Apple Mac Mini MC270LL/A Desktop
- Average Rating:
- List Price:
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$699.00
- Our Price:
- Too low to display
Product Info
- Brand: Apple
- EAN: 0885909340422
- Manufacturer: Apple Computer
Features
- 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
- 2 GB of Memory
- NVIDIA GeForce 320M Graphics
- 320 GB Serial ATA Hard Drive
- 8x-Speed SuperDrive
Spotlight customer reviews:
- Customer Rating:
- Summary: Using it to dual boot Snow Leopard and Windows - works great
- Comment: I had planned to give this computer four stars instead of five, because I thought the price was a little high for a Core 2 Duo based machine. But, right after I bought it, my old dual core opteron Windows behemoth gave up the ghost. That was the business machine for my husband's musician / furniture delivery proprietorship. We're Mac people, especially him - he refuses to use a pc, but it's bad enough trying to do books for a musician without having to try to do them on the accounting software that gets made for Macs.
Thanks to boot camp, I was able to resurrect my windows machine, for all intents and purposes, on a separate partition and run my windows applications, including quickbooks pro natively. In effect, I got two computers for the price of one. I got my cuddly little mini mac for the living room netflix watching and media playing. And I got my big bad business machine.
Thanks to the demise of the behemoth, I already had a bluetooth keyboard and mouse available, so I feel like I'm even money ahead.
Bottom line: this computer is a great value if you need something versatile enough to run two completely different operating systems and have your own keyboard, mouse, and monitor. It's a fair value if you want a decent home computer and the Mac software suite is important to you. I'm totally sold on time machine, which is integrated into the Mac operating system. I've used it to recover from a hard drive failure, to port ALL of my files and settings and programs around with me while the computer had to go to the shop. I just started up another mac from my external drive, and it was like working on my own computer. I've used it to upgrade hard drives. And I've used it to retrieve mistakenly deleted files.
But, if you're comfortable with pcs and don't have huge gaming demands to put on one, there are some really cool net top boxes that are priced much much lower. If all you are really looking for is a small form factor, and you're on a budget, I'd suggest going with one of those.
- Customer Rating:
- Summary: C'mon! It's a Mac!!!
- Comment: lots of power in a small device. Mac Mini has all the computing power i need, it runs great and looks even better. the Mac Revolution is in full swing!
- Customer Rating:
- Summary: Great machine
- Comment: This is a great little machine. Excellent first Mac, media center, or "additional" Mac. Perfect for the average user.
- Customer Rating:
- Summary: my first Mac
- Comment: While I have used computers for most of my 33 years in this world, this is the first I've ever purchased, and it is the first Mac I have ever used. Much as I can drive a car but have no idea how to change the oil, I can use a computer but have always turned to an instructor or technical support when there's a problem. If you want a highly technical product review please skip this one. If you're new to Mac or generally wary of buying a computer this review should be helpful.
First, the Mac Mini is so small I could hardly believe it. Since I bought it for an entertainment center I couldn't spare the space for a full desktop model. I connected it to my receiver with an HDMI cable from Amazon, which in turn connects to my Sharp Aquos 65" LCD HDTV. As soon as it turned on I was VERY impressed by how sharp and crisp the picture is. I did have a rather comical problem getting started though, as unknown to me the entire Mac toolbar along the top of the screen was being cut off, leading to a very confused support person having me repeatedly say "What Apple icon?! There's no such thing on my screen." Fortunately it was resolved in seconds once I knew the problem existed. I also had a hard time getting my internet connection to work initially, but that was due to my limited knowledge and not the product. By default the Mac is set to search for a wireless internet signal, a feature which had to be switched off before my wired ethernet connection would work. My Magic Mouse and Apple keyboard were detected in seconds and didn't require any setup. The SD card slot works flawlessly, so there's no need to directly connect a camera if you don't feel like digging out your USB cable.
Once the initial minor frustrations were taken care of there was no issue at all. You can set the Mac to search regularly for any updates to download from Apple so it will always run smoothly. There are help menus if you can't find something. The "Dock", the name given to the software icons along the bottom of the screen, takes some getting used to. If you're new to Mac the icons aren't very intuitive. Still, this is a review of the machine and not the software, so no points off for my own learning curve. Everything I try to do, from saving images to using iPhoto, involves getting familiar with new software, but it always works as it should. Just make sure you shut down completely and turn the Mac back on after downloading any system update, as failing to do so led to the DVD player not functioning until I did.
One feature I love is something called the Dashboard, which with the click of an icon appears on your screen with "widgets", windows of your choice with various features. I have a local weather forecast with current conditions, a calculator, sports score updates and countless other things at my fingertips without having to do a web search any more. It's positively brilliant.
I'm sorry to say that the manual is of almost no help at all when it comes to learning the software. The Apple home page is there when you open the web browser and they do have guides, but a book that lays it all out for me would be preferable. With so many Mac owners being first timers, that's a corner they shouldn't have cut.
Newcomers should know that the disk drive loads differently than you may expect. There's no tray, and unlike my Playstation 3 which sucks in a disk right away, you have to push a disk about 90% of the way inside before the Mac does the rest. At first I was worried I might break it because it seemed like I was forcing the disk in. Strangely, when you eject the disk it comes about 2/3rds of the way out, but it works and that's what matters.
Looking at all the features and feeling intimidated, I noticed that this machine comes with 2GB of RAM, and had no idea if those critical of it meant I should be worried. Not once has this machine stalled in doing anything I ask of it. I can have internet radio going with multiple web pages open and it works. I can run two videos simultaneously and there's no hiccups. The DVD player works fine, though it's impractical for me since I'm using an entertainment center with a dedicated DVD player connected.
If you are just an average person who simply wants a computer so you can check your e-mail, surf the net, copy and edit your photos, store your digital music, and other everyday tasks, you can't do better than this machine. For a grand total of under $850, I have a cutting edge computer with every feature I could ever need, a great mouse and keyboard, and my entertainment center has been transformed into a complete media hub and home office. I still have a lot of features to learn, but overall my only regret is not buying this sooner.
- Customer Rating:
- Summary: An incredible little super machine!
- Comment: I researched the heck out of the mac mini. Once everything looked good I gave it the go. I have worked on macs at school, then worked solely on pc's at home. So I was finally able to buy one for school/freelancing (graphic/web design student).
(disclaimer here for pc user skeptics: Even though I think highly of mac's and their os interfaces, I am no mac but slave. This is so you can know that this review is coming from someone who has had experience in knowing the truth about macs and pc's. That they serve different purposes. Pc's are for server/standardized setups/do it yourself junkies (which I am :D), and macs are made to be real work horses for graphic/multimedia work. Everything about the os is made for a high productivity rate.)
Appearance: Just opening my amazon box to getting it all set up (which only took about 5 minutes) is just amazing even in it's presentation. Apple packages the product very nicely. The product is more beautiful than I had thought it was even from pictures all over the internet. It's so very small, and beautiful. I thought the older mac mini's were good looking, but this goes along with the stream lined look of the unibody mac's/macbooks.
Ports/jacks: The back of the machine is gorgeous as well, with the black face. HDMI is pretty cool, I do wish there were more ports on the back, but then again I don't mind at the same time because I got a D-link 4port powered usb hub where I plug most things in. I would actually suggest this to anyone as it not only saves the life of the mini's internal power supply, but also saves wear and tear of the usb ports on the back of the unit. Slot drive is awesome as well, no clunky tray slamming out like on my old 05 pc.
Setup: This mac is perfect for anyone who already has a keyboard/mouse/monitor. I would even recommend this to ANYONE not doing professional video editing for a living. This mac is plenty powerful for anyone's needs, and it is a SIGNIFICANT amount cheaper than any of the other macs, excluding macbooks ect. because if you need mobility, then you need mobility.
Performance: So far I have been nothing but impressed with this machine. My stats are the 2.4ghz processor with 2gb or ram. I have been able to run indesign, photoshop, flash music player, flash video, all in different spaces at the same time. And with all that it hasn't been laggy. Boots up in maybe 20-30 seconds, shuts down and goes to sleep almost instantly. For someone who only uses internet, word processors, photo, home video editing; I would say 2gb is fine. But if you are like me and use a lot of graphic intensive programs like me. You would want to slap in 4 or even 8gb of ram. I plan to put in 8 as I have a hobby of working with AfterEffects, and Premiere.
If anyone is curious, I have Adobe Master Collection installed on my mac mini, Have not noticed one bit of slow down with all those behemoth programs on the system. Also, if anyone is curious, I have not played around with premiere really yet on it, and have only spent about 10 minutes with after effects. To test it out, I opened a large complicated after effects file, and it did pretty well. I would seriously suggest though to anyone wanting to do heavy video editing that you install 8gb of ram. I would even say that you could use this machine as video student, if you have some patience. Think about it, people who were doing video editing professionally maybe 5 years ago were working on portable macbook systems that were not far off from the mac mini. If you really need a speedy machine on a budget, along with upgrading the ram, you could replace the internal 5400rpm drive with a 7200rpm or even solid state drive. Another option is to get an external firewire 7200rpm or solidstate drive for file working/scratch disk drive. Even with all that it would still be cheaper than other macs.
Other thoughts: I also have a pc, and now the mac mini. The mini is so small that I just put it on top of my desk right beside my monitor. Then I bought a trendnet kvm switch (base model). So now I can use one keyboard/mouse/monitor, and push one button to switch. Although ever since I got my mac, I have only used my pc for word, a couple games, not very often.
OSX: Love the user interface, the entire reason I bought a mac. Spaces, expose, and everything else makes osx highly productive. Took me awhile to learn how to install programs on a mac because it was so plain simple. Instead of going through tons of setup windows, you just drag the program icon into the applications folder and it's done. One step. The mini comes with iLife, which I have absolutely no need for. It gives you some basic programs to work with making a web site, photos, video, mail, garage band, calendar, ect. I Just don't use them because I am going into the field of graphic/web/multimedia, so I just use my kick-A Adobe master collection, lol. For anyone who is just a general user in these areas, they actually are pretty good, especially imovie which is so easy to use.
Conclusion:I have been so happy with my purchase. And if you're going to buy the base 2.4ghz model, you might as well buy it from amazon to save yourself the appletax price as well as regular tax and get free shipping as well! Great Deal. I would recommend this computer to anyone who is willing to try out the mac world, who is a graphic/media student, or to anyone making motion pictures, OBVIOUSLY. Great snappy little machine.
Amazon: as far as amazon on this purchase, Amazon exceeded my expectations by delivery. Arrived two weeks early! How's that for great service.
