Comments on: Mac mini 2010 review

By: Konchok Rangdrol

Konchok Rangdrol — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:02:00 +0000

Have had fun with my new MM. Unfortunately, some weird things happened on and off, black screen, or grey screen, or blue screen would suddenly come up and there I was…would have to reboot. After 3 trips to the genius bar, I gave up. That’s when, at the 1 year mark, i started noticing that my Hard Drive was running at 109 Farenheit, even when at rest!! Give me a break. I love Apple, and been using them since 1986-7 but I am tired that my Hard Drives seem to die at the 1-year mark, and tired of all the updates that I consistently have to spend more money, but which don’t bring any fixes, and only seem to bring more problems…oh well, it’s better than Windows…

By: Pet

Pet — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 20:51:00 +0000

Nice review… thx :_

By: Jaywalker

Jaywalker — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 09:32:33 +0000

Hi IT guy, one question only, HDD read and write speeds?
SATA 1 HDD data flow speed? Looks like those engineers really
need to take some IT course…150 MB/sec compare it to what?
…my WD Caviar black dual processor’s 100MB /sec or OCz
Mercury Extreme SSD 180MB/sec?
Thanks for the essay…

By: John

John — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 00:02:35 +0000

I wonder if the Minis shipping now still have only the SATA I drives. We have no Apple stores here in NZ, I’ll have to buy online, so it is a bit of a worry if there are going to be issues like this.

By: Bernie Skikavich

Bernie Skikavich — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:58:22 +0000

I was reading this as I was thinking about getting a mini.
This may be a thought….
A couple of yeas ago when I first bought my iMac, I was on the phone with Apple & the Applestore constantly due to computer not working right, as expected, constantly freezing, blue screen of death, etc.
Turned out , in the long run, I was so embedded with ‘PC’ thinking, I was not really compatible with the iMac. Eventually I cued in, & it’s ok now.
But here’s the reason I am writing this, at one point, during this frustrating period, the Apple rep I was talking with said that customer satisfaction is their prime objective, and if, at ANY TIME, I wished to return my iMac, I could.
My suggestion, try haranguing them until they make the same offer; return yours, get a new one, and test it before you leave the Applestore to ensure it means the proper specs.

By: WKRP

WKRP — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 04:30:28 +0000

Many posters on other sites, er engadget, bemoan the CPU choice and price point of this machine. This will be my first mac, and the only Apple website upgrade I chose was the faster CPU (in the optical drive version). I am adding my own SSD and saving some bucks by getting RAM elsewhere. RAM is pretty reliable, whoever’s name is on the sticker, and Apple’s 8GB item is double what I can get it for at other places.

I don’t know if voice recognition software performance depends on RAM or CPU, but I will probably just get 8GB. Hard to justify pinching pennies when I am going with SSD.

By: rtheil

rtheil — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:03:49 +0000

If you are planning on doing video editing, you will want a faster hard drive. Especially if you are editing any HD video. Hard drive throughput is important. Editing videos is also nothing like playing them on your TV.

By: Vincent Nguyen

Vincent Nguyen — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:51:47 +0000

Funny you should ask, I’ve been using the new Mac Mini in the living room hooked up to my 42″ flatscreen processing vids on iMovie and photos on iPhoto of my daughter. Works fine.

By: Shane ˚͜˚ Talbert

Shane ˚͜˚ Talbert — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:50:01 +0000

I plan to buy the Mini for video/audio editing. Will the 2.4 GHZ and 2GB ram be good with iLife and Adobe? Should I upgrade anything??

By: zanysassafrass

zanysassafrass — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 03:21:40 +0000

i am looking to buy a mac mini and i was wondering, i would upgrade the ram to 4gb of ram would and keep everything else the same would that work well to playing world of warcraft and watching youtube?

By: Jegolas

Jegolas — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:59:49 +0000

I’m thinking about getting a mac mini, but I am mainly going to use it for Objective-C programming for iOS like the first poster here. Is getting the newer mini worth it over the 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo one? I’m trying to battle the extra price of getting the newer one compared to the older version. Any tips to help decide? This will be connected to a monitor and maybe on the off chance I might connect it to my TV, but I think that might be more rare than not. The main purpose if programming.

Thank you.

By: millisa

millisa — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:36:33 +0000

I believe you at this point. I hooked up my old 2010 mini drive to a linux box and it negotiated 1.5gb there. It’s interesting that they are shipping with these drives (I found someone with a MBP with the same issue). At least you can feel good that you can put sata2 drives in and the mini will do 3gb if the drive will let it.

By: rtheil

rtheil — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:19:23 +0000

THAT is some great information! I am blown away that the system has a SATA II drive it brand new. I must have gotten unlucky or something. Or as my girlfriend said, maybe one of the dudes at the foxconn factory put the wrong HD in right before he jumped off the roof! lol

Unfortunately, when I made an appointment with the so called “geniuses” at the Apple store, they immediately referred me to engineering. Even they were clueless as to what I was talking about. I had to show one of the geniuses where to find the information on HD negotiation speed. Hardly genius IMO. And sadly, Hitachi confirmed that the drive is in fact SATA I.

By: millisa

millisa — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 17:56:55 +0000

My 2010 mini came with a hitachi 5k500 b-320. This is a sata2 drive: http://www.hitachigst.com/travelstar-5k500b

I’ve already swapped it for an intel SSD and it is negotiating 3 Gigabit in system profiler. The 2009 mini I have here also negotiates 3 Gigabit for the sata drive.

I couldn’t say why yours is showing differently, but the statement that their products are running sata1, doesn’t appear to be the case universally. I would make an appointment at your local apple store’s genius bar and just bring the mini in. They can check out the ones sitting there and see yours isn’t working correctly.

By: Vincent Nguyen

Vincent Nguyen — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:37:27 +0000

I’d have to agree the price is higher – you can live vicariously through folks that have it :).

By: Lisaaaargh

Lisaaaargh — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 12:47:04 +0000

Thank you :)

Still can’t justify buying it at that price but I can lust after it!

By: Tomer Kanan

Tomer Kanan — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:27:42 +0000

Thank you very much … Finally some one gives a straight answer…i will upgrade to ssd sata II with 300Mb\sec and 4 gb ram and hope it will be fast…thank you

By: rtheil

rtheil — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:23:51 +0000

Again, depends what you are going to do with it. But 4GB memory and a faster HD should satisfy most.

By: Tomer Kanan

Tomer Kanan — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:19:17 +0000

I got as a present a Mac mini 2.4. Ghz so what do you recommend that I should do to make it really fast ( except of selling it)

By: rtheil

rtheil — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:10:55 +0000

8GB, not sure. It depends on what you are doing, and if you are even capable of using that much memory. Large graphics and video editing need lots of memory and a fast HD. In many cases a regular old HD is going to be faster than most SSD’s in overall throughput (sustained read/write), but the SSD will win in access time and writing smaller bits of data many times. I”m doing Objective-C development, and unless I start writing Open GL games, I doubt I’d ever need 8GB. But if I did I’d get a better Mac.

Be sure to look at read/write throughput of SSD’s before purchasing. Basically, 150MB/sec read is SATA I and 300MB/sec is SATA II. (write speeds will almost always be slower)

By: Tomer Kanan

Tomer Kanan — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:06:09 +0000

What is your opinion if I will upgrade the Mac mini to 8 gb ram and a ssd ? Do you think it will be really fast ? I don’t know if to do it or not

By: rtheil

rtheil — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 15:56:11 +0000

Any SATA II 2.5″ hard drive will work, including SSD.

By: Tomer Kanan

Tomer Kanan — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 15:43:12 +0000

Can I put inside ssd with sata II or not? Will it work????

By: rtheil

rtheil — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:35:36 +0000

I bought a new Mac mini to get into Objective-C programming for iOS. Being a techy guy on windows and linux platforms, this was a new world to me.

I get the mac mini home, and start looking around and checking specs. First thing I see is that the negotiated link speed of my hard drive in the system profiler, is 1.5 gigabit, but the controller is capable of 3 gigabit. I called Apple, and people were so confused by what I was talking about. Finally, I got the request sent to engineering. Engineering’s response was “This is as designed, as we only install SATA I drives in all Mac mini computers.” Wow, seriously? You put a drive with technology from 7 years ago in my 1 day old Mac? LAME!

Further research leads me to a section on the mac mini configuration in the apple store where you can choose a hard drive. It says “All Mac mini models include standard Serial ATA hard drives with data transfers up to 300 megabytes per second”. Now, if you know how to convert bytes to bits, you’d know that 300 megabytes is about 2.4 gigabits. This means to me that I will receive a SATA II hard drive in my computer, connected to a SATA II controller, as only SATA II and SATA III are capable of 300 megabytes per second.

I called Hitachi to confirm with them that in fact the drive in my Mac is a SATA I drive. And even though it’s a desktop computer, this drive has the free-fall sensor in it. So, here I am with a BRAND NEW Mac, and its hard drive is from 7 years ago.

I’m awaiting another response from Apple engineering as to why the web site says one thing, but they are doing another. More importantly though, I am trying to get the word out to everyone so that people will stop buying Mac mini computers. Why would anyone buy a machine that knowingly has technology in it from 7 years ago? This is without mentioning that the optical drive is only 8x vs. the standard 16x-22x drives in PCs today. Unfortunately, I’m not interested in dropping $800 in something that contains technology from many years ago. Especially since it’s only been 3 days since it was announced by Apple.

See more on my blog: http://www.rickystechblog.com