Hi,
I finally received my Mac Mini early 2009. It's the 2.26GHz version, 160GB hard drive, upgraded to 4GB memory. As a sort of trip down the memory lane, I'll be comparing it to my current big PC setup that has an Opteron 185, Radeon 5450, 2GB memory and 150GB Raptor + 1.5GB Samsung drives running Windows 7. BTW, this is my first Mac. The only hands-on experience with Macs I can remember goes back to a Mac SE somewhere around the end of the 1980s. I remember being very impressed with Hypercard
Boot-up is faster on the Mac, although the advantage of the Raptor drive quickly comes out when opening apps. Storage is obviously much too limited at the moment to use the Mac as a main computer. I'll have to fix that: I'm considering a Samsung 830 256GB SSD + a 1GB drive. With a mounting solution and an external enclosure for the SuperDrive, this should set me back around 350 and give me a great upgrade in both speed and capacity. The Samsung SSD is SATA 6G but it's also the cheapest 256GB on the market right now.
From some benchmarks, I gathered that the Mac's processor should be around 20% faster, but the GPU should be quite a bit slower. That's not noticeable at all at the moment. I won't be playing games and the heaviest processing I'll be doing repeatedly is possibly some photo conversions (RAW, web publishing) for very limited amounts of photos. Despite the faster CPU and hotter GPU, the Mac is much, much more silent than my custom-built PC. The heatsink in there was for an older processor and some fans have their work cut out to keep things cool. That's what you get with a PC of 8 years old that has been upgraded in nearly every way. The Mac has the definite edge here. Also, it takes up about the space of a small stack of CDs instead of major leg room under my desk
I am struggling a bit with keyboard and mouse behaviour in some cases. For example, the sign seems to be hidden under ctrl-alt-2 instead of a more standard alt-5. Also, moving around in text takes some getting used to (alt-arrows to skip words instead of ctrl, command-c/x/p for copy/paste instead of ctrl, ...). I'll be reading up on a few things, like Apple's Mac 101, to get used to it quicker.
I'm longing for a Mac portable, so this Mac Mini is (in my case) a very cheap way to get used to a Mac before making the jump completely. Depending on what happens in my freelancing activity in the next few weeks, I could find myself with an MBA 11" or holding out for the rumoured 13" Retina MBP.
Peter.
I finally received my Mac Mini early 2009. It's the 2.26GHz version, 160GB hard drive, upgraded to 4GB memory. As a sort of trip down the memory lane, I'll be comparing it to my current big PC setup that has an Opteron 185, Radeon 5450, 2GB memory and 150GB Raptor + 1.5GB Samsung drives running Windows 7. BTW, this is my first Mac. The only hands-on experience with Macs I can remember goes back to a Mac SE somewhere around the end of the 1980s. I remember being very impressed with Hypercard
Boot-up is faster on the Mac, although the advantage of the Raptor drive quickly comes out when opening apps. Storage is obviously much too limited at the moment to use the Mac as a main computer. I'll have to fix that: I'm considering a Samsung 830 256GB SSD + a 1GB drive. With a mounting solution and an external enclosure for the SuperDrive, this should set me back around 350 and give me a great upgrade in both speed and capacity. The Samsung SSD is SATA 6G but it's also the cheapest 256GB on the market right now.
From some benchmarks, I gathered that the Mac's processor should be around 20% faster, but the GPU should be quite a bit slower. That's not noticeable at all at the moment. I won't be playing games and the heaviest processing I'll be doing repeatedly is possibly some photo conversions (RAW, web publishing) for very limited amounts of photos. Despite the faster CPU and hotter GPU, the Mac is much, much more silent than my custom-built PC. The heatsink in there was for an older processor and some fans have their work cut out to keep things cool. That's what you get with a PC of 8 years old that has been upgraded in nearly every way. The Mac has the definite edge here. Also, it takes up about the space of a small stack of CDs instead of major leg room under my desk
I am struggling a bit with keyboard and mouse behaviour in some cases. For example, the sign seems to be hidden under ctrl-alt-2 instead of a more standard alt-5. Also, moving around in text takes some getting used to (alt-arrows to skip words instead of ctrl, command-c/x/p for copy/paste instead of ctrl, ...). I'll be reading up on a few things, like Apple's Mac 101, to get used to it quicker.
I'm longing for a Mac portable, so this Mac Mini is (in my case) a very cheap way to get used to a Mac before making the jump completely. Depending on what happens in my freelancing activity in the next few weeks, I could find myself with an MBA 11" or holding out for the rumoured 13" Retina MBP.
Peter.
