Mac Mini

[babelfish]

Hey all,

Just wanted to get feedback from the people who are using a Mac Mini as I am interested in getting one for myself.

Main questions are how do you like it and what do you mainly use it for? Myself I'd probably use it as a secondary computer hooked up to a large display for research and/or as a media centre.

Final question: (addressed to the people who have it hooked up to their HDTV) Has hooking up the Mac Mini been easy? Is set-up pain free and does everything work out fine? If there have been problems what where they?

Thanks much everyone,

This is the first time I'm ever going to get a desktop so lots of things I don't know :\

[Wyatt]

I don't have my mini any more (I had to go portable), but it's a damn fine machine. It was my only computer for a while, so it was my media center, my Internet machine, my schoolwork machine, and my production machine (I dabble in Web development). It did an excellent job of all those things.

As far as hooking it up to a TV goes, it'll depend a bit on what connections you have on your TV. If you have DVI or VGA inputs on your TV, it'll be easy as pie. If you only have HDMI, you'll have to get a DVI-HDMI converter.

[babelfish]

Well this is what I have -

http://www.samsung.com/uk/products/television/tftlcd/le40n73bdxxeu.asp?page=Specifications

The TV has pretty much every connecting I'd ever need (I think!).

Frankly connecting my 17" MPB (gen1) to it has been a nightmare and it still doesn't work -.-

But that's a problem for another day hehe - well not really more of a :'(

[zippy]

The TV has pretty much every connecting I'd ever need (I think!).




BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!



Sorry, I have nothing relevant to add.

[turtle]

I have a G4 Mini and I use it for everything but Aperture. I use it for PS, F@H, all my E-mail, web server, FTP server, media server, Office docs, audio/video for pleasure, encoding/decoding audio/video, and several others. I just can't think of all of them right now.

I have it connected to a 21" CRT (http://www.amazon.com/Sony-CPD-G520-Trinitron-CRT-Monitor/dp/B000058ALT) monitor so it works well for me. :)

[Chinney]

My new Intel Mini is very capable and a pleasure to use. The only thing that I imagine that it would not do capably is advanced gaming and other apps that require real VPU power. I don't need it for that though. Regular games - Civ 3, for example - work just great on it. One thing that I was pleasantly surprised about is how quiet it is - much quieter that my G5 iMac, a wonderful machine in its own right, but whose fan whines quite a bit at medium to high intensity use.

[turtle]

The Mini has always been a quiet one. I don't think I have ever heard my Mini.

[Wraven]

turtle,

That is weird - I do a lot of video conversion (MP4 / H.264 to iPod-spec H.264) on my old (now wife's) PPC Mac mini and it gets crazy loud when the processor has been working for a while. Doesn't bother me though, just thought I'd point it out. Do you ever do intense processing on that PPC Mac mini of yours?

[turtle]

turtle,

That is weird - I do a lot of video conversion (MP4 / H.264 to iPod-spec H.264) on my old (now wife's) PPC Mac mini and it gets crazy loud when the processor has been working for a while. Doesn't bother me though, just thought I'd point it out. Do you ever do intense processing on that PPC Mac mini of yours?

Constantly. It's always at 100% CPU usage due to F@H. Maybe the reason I can't hear it is because of it's location and I do have other machines in my office. Then again, maybe I'm so used to it that I just don't consciously notice it anymore. :\ I don't hear it either way. :)

[Dorian Gray]

Wraven, that's interesting. For some reason there have always been wildly different accounts of the mini's noise. My own experience was with my aunt's, which I used to encode video overnight a few times (G4 1.25 GHz). It ran absolutely silently after hours of 100% CPU use. By silent I mean I had to put my ear within a few inches to hear the very gentle rustle from the fan. The hard disk being accessed made much more noise.

Noisy is an iBook G4 when the fan comes on. :eek: It's the character of the noise as well as the volume that is so irritating. Luckily the fan doesn't come on under normal use.

[Chinney]

Meanwhile, my (minor) complaint about the noise of my iMac G5 at high CPU/VPU usage is not shared by everyone. It all seems to depend on the particular machine (i.e., not the model, but the actual individual machine).

[PKIDelirium]

Noisy is an iBook G4 when the fan comes on. :eek: It's the character of the noise as well as the volume that is so irritating. Luckily the fan doesn't come on under normal use.

:confused:

My iBook's fans are pretty quiet even when they're running full tilt.

[World Leader Pretend]

My iMac won't ever be quiet!!! :grr: :grr: :mad:

*slaps it*

On the other hand though, it is the nicest computer I've used. :)

[morgan rose]

how does noise have anything to do with the original post, I to am thinkin of purchasing one to replace my dvd player, cd, and itunes through my plasma, i have some moeny to blow so i am not looking for the cheap way out, if I get a mac mini will it be easy to hook up to my TV and will everything look normal and not stretched out, also should i get a better sound card or will the mini act as a reciever with surround sound capabilities.

[Wraven]

how does noise have anything to do with the original post

Maybe read a bit closer. He was asking about the mini's capabilities as media center and were there any problems that anyone had encountered. Noise absolutely has something to do with these questions.

:(

[morgan rose]

yeah if you don't have speakers, lol. I think he is asking how the other components work and that is what I am interested in; how easy is it to hook up, what cables I need. Honestly though good try, i guess i never thought about my entertainment center not having sound coming out of it that wouldn't be louder then the computer. You could have answered my questions, but maybe your not smart enough in which case don't waste the bandwidth. Can anybody answer my questions?

[turtle]

yeah if you don't have speakers, lol. I think he is asking how the other components work and that is what I am interested in; how easy is it to hook up, what cables I need. Honestly though good try, i guess i never thought about my entertainment center not having sound coming out of it that wouldn't be louder then the computer. You could have answered my questions, but maybe your not smart enough in which case don't waste the bandwidth.
:rolleyes:

Can anybody answer my questions?

Yes, but why should we? :\

Respect goes many directions. :no:

[turbulentfurball]

In the middle of the summer, when my G4 mini was running full whack, it made one hell of a noise (in comparison to when it's idle, not compared to any other computer I've heard) Now in winter, it's practically silent at all times. I guess my room must just be really cold. :lol:

[Fahrenheit]

yeah if you don't have speakers, lol. I think he is asking how the other components work and that is what I am interested in; how easy is it to hook up, what cables I need. Honestly though good try, i guess i never thought about my entertainment center not having sound coming out of it that wouldn't be louder then the computer. You could have answered my questions, but maybe your not smart enough in which case don't waste the bandwidth. Can anybody answer my questions?

OMG Like what a total bitch. You are sooooo going in my burn book.
http://h1.ripway.com/summer_suicide/meangirls.JPG

[turtle]

OMG Like what a total bitch. You are sooooo going in my burn book.
http://h1.ripway.com/summer_suicide/meangirls.JPG

:lol: :lol: :lol:

[rasmits]

Sorry, I have nothing relevant to add.I don't get it.

[morgan rose]

still nobody can tell me user compatibility, although i like the burn book. Nice touch.

[morgan rose]

Hey all,

Just wanted to get feedback from the people who are using a Mac Mini as I am interested in getting one for myself.

Main questions are how do you like it and what do you mainly use it for? Myself I'd probably use it as a secondary computer hooked up to a large display for research and/or as a media centre.

Final question: (addressed to the people who have it hooked up to their HDTV) Has hooking up the Mac Mini been easy? Is set-up pain free and does everything work out fine? If there have been problems what where they?

Thanks much everyone,

This is the first time I'm ever going to get a desktop so lots of things I don't know :\

Now I see it he does talk about noise, damn I am an ASS, since I was asking why nobody answered the original post

[Ryan]

yeah if you don't have speakers, lol. I think he is asking how the other components work and that is what I am interested in; how easy is it to hook up, what cables I need. Honestly though good try, i guess i never thought about my entertainment center not having sound coming out of it that wouldn't be louder then the computer. You could have answered my questions, but maybe your not smart enough in which case don't waste the bandwidth. Can anybody answer my questions?Congratulations on being one of the few people I've ever seen here that I have not wanted to help even though I have the answers. :rolleyes:

[jdl57]

O.K., I'll answer the question. I suppose you can hook up to the HDMI port on your HDTV but why bother? The Mini's optical drive is not blue-ray and MPEG4's are not high definition. To hook up to a television, you need an adapter from Apple that converts DVI to s-video/composite output. You will also need a cable that has a mini stereo plug on one end and RCA plugs on the other. Plug these to the DVI and audio out plugs on the Mini and into the input on your television and it will work.

To store movies on your hard drive, you have to use a program like MacTheRipper to rip a VIDEO_TS file on your hard drive. This is technically illegal. While it is not illegal to make a copy for your own use, it is illegal to defeat the copyright protection on a DVD. This will play through iDVD but not through Front Row. To play with Front Row the file needs to be converted to a MPEG4 file. I use HandBrake for this. Conversion to a high quality MPEG4 file takes hours. When I first started doing this, my Mac Mini was a single core 1.5 Intel. It now has a Core 2 Duo. It also has 2 gigs of ram, but the ram was there with the Core Solo. This has tripled my conversion speed. Instead of taking 10 hours to convert a 2 hour movie, it only takes 3.5 hours. A high quality H.264 MPEG looks very good.

Handbrake runs both cores at 100%. When I first started it on the Merom chip, the processor temperature ran up to 95 degrees C! A program called smcFanControl solved this. I can now turn up the fan to 5,000+ R.P.M. at will. It dropped my core temp 20 degrees. When I am finished, I turn the fan down again to 1500 silent R.P.M.s.

If you store the movies on an external drive, you will need to make an alias of the file and move the alias to your internal drive. Front Row will then recognize and play it. The external hard drive will get hot when playing a movie, stacking th Mini on top of it is not recommended.

Good luck.

[Eugene]

I think the nicest thing about the Mac mini is how accessible the CPU is. You could, for example, buy a used Core Solo mini (which is otherwise identical to the current models), and drop in a Core 2 Duo T-series such as this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819111304)

[morgan rose]

Thank You for your help.