Buy Used/3rdParty More product information	Apple Mac mini M9687LL/A (G4 1.42 GHz, 256 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Drive) List Price: $599.99    Our Price: You Save: 100% Manufacturer: Apple Computer MPN: M9687LL/A Availability: This item is currently not available. Number of Media: 1 Features: 1.42 GHz PowerPC G4 running Mac OS X version 10.3 "Panther" 256 MB DDR SDRAM, 80 GB hard drive, slot-loading Combo Drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) One FireWire 400 port; two USB 2.0 ports, DVI output, VGA monitor output (adapter included), and headphone/audio line out Built-in 10/100BASE-T Ethernet and 56K V.92 modem iLife ‘05 (includes iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD and GarageBand), AppleWorks, Quicken 2005 for Mac, Nanosaur 2, Marble Blast Gold, and Apple Hardware Test
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Customer Reviews Great form factor for a good price It's funny how Apple offers a low price computer and everyone feels it should be faster and more full-featured than it is but similarly-priced PCs seem not to carry such expectations. It's important to face reality before buying a computer that is low cost. No $500-$600 machine is going to be a games/graphics/audio/video powerhouse. The Mini is no exception in this regard. It's a consumer model designed for modest everyday computing demands. It's not that it won't run high end software nor that it won't run such software adequately. I use my Mini for various Adobe applications (and only Illustrator seems sluggish on start up) as well as DVD Studio Pro work. It's not intolerably slow but it's also not lightning fast. It is, however, quite adequate with processor-intensive applications. When it comes to running OS X and other consumer applications, it works very well. The Mini was my transitional machine between OS 9 and OS X. It's a good way for those who have been reluctant to make the move to spend less and learn OS X. A lot of people feel too much is made of Apple's designs and any performance/upgrade sacrifices that they force should be more strongly focussed upon but there clearly is a desire for very small computers like the Mini. If using a computer were only a matter of running applications, wireless networks would not have grown in popularity as their signals are inferior to wired connections. People want something attractive and small that they can accomodate more easily on their overcrowded desks. Form factor isn't everything but it is increasingly important where the power of high end machines greatly exceeds the needs of the consumer level user and the cheaper consumer models are roughly similarly capable despite a few statistical differences here and there. The Mini is an attractive alternative to tower-sized consumer models and those who would like to run the Mac OS as a secondary machine or a machine that only needs to meet the needs of the average user. An extremely well built little piece of technology with a few weak points... Well, first of all let me say that the mini is a relatively large amount of power packaged in very little space. Everything is extremely easy to install and if you get the wireless mouse and keyboard you will be saving a USB port, which is always a good thing. There are a couple of things that could have been done better. For instance, the RAM, 256 M of Ram is a joke for any system using the OS Tiger, I am sure a lot of people are frustrated because their minis do not perform as they should. Low RAM is a major bottleneck on Tiger; the thing is so big and powerful that anything lower than 512 will hamper your system. Anyways, after upgrading the ram on the mini I configured it as a small server for a couple of Sites I had to get online and I think it is performing superb. I dint have to spend a cent on extra software (I am using Apache and PHP, both are free and work great on the UNIX based Tiger OS), and my cable Internet connection is up to the task of keeping the sites running smoothly. I wouldn't recommend this for a huge e-commerce site, but it should be more than adequate for sites that only generate a couple of thousands of visits a day. Mac Mini 1.42 slower than expected but a nice computer I recently purchased a Mac Mini 1.42GHz with 1MB RAM and the combo drive. Once you get past the cool looks and start doing various tasks on the machine, the performance seems to be less than what a 1.42GHz G4 should be. I will say that the set up was extremely easy - all Macs are easy to set up. The 1MB RAM helps a lot. I played around with a display model at Best Buy that only had 256MB RAM and Tiger couldn't roar. Some of the slowness has to do with the 80GB Ultra ATA hard drive only being 4200 RPM. But that is only part of it. I have a G4 DP 533MHz machine with 1.25GB RAM. I would expect the Mini to be faster in processor intensive tasks than my system even though it has dual processors. But the Mini falls short. Everything seems to be faster on my old G4. Surfing the net using Safari, using iTunes, Garageband, iDVD, iPhoto, etc. I have my iTunes and iPhoto libraries on an external FireWire drive which is 7200 RPM. I ran Xbench on both systems and the Mini scored a 118.7 compared to a 90.6 for my old G4. But it seems that they should be reversed. Speed issues aside, someone looking for a computer for surfing the net, sending and receiving emial, doing some word processing stuff and burning the occasional cd should find this system to their liking. Somone looking to spend a lot of time in iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto and other high end programs that are both memory and processor intensive will find that the Mini is not only small in size but also in performance.