“Bare Feats”:http://www.barefeats.com/mini01.html has posted some benchmarks of the new Mac Mini. The scores are taken from xBench results online, and were not taken by Bare Feats themselves, because they don’t have one yet. But based on the xBench scores, it looks like the achilles heel of the Mac Mini by far will be its hard drive speed. In the thread and memory tests, the 1.4ghz Mini actually performed _better_ than the 1.6ghz iMac G5, but was less than half as fast when it came to random writes to the hard disk. This will be the largest bottleneck in the system, especially if you don’t upgrade the RAM to 1gb. With only 256mb of RAM, the computer will be writing stuff to virtual memory constantly, and with that slow hard drive, it will make the whole system sluggish if you are running a few different programs at once.

So, if you are planning on getting a Mac Mini, include a RAM upgrade in your budget. But don’t get the RAM upgraded at the factory from Apple. They charge well over twice as much as other companies. Here is some from a Mac reseller for “$189.00″:http://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_Item.cfm?ID=6559&Item=OWC2700DDR1024.

And of course if you get your Mac Mini for “free”:http://forevergeek.com/apple/freeminimacscom_get_a_free_mac_mini.php that $189.00 will be an even more attractive investment.

Related posts:

Mac Mini Details – RAM, Hard Drive, Wireless
Now Shipping: Griffin’s iTrip Mini FM Transmitter for iPod Mini
Mac mini Hard Drive Upgrades
AeroMini – a new Japanese Mini PC
Mac Mini Mini Dock

Hope you like that post!

Forever Geek is a resource for all things geek. You can stay tuned by having the latest FG news delivered to you for free via RSS.