Comments on: First Mac Mini Dissection

By: Xaos

Xaos — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 03:45:30 +0000

hmm.. they didn’t show how hard it was to open it up.

From what I’ve been reading its not terribly difficult to do and the RAM slot is extremely easy to access though the hard drive poses more a problem as does the connection on the motherboard for the airport extreme/bluetooth adapter.

By: jbelkin

jbelkin — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 00:52:44 +0000

You might not of heard but there are two connectors called USB and Firewire. You plug in a connector and instantly, you have 50 to 400 GB without having to rip open the machine. And you can keep adding hard drives. We have an eMac here with slower specs and it powers 6 HDD’s just fine. And the speed is great.

By: JC

JC — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 20:40:04 +0000

hmm.. they didn’t show how hard it was to open it up.

If it’s not terribly difficult (hacksaw!) you can at least upgrade the RAM instead of paying out many orifices for apple’s ridiculously overpriced memory… if there’s enough room, you might be able to pop in a full-size hard drive, if not a 7200 (which would run hotter and take more juice)

By: cliche

cliche — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 20:16:06 +0000

I wouldn’t completely rule out 7200, which I got for about $120 for 60gig last year(hitachi). So I’m guessing price for 40gig a year later is fairly affordable even for a value system. And if it is 7200, it’s the same speed as the ones in other value systems.

By: Derek

Derek — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 20:06:31 +0000

I would guess it does run at the slower speeds. 5400 at the fastest. I just think of it as a cheap, small powerbook. Which is pretty fast for me.

By: Hoby

Hoby — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 20:02:12 +0000

I wonder if it’s possible for people to retrofit this logic board into a fruity iBook to give it new life…

By: Scrivs

Scrivs — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 19:53:38 +0000

I wonder if the harddrive also runs at the slow laptop speeds…if so this gets less enticing.

By: bsmith

bsmith — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 19:37:07 +0000

look at the power connector – it’s got more contacts than it needs. something is going to plug in there between the power cord and the mac mini… something like the DVR/Elgato/Asteriod device mentioned on studio2f:

http://www.studio2f.com/misc/2005/01/12mac_mini_less_is_more.php

(fingers crossed!)