggest complaint so far would be flash performance. While I haven't run into anything that stresses the system to the point of skipping frames, flash sites take up WAY too much CPU usage. A single, low quality youtube video takes up 40% of total CPU. Thats just ridiculous! The same video uses up maybe 5% under Windows. A HD version of a Hulu video sucks anywhere from 50-70% of total CPU usage depending on the scene. There are no skipped frames however. I'm not sure if this is Apple's or Adobe's fault, but it would certainly be nice to have this fixed.
How's gaming performance? Well, I don't really have any games for OS X. I do have WoW on my USB stick, but I don't have an account. Best I could do was watch the performance on the login screen. Running at 1600x1200, the login screen ran at a paltry 10fps. Certainly not a gaming machine.
I've yet to have any application crash. However, this morning I woke up to find the whole system had crashed. The screensaver wasn't running, and all I had was a black screen with a mouse pointer which would respond to movements, but nothing else. Force quit commands did not work. All I could do was to manually shut it down by holding the power button down. Considering i've had PPC macs before with 6 months of flawless 24/7 uptime, its disappointing that the Mini couldn't last 3 days.
My only other (small) complaint would be with the mouse. Besides OS X's annoying acceleration curve, i've found that when right clicking, the menu's that pop up tend to flash a few times. For example, right clicking on a link in Safari, or on the desktop causes the menu which appears to flash two or three time before displaying. It does this about 50% of the time. Very odd.
I picked up a stock 2.0ghz 09 Mini. Its 100% untouched so far, with the original HDD and 1gb of RAM.
The first thing I noticed was the smell. It hit me like a brick when I opened the packaging. It reminded me a lot like some kind of glue - not your ordinary "electronics" smell like one would find on a new CRT. The smell increased in intensity when the unit was turned on. After a day or two, its now completely gone, so its no big deal really.
The first thing you notice when turning the Mini on (besides its small size!) is just how quiet it is. The fans rev up briefly when activated, but then slows down to the point of being inaudible. So just how quiet is this guy? I don't have a decibel meter, but I can say with assurance that its quieter than my fanless G4 Cube. You can hear a very slight "sssssssh" sound with your ear next to it. In the dead of night with it running 24/7 you can just about hear it, but it not annoying. Its by far the quietest computer i've ever come across, and thats saying a lot considering i'm a quiet nut. Its not SILENT, but its about as close as you can come considering there is a fan and a HDD spinning inside.
My guess is a good deal of the silence has to do with the HDD. Its the default 120gb 5400rpm drive, which OSX identifies as a Hitachi. I'm actually hesitant to swap the drive out, because i'm almost positive anything else I would stick in there would be louder. Even the seeks are inaudible.
I've tried running the mini with the CPU pegged at 100% for an hour. After that time, it does warm up slightly, and you can feel warm air blowing out the rear. However, not once did the fan speed up. Impressive. The mini supposedly only uses 12-14w when idle, so its the perfect setup to have running 24/7. Just make sure to set your screensaver to "computer name". Any of the fancier 3d ones take up CPU and GPU power, and heats up the system and wastes electricity.
The next big topic would be performance. Considering the "slow" 5400rpm drive in the machine, i'm surprised how fast it boots. I don't even get to see the OS X loading bar. It goes straight from the grey Apple screen to the desktop in just a few seconds. Apps load quickly (1-2 bouches) though I haven't tried anything really intensive like photoshop.
Everything runs rather quickly. Not quite as fast as running Windows XP on a Core2 chip, but certainly better than Vista. Considering all this is with only 1gb of RAM, i'm impressed. Occasionally the system will "stall" for a split second (probably due to swapping ram), but not once have I seen a beach ball.
I've tried several 1080p trailers off of Apple's site and they all run perfectly, using up about 50% of the CPU (or approx 100% of a single core). My biggest complaint so far would be flash performance. While I haven't run into anything that stresses the system to the point of skipping frames, flash sites take up WAY too much CPU usage. A single, low quality youtube video takes up 40% of total CPU. Thats just ridiculous! The same video uses up maybe 5% under Windows. A HD version of a Hulu video sucks anywhere from 50-70% of total CPU usage depending on the scene. There are no skipped frames however. I'm not sure if this is Apple's or Adobe's fault, but it would certainly be nice to have this fixed.
How's gaming performance? Well, I don't really have any games for OS X. I do have WoW on my USB stick, but I don't have an account. Best I could do was watch the performance on the login screen. Running at 1600x1200, the login screen ran at a paltry 10fps. Certainly not a gaming machine.
I've yet to have any application crash. However, this morning I woke up to find the whole system had crashed. The screensaver wasn't running, and all I had was a black screen with a mouse pointer which would respond to movements, but nothing else. Force quit commands did not work. All I could do was to manually shut it down by holding the power button down. Considering i've had PPC macs before with 6 months of flawless 24/7 uptime, its disappointing that the Mini couldn't last 3 days.
My only other (small) complaint would be with the mouse. Besides OS X's annoying acceleration curve, i've found that when right clicking, the menu's that pop up tend to flash a few times. For example, right clicking on a link in Safari, or on the desktop causes the menu which appears to flash two or three time before displaying. It does this about 50% of the time. Very odd.
