Mac Mini energy efficient and powerful?

"I think she was a little drunk.."

Having used a Acer Revo 1.6 dual core Atom, it's not as powerful as the C2D in the Mini. It's the ION hardware acceleration for large resolution playback which is the only reason it can cope with HD. If you attempt it in software on an Atom it will fail but will work using a high load on a C2D 2.4GHz.
 
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Seeing as the Mac Mini is similar if not the same specs to my Macbook 13" then I would say yes, they are very efficent and powerful. The OS is the big difference between the Mini and competitors. Don't get me wrong Windows works fine on the Mac Mini, great infact but with OS X - it just seems to unlock its potential. :)
 
Used a mac mini before and was quite shocked with how fast it was. At the time i found it faster then a Macbook Pro.

However the latest revision will be the end of the Core 2 series as apple migrates to the newer chips.

Have in mind that when they move over to the mobile version (probably i3) power requirements will go slightly up.

And the fact apple is having lots of issues with i5 / i7 powered machines at the moment. lol
 
Ps: Had 3 mac mini's in my time. Ran OSX server on it , less then 20% system usage most of the time.

Apple in the latest revision made the hard drive upgradable - but is not easy to get to, some good guides online.

If anything, you need to upgrade the 4200RPM laptop drives..then its a screamer.
 
JGBR said:
If anything, you need to upgrade the 4200RPM laptop drives..then its a screamer.
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They don't come with 4200RPM drives? They have 5400RPM drives, which I agree aren't great - I've swapped the drive inside mine for a 7200RPM WD Scorpio Black and it's made quite a bit of difference.
 
Do they let you do this in an Apple store or would I have to risk breaking it myself. :eek:

I have read that people on have broken parts off just getting the lid off. :o
 
Do it carefully with a putty knife and the right way and no one would know, do it wrong and well...game over normally LOL.
 
For most people its fine email/browsing etc. Its only when you start getting into certain areas such as photo/video etc.
 
JGBR said:
For most people its fine email/browsing etc. Its only when you start getting into certain areas such as photo/video etc.
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I dunno, I spent an hour or so working on a couple of photographs in CS4 last night on my spanky new Mini and it worked great.
 
Hence why i moved to a Mac Pro!

But thats 500 up against 4500 GBP lol.. So unfair.

But I stil llike the mac minis but would wait for a i3 update now.
 
Yeah sometimes it worth paying abit more and moving to a imac if you need a screen etc too , for a tadge more you can move to i5 but depends on what you need and budget
 
Mini would be more than what i would need. Could upgrade the Hard drive and put 4gig in it. Load Windows 7 on it too and would be a very capable machine?
 
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