Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Mac Mini Specs, RAM

Glenn Fleishman writes: "I bought a 450 MHz Cube for about $1,800 in Sept. 2000. Here's what the Mac mini delivers for $499 by contrast." Checking his handy comparison chart, its clear you get quite a lot. The Mini's no slouch.

After running some benchmarks, Charles Jade at ArsTechnica concludes: "It's clear that the (Mac Mini) performs considerably faster than both my iBook, which cost me $200 more than an (Mac Mini), and nearly as fast as my wife's PowerBook, which cost four times as much and is less than a year-old (and that makes me want to cry)."

Also, some have complained the Mini is hampered with anemic memory, and its single memory slot is inaccessible. However, the RAM can be upgraded by the customer but "isn;t recommended" by Apple, according to Macintouch: "... doing it yourself does not void the warranty unless you damage something. A booth person told me the memory slot is easily accessible once you get the case open."

It uses desktop memory, not notebook RAM, which is more expensive, but; "If you're buying a Mini at the Apple Store, you can replace the standard 256-MB DIMM with 512 MB for $75 or go all the way to 1 GB (the Mini's maximum) for $425. As usual, you can do much better than that with third-party RAM, but then you end up with a 256-MB DIMM you probably have no use for."

Panic Attack

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Road to Expo: PowerBook speed bumps to 1.5/1.67GHz confirmed

Armchair Apple watchers can add another item to the itinerary of Apple CEO Steve Jobs' Macworld Expo keynote tomorrow: PowerBook G4 updates. Mobile warriors will be disappointed to hear that they'll have to wait a little longer for the already long-awaited PowerBook G5...

panic attack panic attack panic attack panic attack