Let's integrate and talk smack while we wait for ours to arrive in the mail!
Core Duo, 1GB RAM here.
Core Duo, 1GB RAM here.
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Official "I Ordered an Intel Mac Mini" Thread...
- Thread starter tjwett
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i guess i'm the only one around here who likes weak graphics and minimal storage. fine, have it your way!
Being pretty sure that an Intel Mac mini was coming, I had planned to order one today. However, due to the integrated graphics, and high price, I'm not ordering one. Drop the price $50-$100 on both models, and put in a dedicated GPU, and I'll buy one.
tjwett said:
It took me all afternoon to decide but I finally bit the bullet and ordered the standard Core Solo model. I figured I'd see how well it suits my purposes (using Front Row on my tv and as a very lightly used ftp server) before I upgrade the RAM. I wasn't really looking for a powerhouse or anything. If it runs at least as well as my 1.2GHz G4 iBook, I'll be happy.
admanimal said:
I think it will give your iBook if not a sound thumping then a good whack around the ears. It's a good deal quicker than the 1.42GHz G4 which was noticeably quicker than the 1.2GHz G4 so it should be real nice.
I don't give a flying rat's arse about the integrated graphics malarky, this is not a gaming machine, it's for people to type documents, surf the internet do email and watch movies on. It should run 720p movies very capably and DVDs etc will run with no trouble at all. Shame the price has gone up but if I was in the market for a desktop I'd be looking at the iMac to be honest but the Mac mini would be a nice one to plug in under the TV and watch DVDs and stuff. It would also make a nice little encoding machine for ripping my DVDs to mp4s.
I think you will find that the integrated graphics will be pure garbage.
It is not worth the price increase. Wait 6 months and I bet there will be a video card in there.
It is not worth the price increase. Wait 6 months and I bet there will be a video card in there.
mvelinder said:
My 1.42Ghz mini is all maxed out, and I feel trapped. I'm starting to reach the limits of it's speed and I need more speed. But I'm gona have to wait a while before my dad buys me another computer. Maybe another 1 or 2 years. Unless he wants to give my mini to my sister and my me an iMac. ooooo
skubish said:
I really doubt this. It really depends on what you want to do. I woudln't expect to be playing games on a mac mini - it's not what it is designed for anyways. For general web purposes, watching video and such, a 256MB x1600 or a 32mb integrated card is not going to make any difference at all.
If you wait 6 months, then your'll just be further along in the gaming/graphics race and still have a crap video card compared to what is required. You're missing the purpose of the Mini (as has been stated above already by another). The mini is a well priced mac that will meet many peoples needs.
skubish said:
I used to use a homebuilt PC with a 1.2GHz Duron with 256 MB of RAM and some kind of integrated graphics on the motherboard (it was a cheap one, I forget the exact kind) for basically the same things (except Front Row, obviously) I will use my new mini for. That computer worked out fine for me, and I expect the mini will be even better. Neither of these computers were/will be my primary use machines, so I wasn't looking for the fastest of anything in particular.
That said, I did notice a big improvement in speed when I eventually did add a real graphics card to the Duron machine. But I'm sure with more memory and a better IG chipset, the mini's will do better than that computer's integrated graphics.
So to summarize, I know exactly what integrated graphics are like, and I bought one anyway.
skubish said:
I had a dev kit with the intel gma 900. For non graphics intensive apps it worked great. I was pretty much amazed how well it ran quartz and core image. I got the same ripple with the gma 900 as I got with the nvidia 5200 on my G5 powermac. I believe the gma 950 will be fine. If you are a gamer the chip is a sloutch, but for everyday iLife type apps it will do the job. Pure garbage I think is a bit of an exagerasion.
My local Apple Store claims they'll have them on the 3rd. If so, there's a good chance I'll have one on the 3rd. 80%, say. Still deciding solo vs duo.
I'd really like to add one to my living room for DVD viewing and couch surfing, and I'll likely have it serve up my home web stuff and files as well. The integrated graphics don't bother me. My Intellimac, PowerMac, and PowerBook can handle that sort of stuff just fine already.
I am, however, curious to see how it performs with the "slower" Core chips... the 3.6GHz Pentium in the DTK was pretty slick.
I'd really like to add one to my living room for DVD viewing and couch surfing, and I'll likely have it serve up my home web stuff and files as well. The integrated graphics don't bother me. My Intellimac, PowerMac, and PowerBook can handle that sort of stuff just fine already.
Ditto.badmofo9000 said:
I am, however, curious to see how it performs with the "slower" Core chips... the 3.6GHz Pentium in the DTK was pretty slick.
jsw said:
I was tempted to get the Duo just for the cool factor of having a tiny little dual core CPU machine sitting under my TV, but I decided that I don't really need the power in this machine.
It would be awesome if Apple (or someone else) could come up with a Front Row like interface for Mail and Safari so I could browse those from my couch too. Just a thought.
all this uproar about the integrated graphics is perhaps a bit premature. for one thing, as many have said, this is an entry-level machine. it is not a gaming power house. i wouldn't want to game on an entry-level PC with integrated graphics either. people's argument seems to mostly be "well, for this price you could get a monster PC with blah blah blah graphics card". great. that's how it has always been. Macs have always been more expensive and they likely always will be. i don't know of any evidence that would suggest the Intel switch would result in cheaper prices. that was just speculation based on hopes and prayers. did people think Apple was going to choose this crappy little press event to completely pull a 180 on it's successful entire pricing method of the past 20 years and start putting top-of-the-line components into the cheapest machine they've ever made?!? wake up, this is Apple we're talking about. nothing is going to be cheap. furthermore, we don't even know what this thing will actually perform like. the only details out there are benchmarks from heavy gaming on Windows. that says just about nothing conclusive or useful as to how it will actually run on OS X. geez, i've seen 3 Ghz PCs that run certain things more sluggishly than my little PowerBook. how are so many people running Tiger right now on CPUs half the speed of their PC counterparts? granted, games appear to not be this GPU's bag at all. but there are attributes in this chip that make it optimized for a lot of other things this little machine was probably more intended to do. hell, they didn't even include Bugdom or whatever free games they usually throw in. let's see how it performs with iLife. that's what it was made to do. hey, it may suck. or i may be pleasantly surprised. but i'm not going to have a heart attack because of some Windows Doom 3 benchmarks. the fact is that no one really knows how this machine combined with this processor and memory actually performs.
Woohoo!! I ordered one about 45 minutes after the UK Store went up! Mind you it took me 45 minutes to place the order because Apple's store was so overwhelmed and was going soooo slowly. At first I thought I could be one of the first!!
I went for the 1.66 Core Duo CTO'd with a gig of RAM. 1 Gig of RAM from Crucial is £77.54 whereas the 1 gig straight away from Apple is only £70 and that's before my discount. Selling the two 256MB sticks on eBay would have got me peanuts so it really wouldn't have been worth it.
So that's a 1.66 Core Duo 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD and Superdrive for £601.22 with the discount I can get through my Uni.
I also picked up a Deskjet for 5940 - £79.95 but gives me a £60 rebate. A decent new printer for £20?? Bargain! The girlfriend can have my old one.
Now I've just got to find a nice enough case to puck my headless eMac in so that I can 'give' (loan) it to my girlfriend and convert her to the wonderous world of OS X and Apple!!
I went for the 1.66 Core Duo CTO'd with a gig of RAM. 1 Gig of RAM from Crucial is £77.54 whereas the 1 gig straight away from Apple is only £70 and that's before my discount. Selling the two 256MB sticks on eBay would have got me peanuts so it really wouldn't have been worth it.
So that's a 1.66 Core Duo 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD and Superdrive for £601.22 with the discount I can get through my Uni.
I also picked up a Deskjet for 5940 - £79.95 but gives me a £60 rebate. A decent new printer for £20?? Bargain! The girlfriend can have my old one.
Now I've just got to find a nice enough case to puck my headless eMac in so that I can 'give' (loan) it to my girlfriend and convert her to the wonderous world of OS X and Apple!!
Spanky Deluxe said:...The girlfriend can have my old one.
...Now I've just got to find a nice enough case to puck my headless eMac in so that I can 'give' (loan) it to my girlfriend and convert her to the wonderous world of OS X and Apple!!
ahh, how well we treat our ladies. i do the same thing. something new out? well, i can always give the old one to the girlfriend! nothing says i love you like hand-me-downs.
tjwett said:ahh, how well we treat our ladies. i do the same thing. something new out? well, i can always give the old one to the girlfriend! nothing says i love you like hand-me-downs.
Lol! Its the only way to go! Without people like us a lot of girls would still be using Pentium-2s with 128MB RAM. Unless they have a rich daddy of course!!