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Talk about your minis here! Raves, descriptions, stories, etc

iMpathetic said:
Well? What do y'all have to say about your minis? Give a shout-out, explain what it does for you, tell us all about your setup, etc. I'm really interested in this topic now, because I just ordered my very first new Apple product ever! Which is a mini! Yay!
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Both are 1.66 gHz CD with 2 gigs of RAM.

Mini #1. Photo processing machine. I boot from a 500 gig Seagate Firewire drive. Internal drive has Tiger and WinXP volumes. It runs Aperture and Photoshop CS3 concurrently. I have a 22" Samsung DVI (TN panel) and Canon i9900 printer. Screen gets calibrated weekly with a Spyder2Express, and I only use Red River Arctic Polar Satin and Gloss papers. This machine also serves up our Apple TV.

Mini #2. Home theater. It's connected to a projector for a 160" diagonal screen. It has an Eye TV Hybrid HD tuner with DVR software connected to a roof top antenna and provides 1080 Dolby Digital. It's also connected to an Onkyo 5.1 surround (DTS and DD) system by Toslink optical cable. It has a 320 gig external firewire drive that has our 5.1 surround-intensive ripped DVDs for playback through Front Row (thus retaining the DD or DTS 5.1 audio). Most of the rest of our movies and TV shows are transcoded to MPEG-4 (H.264, Dolby Pro Logic 5-channel surround) on a 500 gig hard drive served by an AEBSn and also played through Front Row or Quicktime through the Onkyo. It's a kick-@$$ system. Can't wait for the Superbowl. :)
 
termina3 said:
The iMac can go much higher as far as the processor, and the GPU and drive play an important part in CS3.
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The gpu does nothing for Photoshop. Nearly all photo and video processing apps rely on the cpu, not the gpu. The notable exception to this is Aperture, which relies on Tiger/Leopard Core Graphics routines.

You can run CS3 on a mini (perhaps well), but I don't see the purpose in saving a few hundred on hardware when you're paying upwards of $1000 for software. Undeniably there would be a visible benefit in the iMac--or at least my argument rests on this assumption.
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No self-respecting photographer (ok, only very few) would use a glossy display for critical photo work. I'm about to retire my Samsung TN matte for a 24" S-IPS matte and all will be good. I'm glad I managed to get a 24" white iMac with matte S-IPS panel. The glossy is a deal-breaker.
 
I don't know why there is such resistance to the mini in some quarters. Granted, it is not suited for "power users," but it runs the programs most everyone uses and it does so with ease.

With the rate of technologic change, I figured that it makes more sense to replace an inexpensive machine like the mini more frequently than it would to replace an expensive machine like the pro less frequently. I'm sure there's a flaw in my logic somewhere, but so far, this strategy has worked for me. Can't wait for the next mini upgrade, although I'm not expecting one next month:(
 
Cave Man said:
The gpu does nothing for Photoshop. Nearly all photo and video processing apps rely on the cpu, not the gpu. The notable exception to this is Aperture, which relies on Tiger/Leopard Core Graphics routines.
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Actually Photoshop CS3 does use the GPU check adobe's site it says there it's the first adobe Photoshop to use the GPU.
 
I have a G4 1.42 GHz mac mini purchased in June 2005. It came with 256mb ram and it still has that.
Works all right for me in every way.
All programs runs smoothly and I am talking about iLife and iwork and all software it came with. Haven't actually used any other programs so can't say about them.
For me it has been the best computer purchased ever, even better than my ibook purchased in 2003.
 
Cave Man said:
Are you going to reveal your lack of experience and knowledge again? Perhaps you should just avoid saying anything, since you've never owned a Mini.
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I've always wondered, in mini's, is photobooth in the dock? is there a photobooth on the mini? what happens when you open it up? (Am i acting stupid enough for ya?)
 
Cave Man said:
Both are 1.66 gHz CD with 2 gigs of RAM.

Mini #1. Photo processing machine. I boot from a 500 gig Seagate Firewire drive. Internal drive has Tiger and WinXP volumes. It runs Aperture and Photoshop CS3 concurrently. I have a 22" Samsung DVI (TN panel) and Canon i9900 printer. Screen gets calibrated weekly with a Spyder2Express, and I only use Red River Arctic Polar Satin and Gloss papers. This machine also serves up our Apple TV.

Mini #2. Home theater. It's connected to a projector for a 160" diagonal screen. It has an Eye TV Hybrid HD tuner with DVR software connected to a roof top antenna and provides 1080 Dolby Digital. It's also connected to an Onkyo 5.1 surround (DTS and DD) system by Toslink optical cable. It has a 320 gig external firewire drive that has our 5.1 surround-intensive ripped DVDs for playback through Front Row (thus retaining the DD or DTS 5.1 audio). Most of the rest of our movies and TV shows are transcoded to MPEG-4 (H.264, Dolby Pro Logic 5-channel surround) on a 500 gig hard drive served by an AEBSn and also played through Front Row or Quicktime through the Onkyo. It's a kick-@$$ system. Can't wait for the Superbowl. :)
Click to expand...

Thanks so much for that, probably the best post Ive seen so far on this thread! Is booting the mini from a fast Firefire drive faster than bootiing from the slower internal drive?
 
Well, I was mainly talking about the difference between, say, a 10,000RPM FW desktop external HD and a 5400RPM SATA internal laptop one. Any thoughts?
 
iMpathetic said:
Well, I was mainly talking about the difference between, say, a 10,000RPM FW desktop external HD and a 5400RPM SATA internal laptop one. Any thoughts?
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Any thoughts? Well, I know the 5400 2.5" SATA drives today are pretty fast, especially if they have a nice cache to go with them. FW400 is 400 Mbit/s. WD claims their 320/5400/8 can do 3 Gb/s. Of course, things are never what they seem...

But still, if there were a 500 gig 5400 2.5" drive on the market (and for a reasonable price), I'd sure like to have it. It would do much better than a FW400-anything, I should think.
 
I use my mini as a home theater pc and for other general purposes. It's connected to my 37" HDTV via a DVI to HDMI cable.

I use the Elgato HD Homerun for DVR functions. The mini does a great job of time shifting high definition TV programs, as well as editing and conversion when I want to archive a program to DVD for later viewing. (I usually let the HD conversion run during the night. It's not a fast process on any computer.)

I also do a little bit of surfing, email, viewing photos, listening to music, etc. The mini makes a fine home entertainment device.

The mini isn't my main computer but it's faster than my main computer which is a dual core G5 Power Mac connected to a 30" HP display. if the Mac mini had a dual-link DVI port, I'd replace the old G5 with one tomorrow.

As for those who claim the Mac mini isn't suitable for running Adobe applications; all I can do is laugh.
 
Cave Man said:
Any thoughts? Well, I know the 5400 2.5" SATA drives today are pretty fast, especially if they have a nice cache to go with them. FW400 is 400 Mbit/s. WD claims their 320/5400/8 can do 3 Gb/s. Of course, things are never what they seem...

But still, if there were a 500 gig 5400 2.5" drive on the market (and for a reasonable price), I'd sure like to have it. It would do much better than a FW400-anything, I should think.
Click to expand...

Well, we will see, I suppose. I will probably be buying an external FW400 case anyway, and stick a Raptor in it. I'll post in a week or two about how that goes.

On another note, what OSes are you guys running on your minis? Do they run Tiger, Leopard, Linux, or what? Also, do any of you boot them into Windows a lot and use them as your XP or Vista box?

Thanks for the interest so far in this thread, everyone, it's really helped me think about how I should set mine up. (and whether or not I should run CS3 :D)
 
iMpathetic said:
On another note, what OSes are you guys running on your minis? Do they run Tiger, Leopard, Linux, or what? Also, do any of you boot them into Windows a lot and use them as your XP or Vista box?
Click to expand...

Both of mine have 10.5.1 and run perfectly fine. There are still network issues to be resolved in 10.5 with Airport, but hopefully the next update will fix it. I don't boot into windows - I use Parallels. I have recently bought Fusion, but haven't had the opportunity to install it.
 
termina3 said:
The iMac can go much higher as far as the processor, and the GPU and drive play an important part in CS3. You can run CS3 on a mini (perhaps well), but I don't see the purpose in saving a few hundred on hardware when you're paying upwards of $1000 for software. Undeniably there would be a visible benefit in the iMac--or at least my argument rests on this assumption.

Anyways, the iMac has fewer cords. I have mild OCD--that alone is worth $200 to me.
Click to expand...

I bought a mini for several reasons:

Glossy screen on iMac
I prefer the computer and display separate for upgrades.
Mini can be used for media machine when new mini/desktop comes out.

That being said I still probably would have bought a 24" iMac if it didn't have the glossy screen. They are nice and a good value. I am very happy now with the mini anyway and I run CS3 fine.
 
Cave Man said:
Both of mine have 10.5.1 and run perfectly fine. There are still network issues to be resolved in 10.5 with Airport, but hopefully the next update will fix it. I don't boot into windows - I use Parallels. I have recently bought Fusion, but haven't had the opportunity to install it.
Click to expand...

Interesting. What do you mean by AirPort issues? Ones that would inhibit my mini being an internet browsing machine/server? I heard 10.5.2 would fix all of this so we'll see. I still don't get what Fusion does-does it just run Windows apps?
 
Cave Man said:
No self-respecting photographer (ok, only very few) would use a glossy display for critical photo work. I'm about to retire my Samsung TN matte for a 24" S-IPS matte and all will be good. I'm glad I managed to get a 24" white iMac with matte S-IPS panel. The glossy is a deal-breaker.
Click to expand...

Sorry. I should've specified white iMac. I agree that glossy won't work.
 
iMpathetic said:
Interesting. What do you mean by AirPort issues? Ones that would inhibit my mini being an internet browsing machine/server? I heard 10.5.2 would fix all of this so we'll see. I still don't get what Fusion does-does it just run Windows apps?
Click to expand...

Sorry, I should have been clearer. There are still a number of issues to work out with the Airport Extreme Base Station (the 'n' version, both 100 and gigabit models), not the Airport card that's in the Macs, Apple TV or iPhone/iPod Touch. The biggest two are dropping of remote volumes/machines such that they cannot be remounted, and Airport disks that can be seen by computers, but which cannot be mounted. Both of these problems require a shut down of the AEBSn - you cannot do a software reset. If you're not using an AEBSn, then I don't think you'll have any problems. This is not a Mini-specific issue; the problem occurs with all Macs.

Fusion and Parallels run Windows apps at near native speeds within the Mac OS. So you can have Windows running as an app within the Mac OS.
 
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