Notes On The New Mac Mini

October 23rd, 2009

Picked up the cheapest Mac Mini (2.26GHz, 160GB, $599) a few days ago; some observations:

• Comes with 2 GB of RAM standard; good enough for me. Have yet to use the putty knife.
• Used Apple’s migration assistant to transfer everything (applications, documents, settings) from the old Mac Mini. The old Mac Mini was hooked up via WiFi (bad me) so the migration took several hours. That said, it worked without a hitch.
• Because of the sole Firewire 800 port, I may ditch an old Maxtor drive and a LaCie DVD burner, or hook the latter up to the old Mini now delegated to the television.
• Somehow managed to fill all five USB ports.
• Came with an adaptor to take the Mini DVI to DVI. No issues with HDCP on the monitor. Haven’t used the DisplayPort.
• Not mind-blowingly faster in comparison with the old Mac Mini, but it’s noticeable, namely Handbrake encoding time is down 1/3.

Anyhow, overall very pleased. Would have been nice to pick up the new MacBook or iMac, but the aging MacBook mysteriously resurrected itself, and even the cheapest iMac seems like overkill. So the few hundred bucks saved will go toward a Mighty Mouse and whatever Apple announces next year.