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Should I get the M1 mini as a desktop replacement or just use the M1 MBA with a dock?
- Thread starter abhi182
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I've had no issues using the Air plugged into a 4k monitor, lid open, running a bazillion tabs and various programs. I think the few snags I run into are because of software being a little funny running on ARM, rather than any kind of resource constraint. I don't see any reason to get a mac Mini tbh.
The Mac Mini would be useful if you have multiple, large monitors. I have three 4k displays so the Mini wouldn't be enough.
One thing that I will do with the new MacBook Air is to try my trading programs on it. If it does run my trading programs (Rosetta is fine as I don't expect them to run natively), then it will make me far more confident getting an M1X system down the road. I have a bunch of other programs that likely don't have native ports but I can just run them on an Intel Mac.
Right, fair point if you need multiple displays. I am hugely impress with the Air, having first dabbled in Macs this summer with a 16" that overheated too much and I returned. Now running a fanless computer in the same external set up that turned the 16" into a jet engine. I'd prefer to have a 16" with AS, but happy to have this now (during WFH, when I have a monitor in any case) and will consider upgrading whenever that comes out.
Hah. This reminded me of those tongue-in-cheek "money-saving tips from McDonad's" TV ads which ran in the UK during the 90s.
I can imagine. I guess that's the price you pay for PC gaming on a laptop. Though things are much better these days. Those Razer gaming laptops look good for portability, but I've mainly heard bad impressions about them so I've avoided the brand.It really was a monster of a thing. I’m talking way back in the day when having dual graphics cards in a laptop was really only beginning to show up in precious few systems. It also had a desktop processor, rather than a laptop variant, so cooling that no doubt contributed to its gargantuan size, and the heat produced.
I thought it would be a great portable gaming system, and it was, it was a stunningly good gaming system..... The portable bit, well, not so much, it hardly ever left my desk. But it made a bloody good radiator
Don't know what you are doing but the M1 MBA 100% throttles on any sustained load. It's only fine with burst loads. Keeping the lid closed traps the heat in the case more.
I wrote an embedded operating system on one of those using only that tiny screen. I can't imagine doing that now.Compaq portable computer:
It's fine even under load. It loses about 10%-15% of the top performance after 10-15 minutes under load. It is still very fast even then.
Just an update that I swapped the setup.
I used the MBA in docked mode for 1.5 weeks or so while using a LG Gram for untethered use.
While I had no complaints about the performance, I realized that my rekindled love for computers was on account of several factors combined including the MBAs immediate resume/ super snappy performance
The docked mode was killing some of that joy with its resume lag (external monitor) and that slight but noticeable performance hit/ Temperature rise with 4k extended display mode.
The LG laptop OTOH had minor nags in undocked mode anyway so might as well use that for the desktop setup (not to mention the default 3 year warranty given the higher likelihood of something conking off in docked mode- shame on you apple for charging a bomb for the same).
May still end up picking a mini if some nice deal comes along
I used the MBA in docked mode for 1.5 weeks or so while using a LG Gram for untethered use.
While I had no complaints about the performance, I realized that my rekindled love for computers was on account of several factors combined including the MBAs immediate resume/ super snappy performance
The docked mode was killing some of that joy with its resume lag (external monitor) and that slight but noticeable performance hit/ Temperature rise with 4k extended display mode.
The LG laptop OTOH had minor nags in undocked mode anyway so might as well use that for the desktop setup (not to mention the default 3 year warranty given the higher likelihood of something conking off in docked mode- shame on you apple for charging a bomb for the same).
May still end up picking a mini if some nice deal comes along