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I want to buy a mini noob questions.

N

Nadesico

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 8, 2006
10
0
I'm on a 24 inch mid 2007 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 gig of ram how much of an improvement would a base 2011 mini be?

One of the biggest reasons I will be buying a mini is for the HDMI for watching things on a 47 inch led tv.

Can I use the hdmi for a TV and still have it hooked to a monitor and do regular surfing and computer tasks while having a movie on at the same time?

I did try a couple mini dvi to hdmi converter cables on my iMac they would work really good but then the iMac would get really hot and eventually the picture on the tv would get fuzzy and the converter cables would stop working.

Inside should be pretty clean as I just cleaned the fans and blew it out with air when I installed a 1tb drive a few months ago when the original 320 gig died.

Since in the buyers guide Apple has never released any product in November or December I will be waiting to see if a new mini comes out this month, if not one gets ordered Nov 1st.

Any preferred ram dealers, and ram modules to stay away from?

Thats about all my questions for now, thanks for any help in advance.
 
Crucial for ram :) meant to be very good and cheap!

Sadly I can't help much more, I'm waiting a month or two before getting my mini, and btw crucial have 16gb of ram for £50 atm!

EDIT: You could run a tv with hdmi with a monitor running a displayport to XXXX adapter too I think!
 
Nadesico said:
I'm on a 24 inch mid 2007 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 gig of ram how much of an improvement would a base 2011 mini be?

One of the biggest reasons I will be buying a mini is for the HDMI for watching things on a 47 inch led tv.

Can I use the hdmi for a TV and still have it hooked to a monitor and do regular surfing and computer tasks while having a movie on at the same time?

I did try a couple mini dvi to hdmi converter cables on my iMac they would work really good but then the iMac would get really hot and eventually the picture on the tv would get fuzzy and the converter cables would stop working.

Inside should be pretty clean as I just cleaned the fans and blew it out with air when I installed a 1tb drive a few months ago when the original 320 gig died.

Since in the buyers guide Apple has never released any product in November or December I will be waiting to see if a new mini comes out this month, if not one gets ordered Nov 1st.

Any preferred ram dealers, and ram modules to stay away from?

Thats about all my questions for now, thanks for any help in advance.
Click to expand...

To answer your question:

1) Yes the performance of a base Mac Mini would still be a lot better than your iMac as the i5 processor is faster than a Core 2 Duo. The RAM also runs faster and the HD 3000 although not a great chip would still be better than the one in your iMac.
On a side note the new Mac Minis that will most likely be announced soon and will have much better processors and graphics as well 4GB RAM standard probably.

2) Yes you can definitely have it hooked up to a TV and monitor at the same time. Not sure how you want your setup to be exactly but it's definitely do-able.

3) That cable problem you are having sounds very strange. Maybe you are using a faulty cable? Your iMac should be powerful enough to drive the TV no problem.

4) I always go with Crucial.com for my RAM and SSD upgrades as they offer good prices and as far as I know they are very reliable.
 
Thanks for the answers I will be going with one of the new mid grade minis.

I'm really bad at this stuff, would I be able to use this monitor

http://www.amazon.com/Dell-UltraSha...UTF8&colid=Y1T39ITLKU6Z&coliid=I1ZHOZ7EZQMPDB

with one of the adapters on the Apple site while using the hdmi for my tv?
I take it, it would be the mini display port to dvi adapter?

Thats what I get for having an AIO iMac for so long can figure out all the thunderbolt, dvi, display port and VGA adapters.

As far as the problems I was having with the iMac Displaying things on my TV with the adapter they were cheap Amazon ones and its possible I just got junk ones. (Though I must have got 3 junk ones)

I was also annoyed at the fact that theres no easy solution to simply put the iMac screen to sleep while playing a movie through the HDMI.
 
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Nadesico said:
Thanks for the answers I will be going with one of the new mid grade minis.

I'm really bad at this stuff, would I be able to use this monitor

http://www.amazon.com/Dell-UltraSha...UTF8&colid=Y1T39ITLKU6Z&coliid=I1ZHOZ7EZQMPDB

with one of the adapters on the Apple site while using the hdmi for my tv?
I take it, it would be the mini display port to dvi adapter?

Thats what I get for having an AIO iMac for so long can figure out all the thunderbolt, dvi, display port and VGA adapters.

As far as the problems I was having with the iMac Displaying things on my TV with the adapter they were cheap Amazon ones and its possible I just got junk ones. (Though I must have got 3 junk ones)

I was also annoyed at the fact that theres no easy solution to simply put the iMac screen to sleep while playing a movie through the HDMI.
Click to expand...

Yeah just get a Mini Display port to DVI adapter and it will work great alongside your HDMI TV :)
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Nadesico said:
Can I use the hdmi for a TV and still have it hooked to a monitor and do regular surfing and computer tasks while having a movie on at the same time?
Click to expand...

jvpython said:
2) Yes you can definitely have it hooked up to a TV and monitor at the same time. Not sure how you want your setup to be exactly but it's definitely do-able.
Click to expand...

Maybe I'm missing something here (and in all the replies above) so could somebody please help me out.

The new Mac Mini released today only has one HDMI port. It no longer has a mini DVI port. How do you connect to two monitors simultaneously (assuming that neither is a Thunderbolt display)?
 
KiwiAus said:
Maybe I'm missing something here (and in all the replies above) so could somebody please help me out.

The new Mac Mini released today only has one HDMI port. It no longer has a mini DVI port. How do you connect to two monitors simultaneously (assuming that neither is a Thunderbolt display)?
Click to expand...

Thunderbolt is backwards compatible with DisplayPort and any adapters made for it. So you can connect pretty much any type of monitor through it.
 
APlotdevice said:
Thunderbolt is backwards compatible with DisplayPort and any adapters made for it. So you can connect pretty much any type of monitor through it.
Click to expand...

Thank you. So you would for example connect HDMI-HDMI and Thunderbolt-DVI (using an adapter). That makes sense.
 
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