Mac Mini: 11 Months Since Last Update

[dmelgar]

which enclosure is that?

i'm asking as i've been running my desktop off an external enclosure for years now, and from my experience usb2 has been borderline unsuable outside of backup tasks. the moment frequent random accesses kick in (typical for normal hdd use) usb2's performance goes south.

I always get the cheapest enclosure available at my local PC store. Which explains why I have three external enclosures and they're all different.

I have no idea what "brand" it is. Its a no-name. Nothing on the enclosure. When I look in the System Profiler, it says the manufacturer (of the chipset I assume) is Sunplus Technology. Its a USB to Parallel-ATA bridge.

The other enclosure that I have that is the Firewire/USB says its a HDT725040VLAT80 by Initio. This enclosure works fine with Firewire, but half the speed with USB.

 

[Brien]

Yeah Apple needs to make the Mac Mini a tad more affordable and just a better machine.

It's a sad excuse for a mini computer to be selling it at the same exact price untouched since August of 2007. That speedbump was barely anything, so you could even say it has been untouched since early 2007 without any crazy updates.

Apple is shifting focus to notebooks, that's where they make the $$, but they are truly neglecting desktops by ignoring Mac Mini.

Apple's reluctance to update the Mini, along with even higher prices this revision, may be telling of Apple going after the high-end clientele. Perhaps a 'cheap' Mac no longer fits their vision and the Mini will be quietly EOL'd.

 

[dmelgar]

which enclosure is that?

i'm asking as i've been running my desktop off an external enclosure for years now, and from my experience usb2 has been borderline unsuable outside of backup tasks. the moment frequent random accesses kick in (typical for normal hdd use) usb2's performance goes south.

I just did a bunch of speed tests, and it didn't come out as I expected. I moved the drive I usually use via firewire to the USB enclosure and I achieved much lower rates. The tests show that the more devices I connect via USB the slower access is, even if those devices aren't being used.

The drop in speed is pretty dramatic.
Firewire drive: 36MB/sec
Same drive via USB: 35MB/sec. Only device on the bus.
drive + printer : 33MB
drive, printer, HDTV card: 28MB
driver, printer, HDTV, Bluray burner: 21MB

I don't have a firewire chain setup so I can't tell if that would slow down as well, but the trend with USB is very disturbing. Maybe I need to rethink the importance of firewire.

 

[montanachad]

Apple's reluctance to update the Mini, along with even higher prices this revision, may be telling of Apple going after the high-end clientele. Perhaps a 'cheap' Mac no longer fits their vision and the Mini will be quietly EOL'd.

This low income client has too sell my Mac Mini G4 1.5GHz and older PC laptop, work a couple days to even afford the current no-update Mac Mini CSD. Why didn't the Mini get a price drop, standard superdrive, and speed bump, I ask myself. I would need too save for months to get a new Mac laptop.

 

[FastEddy]

" ... Although FW400 can be faster than USB2.0 I've seen more variability on chipsets. ..."

FireWire 400 is slightly faster than USB 2.0, generally, especially in bulk file transfers like video files. With small file transfers like syncing cell phones, etc. the performance differences are difficult to detect. FW800 is twice as fast as either.

There are some performance differences in the chip set used in FireWire and USB 2.0:

FW connectivity to multiple cameras is best through the Agere' chip set. Up to 8 DV cameras can be connected with this FW chip set, and all 8 can feed video "simultaneously" without frame drops. Lucent owns the manufacturing rights to the Agere' chip set, but this applies to very recent Lucent chips.

FW800 and FW400 hubs with the recent Texas Instruments chips are best = better data flow through the multiports of the hub. These are ubiquitous in modern hubs and FireWire over fiber extensions.

NEC used to make hub and port card chip sets that were considered the slowest, but quite reliable. NEC no longer makes FW chips.

USB 1.1 and 2.0 connectivity to Cypress chip set in keyboards, mice, joysticks and printers are the best, most reliable and most cross compatible, WinPC, Apple Mac, Linux, Unix, etc. (There is now only one system that requires "special" USB chips for the host port card and motherboard connections, Sun Solarus, all other Sun systems = no problems.)

For USB audio (DAC) there is huge controversies as to which is best ... TI and several British and Danish chip houses seem to be in the fore.

Because of the peer to peer topology, better "handshaking", significantly lower "jitter" specs, and better bandwidth, FireWire audio (DAC / ACD) are vastly superior to USB audio (DAC) chip sets. FireWire 400 can stream eight (8), bi-directional channels of 24 bit / 96k audio ... USB 2.0 but two 24 bit channels, one way at a time, only.

====

Mercenary announcement: I work for USBStuff.com and FireWireStuff.com, since 1996. The above information is mostly from hands on experience and tech support Q&A.

 

[FastEddy]

In the local Apple store yesterday ... no upgrade yet

As I say, we intend to buy two more when the upgrade happens.

 

[FastEddy]

... just bought another Mac Mini w/1 gig ram ...

I plan on getting another sometime within the next couple of months.