What do you think of the mac mini?

The Mac Mini is a great budget computer. It includes built-in wireless (“Airport”) and Bluetooth. You can buy a $30 USB hub to add more devices.

thanks a lot,should i buy an brand new one or a used one?and wheres the best place to get it besides a mac store

You can get a deal on refurb macs at the apple store online that include the apple one-year warranty. I wouldn’t bother with a used one via craigslist or wherever, too risky.

It may be risky because a new one could be released very soon, outdating yours. If that doesn’t bother you, then go ahead.

People get so hung up on the idea of their Mac being out of date.

My advice: buy a Mac that you will wanna use for three or four years, maybe more. Of course your Mac will go “out of date” during this time period. Who cares; it’ll still do what you want to do, and will happily run Snow Leopard and probably the next two OS releases after that.

I agree with Dave; the mini is a powerful little budget Mac and it sounds like it will do you fine.

oh no, come to think of it, my macbook pro is out of date too, and it’s only 3 months old, now my machine is worthless * overacting voice *

the mac mini is just a sweet machine, truth of the matter, i wouldn’t mind having one as a small server if it had FW800

can i use a mouse from a pc for the mac mini?

sure, any usb mouse will do, even those weird “anti rsi” things from the late 90’s

I thought they were discontinued… meaning the mac mini isn’t being produced anymore?

Y isnt being used anymore?its such a great concept

Well you can still buy them on the apple site, maybe that was just an evil rumor haha

Not true

It’s dead as ever: http://www.apple.com/macmini/

Just ordered the mini online,thanks everyone

Enjoy. Is this your first mac?

I recently bought a 24 HD imac,so im having this one for my room which will also stream my movies and songs,ofcourse with an external hard drive.is it possible to make the minis performance even faster and upgrade it?and where would i get that done,geek squad?

Avoid Geek Squad. You can swap parts, but it’s a hassle.

Problem is i dont really know how to do it myself,maye staples,whats wrong with geek squad?

The mini is not a computer for someone who wants to open the case and start swapping parts around.

Geek Squad = poorly trained, bad reputation. Check consumerist.com

Well i just want to give it more ram gigs and make it top notch

That you can do, but it’s much easier to let Apple online or the Genius Bar do it. You can expand its HD capacity with externals if need be.

I like how people thought I was being ‘wrapped up’ in whether your Mac is outdated or not. I’m not. It’s just that one big criticism with Apple is that they outdate their Macs and iPods all the time, and the people who own the older ones have nothing better to do than whine about it. So I’m just saying, if you’re one of those people, wait for the new Mac Mini to come out.

Well, I for one think that the Mini is great. But it’s not easy to get into so if you are planning on upgrading the memory, be careful. I am a Mac person and upgraded my Dad’s Mini’s RAM and it was scary. There are alot of Mac designs out there which aren’t fixer-friendly.

But if you don’t mind buying tons of stuff to attach to the outside of your Mac, yeah they are wonderful! I use one as a DVR with a 1TB external drive. It sit on my TV stand, very inconspicuously, and also plugs into the TV itself so I can use it as a monitor and surf the web on my 36” HDTV! I also have it jacked into my stereo so I can listen to internet radio broadcasts.

wasn’t the mini updated a few week ago? as of early july… after nearly 2 years of complete neglect…i have heard it is hard to upgrade apart from the ram and the hd….also it’s still not great for gaming….

still seems quite a neat idea….

@maccmann what’s it like using the web via a tv screen…?