The guy who commented about them getting their tech-savvy relative to do it is right. Every mac owner I know has upgraded their ram, or had someone else do it for them. It's the first complaint they all have - usually "Why is google chrome going so slow?" The answer is always, 'if you want that many tabs of chrome open, you need a lot more ram.' lol. Apple is making obsolete computers, straight out of the box; and they know it. Still selling computers in 2016 with 4gb of soldered ram for $1,000+ is a joke.
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Why old mac mini are so expensive?
- Thread starter Retromac2008
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The guy who commented about them getting their tech-savvy relative to do it is right. Every mac owner I know has upgraded their ram, or had someone else do it for them. It's the first complaint they all have - usually "Why is google chrome going so slow?" The answer is always, 'if you want that many tabs of chrome open, you need a lot more ram.' lol. Apple is making obsolete computers, straight out of the box; and they know it. Still selling computers in 2016 with 4gb of soldered ram for $1,000+ is a joke.
Sadly, the cheapest Mac Mini has only 4GB of RAM. And yeah, as it is soldered, it can never be upgraded. I have significant doubts that this Mini will be supported for very long, as the resource requirements of OSX continue to increase...
I bought a used 2012 Mac Mini (2.3 GHz Core i7 version) at a second-hand electronics store in Boston a couple weeks ago for only $500, including the power cord, AND the RAM was maxed out to 16 GB! It also helped that I already have a nice 20" aluminum Cinema Display (thinking of getting the 24" LED one soon, though) and a wireless Apple keyboard and mouse, though I did have to buy an adapter to connect the monitor to the Mini. It was worth every penny. I also already have a slim external USB Blu-Ray burner, so I'm also all set for using optical discs with it.
So what if it doesn't? I've worked with displays like that (i.e. the 24" early 2009 iMacs at my college), and I'm fine with it. Plus, the LED display has the built-in speakers and a webcam as well, and even a MagSafe connector so I can at least charge my MacBook with it too! Plus, the MiniDisplay cable should work with the Thunderbolt port on my Mini.
My co-worker upgraded his Fusion Drive iMac (27") with a 2TB Samsung SSD.
Took him quite a while to get everything back together.
Not for the faint-hearted.
Took him quite a while to get everything back together.
Not for the faint-hearted.
Right now you can sell the quad core 2012 mini for more than you paid for it. That's because the new mini doesn't have a quad core option, so prices on the older quads have gone totally insane.
More generally, though, minis hold their value so well because of several things added together. Compared to an Imac, minis are small and easy to ship, so they're easy to sell on Ebay. They're good for many different tasks (media server, network server, etc) that Imacs are not good for. They're Apple's most affordable computer, which makes them highly sought after by people who can't afford a thousand dollar system.
Finally, all Macs carry a price premium because they're macs -- if you want to enjoy the benefits of OSX, be able to run Mac-only software, or simply own a computer that's not a windows PC, a mac is the only hassle-free way to go (linux is not hassle-free, neither are hackintoshes). So the fact that it's a mac sets a basement on its value. And because minis are so inexpensive to begin with, that basement isn't all that far below the retail price of the computer in the first place.
Why so sad? No one is forced to buy the cheapest Mac Mini. For Some it may be all the computer they need.
True! However, a long time ago, I got the low-end Mini (2009 model) for my mother. It's certainly served all her needs well; at least, it did until early last year. At that point, it slowed to a crawl.
It turns out, she had upgraded to OSX 10.10, and the 2GB of RAM in the machine just wasn't enough any more. I upgraded it to 4GB of RAM, and everything was fine again. But if that 2GB had been soldered, she'd have either needed to downgrade to an older version of OSX (and learned how to avoid future upgrade requests from Apple), or we'd have had to get rid of the computer and buy her a new one.
In short, her 2009 Mini is still perfectly useful in 2016 because the RAM could be upgraded. If it took only 6 years for 2GB to be insufficient to run fully updated OSX, I would guess that the low-end 2014 Mini will be unable to run it by around 2020 or so...
I doubt, the 4 GB RAM will be enough for OSX 10.12 to be usable if you open any installed applications, not to say to browse the web with youtube video tabs ...If it took only 6 years for 2GB to be insufficient to run fully updated OSX, I would guess that the low-end 2014 Mini will be unable to run it by around 2020 or so...