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I just bought a Mac Mini!


Neil P

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So, I had a failed attempt at buying a MacBook Pro (for the interested, I have no credit, and was denied financing; I didn't want to pay for it all up front) and yet still had an unquenchable desire for a Mac. Therefore, with my PC half on the fritz anyway, I decided that a Mac Mini would fill the void. It's a refurbished 1.66 GHz Core Duo machine, with 1GB of RAM and a 100GB hard drive (in addition to an 8x SuperDrive--at least I think it's 8x, it is just listed as "double layer")I don't really have much else I can say about it yet, since it hasn't even shipped yet. The estimated delivery date is June 20th, but hopefully that is just a conservative estimate to cover all their bases, and I get it sooner. I went with "2-3 day shipping", but the bigger issue is when they ship it, which is estimated to take 5-7 business days.So, I'll hopefully have more updates soon!

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Cool. I'm sure you will enjoy. They're already selling refurbished Core Duo Mac Minis? This directly from Apple or and Apple Store?

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If you are a student, the academic prices are about the same as the refurbished prices. I saw about a $10 difference on the ipod I just purchased versus the refurbished one.

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Will you be using Boot Camp to also install Windows on the Mini? With a 100GB hard drive, you certainly have enough disk space.

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Cool. I'm sure you will enjoy. They're already selling refurbished Core Duo Mac Minis? This directly from Apple or and Apple Store?
Yep, right from store.apple.com (From the link Fran posted)
They also got some cool pricing on some refurb iPods if you are into that on this main refurb page (toward the bottom of the page)
Yeah, I wish I had known about (or remembered) that when I bought mine a few months ago. The next one I get I might go refurbished, if this Mac mini turns out okay.
If you are a student, the academic prices are about the same as the refurbished prices. I saw about a $10 difference on the ipod I just purchased versus the refurbished one.
I am not a student, but when I was, they offered something like a 10% discount to us. Some of the MacBook Pro's they are offering refurbished at around 22% off the normal price! I think the Mac mini was around 11% savings. It allowed me to get a 100GB hard drive when before I was getting an 80GB (I was going to buy a new one until I remembered the refurb. ones)
Will you be using Boot Camp to also install Windows on the Mini? With a 100GB hard drive, you certainly have enough disk space.
I don't know a lot about that yet, but I probably will. I'll have to look into it more, but it sounds pretty cool.
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Guest LilBambi

Looking forward to hearing about your experience with it.A friend of ours from Florida got one and absolutely loves it!

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Just be careful with your new Mac. These things are addictive. :angry: I started with one iMac a few years ago because I wanted to see what Macs and OS X were like. There are now three, the iMac, an iBook, and a PowerBook, at home. I've still got a Windows box, but I only use it about once a week. The Macs are used every day.

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I got it on Monday! :w00tx100:and took it to CompUSA Tuesday to replace the dead hard drive ;) Hopefully I will get it back Friday, but most likely I won't get it until Monday.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hopefully my last update until I'm online with a functional mac mini:The guy from CompUSA ordered the replacement hard drive. Once he received it, he opened the case and found that my hard drive was being held in place by 0 screws. Normally there are 6. He advised me that since they made such an obvious mistake, it is possible there could be further damage somewhere else in the system. So, he closed it back up and today I went to pick it up. I called Apple, and they are replacing it for me. Despite initial confusion (apparently my serial number was showing up as a MacBook Pro--I would have been glad to let them ship me a replacement one of those B) ) the kind folks did indeed authorize my replacement. Not only that, but the nice guy there even refunded the extra money I paid for expedited shipping! Also, I ordered .mac and he took $30 off of that for me. (They are running a promotion where purchasing .mac with a new order is done at $30 off, but apparently it applies only at the time of sale. However, he adjusted the price for me anyway)SO! The FedEx guy has already picked up the box from me, and Apple has now released my replacement to be shipped. Under "normal" conditions, it would take 7-10 (business) days to ship. However, replacement orders take priority, so he doesn't think it will take nearly that long (but, of course, was unable to give me any kind of guarantee on it). Once it actually does ship, it's overnight delivery.All in all, despite still not having a working computer from them, I am very happy with their customer support.

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RichNRockville

Good luck on your Mac-Mini. I use mine all the time. I like how easy it is to use even though I can't seem to get hamaci (the free vpn) to work with it but that's not the mini's fault, I just don't know enough about the unix os (or linux). all in all a great machine but I do recommend getting 1 gig of ram.Also, you can buy those neat little external firewire hard disk units from macally and put a 2.5" hard disk in them for backups or even rebooting another version of mac os.Love it..Rich

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've had my Mac mini for quite some time now.New problem: kernel panics. They are almost certainly a problem with RAM. The mini I ordered was supposed to have 1 GB of RAM, this one somehow has 2 GB. While it might be a little dishonest, I really don't want to call Apple to tell them of the error (I don't know that they'd make me send it back, but they might not want to fix the bad RAM). It's seemingly random: sometimes it locks up seconds after loading the desktop, sometimes it's after several minutes at the desktop, sometimes it doesn't even make it to the desktop at all.Sometimes it doesn't happen for days:

h22:~ neil$ uptime10:20 up 4 days, 1:57, 2 users, load averages: 0.26 0.26 0.17
It was up even longer, I had to reboot after installing software for my new mouse (Logitech MX1000, love it :harhar: ) Normally the kernel panics are after reboots, which is why I don't like to reboot it often. After that particular reboot, though, I haven't had a problem (it worked fine right from boot and hasn't had issue in 4 days and 2 hours :( )The only other thing I can think of that would cause the problem is the USB hub I have. It's a cheap no-name one, and I've since removed it (it was convenient, not necessary). I was trying so many things to fix it that I don't actually know if that was the cause or not. I seem to remember at least a few kernel panics after removing it.Anyway, I'm loving OS X. Takes a while to get used to using command for shortcuts instead of control, and also that hitting the X to close a window doesn't shut the app down (but that's remedied by closing programs with cmd+Q, I've learned)I really love Exposé. It's such an elegant way to manage open windows. Before I learned of it, I was minimizing windows, or just dragging others out of the way. I also think Spotlight is great :(
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  • 3 weeks later...

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