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Upgrades Businesses Desktops (Apple) Apple Hardware

Price Drops For Mac mini Upgrades 886

RustNeverSleeps writes "Apple has just lowered prices on certain build-to-order options on the Mac mini. The combination Bluetooth and AirPort Express option has gone down to $99 from $129, 1 GB RAM upgrades have been reduced to $325 from $475 and the price of an upgrade from a 40 GB hard drive to an 80 GB hard drive has been reduced to $50 from $90. Also, the original 4x SuperDrive has been upgraded to an 8x drive for the same price. Interesting that they dropped prices so soon after release. Perhaps Apple actually listened to people complaining about overpriced upgrades."
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Price Drops For Mac mini Upgrades

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  • Or perhaps they were losing upgrade sales to cheaper players in the market? I have always been very annoyed at $200 upgrades from anyone, where a generic alternative is $12.
  • by doctechniqal ( 516085 ) * on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @11:57AM (#11480641)
    Amazing - Apple seems to have finally realized that when you market something high quality and feature rich at low cost, people will flock to your stores. There may be hope yet for mass market acceptance of the Mac platform.

    The Mac Mini - Greatly Insane!

    A question: can a Mac mouse/keyboard from an old G3 system be used with the Mini?
  • Look.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sethadam1 ( 530629 ) * <ascheinberg@nOSpAm.gmail.com> on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @11:58AM (#11480655) Homepage
    Look, everyone's going to be excited about this, but let's just say this and get it out of the way:

    All this did was correct stuff that was already WAY overpriced to begin with. I'm thrilled, and this pretty much seals up that I'll buy a mini, but I don't think it makes a huge difference to most people, maybe just to those on the fence. If they weren't going to buy one before, they probably won't now just because of these incremental price "normalizations."
    • Re:Look.... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:03PM (#11480732)
      All this did was correct stuff that was already WAY overpriced to begin with. I'm thrilled, and this pretty much seals up that I'll buy a mini, but I don't think it makes a huge difference to most people, maybe just to those on the fence. If they weren't going to buy one before, they probably won't now just because of these incremental price "normalizations."

      I have always said "the day a Mac becomes affordable I will own one." The mini brought that to be and mine is on its way (should be here the 27th).

      I am getting the 1.42Ghz with 80GB HD. It'll have the bare minimum 256MB of RAM and the regular combo drive but if push comes to shove I'll get an external Firewire DVD writer and might even open the case myself and add some RAM. Who knows. It'll all depend on how well it performs for me.

      I always wait too long and am left in the dust by the early adopters. Now with this price drop I got burnt by being one :( I can never win :)
      • Re:Look.... (Score:4, Informative)

        by MagerValp ( 246718 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:27PM (#11481052) Homepage
        I am getting the 1.42Ghz with 80GB HD. It'll have the bare minimum 256MB of RAM and the regular combo drive but if push comes to shove I'll get an external Firewire DVD writer and might even open the case myself and add some RAM. Who knows. It'll all depend on how well it performs for me.

        Unless you're planning on running one application at a time, you will want to get at least 512 MB. MacOS X is slow as molasses with 256 MB, and it's a shame that Apple still sells computers with that little memory. As Anandtech points out the machine swaps quite a bit with 256 MB [anandtech.com], and the 2.5" HD is rather slow.
        • Re:Look.... (Score:3, Informative)

          by 2nd Post! ( 213333 )
          And according to Anand's article, buying a 512mb stick is actually cheaper through Apple... though you don't get to keep the 256mb stick afterwards... If you sold the 256mb stick, then yes, it's cheaper to buy your own.
  • by Cougem ( 734635 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @11:59AM (#11480682)
    Or perhaps they read Anandtechs's [anandtech.com] review [anandtech.com] saying it was positively scandelous to sell the unit with 256MB RAM with such expensive upgrades.

    Good review for those who care.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      A reseller I was talking to said that he preferred that they only sold with 256MB of RAM, as he can sell people third party ram and installation and make a profit on that, whereas his profits from the Mac Mini are almost non-existant.
    • I've said this before, but I have to disagree. I've worked with Macs with 256MB of RAM, and they were fine. I wouldn't want to run Photoshop with 256MB RAM, but I wouldn't want to run Photoshop on one of these anyway! Yes, 512MB is nice, but it's hardly a necessity.

      As to the people saying you need 1GB, what for? I've got a flatmate that does graphical work on a PowerMac with 512MB, and it's fine for everything except Photoshop. Everyone seems too used to Windows XP's memory usage, and is assuming OS X is s
      • 256 is ridiculous (Score:3, Interesting)

        by siskbc ( 598067 )
        I've said this before, but I have to disagree. I've worked with Macs with 256MB of RAM, and they were fine. I wouldn't want to run Photoshop with 256MB RAM, but I wouldn't want to run Photoshop on one of these anyway!

        I've used Macs with 256MB that ran fine too. 5 years ago. Not now, no way.

        You're granting that you can't run anything on these things (like photoshop), then say "why would you want to?" Well, why not? You should be able to. The guts of the Mac mini is pretty similar to a powerbook (com

      • Everyone seems too used to Windows XP's memory usage, and is assuming OS X is similar...

        Uh, if anything, OS X needs _more_ RAM than XP for decent performance.

  • by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:01PM (#11480706) Homepage
    I've already decided that before long I want a Mini and at least an iPod shuffle withing a short period of time.

    Improving the prices even more just makes it that much sexier.

    I wonder if these price drops are because they've been able to get an idea of the volume of these they'll be selling, and relying on economies of scalre just got even more attractive to them.

  • by fname ( 199759 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:01PM (#11480712) Journal
    The hard drop upgrade was $50 before, and it's still $50 now. The article (and the MacNN story the submitter cribbed it from ) are both wrong.
  • by amichalo ( 132545 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:02PM (#11480725)
    This news has lots of people asking "What about exisitng orders" (they got e-mails notifying them of refunds of the difference), but the real question is why, four days after product availability, did Apple do this?

    Possible reasons:
    - Sales figures in first tow weeks overwhelming under BTO projections
    - Analysts/Fans complained of over priced BTO
    - Yet-to-be-released products with similar BTO pricing coming sooner than Apple originally planned
    - Margins on BTO items are higher, even at reduced prices, than margins on the original equipment.
  • by OlivierB ( 709839 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:07PM (#11480787)
    1. Start by announcing something cheaper than competition or usual
    2. Stress out benefits of given product so potential buyers actually think it's good value.
    3. Let early buyers get in.
    4. For those still undecided, actually improve the deal (i.e more features, ie. superdrive) and/or cut the price
    5. Those actually undecided that thought it was already good value now think this is fantastic value.
    6. Sell like crazy

    I think this technique is call "push-over" or something like that. The key to it is to convince people that even at a premium your product is fantastical value (Apple sure knows a lot ib this field). The more you convince people at step 2, the easier the push-over.
    IMHO, APPLE had it all laid out. They knew they could make the fat margins with early adopters and then have the extra publicity announcing this. It keeps the momentum...
  • by bigtangringo ( 800328 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:08PM (#11480795) Homepage
    Apple has quietly lowered the price...

    Quiet, until the story was slashdotted.
  • Price Protection. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Luckboy ( 152985 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:08PM (#11480807)
    The Apple Store offers price protection for products ub to ten day AFTER SHIPMENT, not ordering. The policy and the phone number to call can be found here [apple.com]. I called last night and they've credited my card.

    As far as the superdrive goes, I ordered mine the day it was announced, and it arrived two days before the official release date. It came with an 8X Superdrive.
  • by pebs ( 654334 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:10PM (#11480833) Homepage
    The 8X drive is only for reading DVD, the write speed for DVD is still 4X.
  • I spent the weekend researching the 20" iMac G5 the GF is getting. In the process of trying to figure out what/when the new iLife 05 and iWork software would be bundled with it (at no $19.95 handling fee. Anybody know?)

    I got caught up in the Mac Mini frenzy. To me $499 is impluse buy pricing. I figured it was worth it to let me have my first Mac to enjoy and learn on. I had been holding out for the next gen PowerBook. I went to the Apple Store and began an order.

    $100 more for the SuperDrive and faster CPU. I'll buy my own RAM and deal with a putty knife to put it in. Yeah, I need Wi-Fi and Bluetooth because you can't add that afterwards. Applecare? Good idea. Now it was $800, even with my educational discount. It was no longer in impulse buy range. I left the site.

    You think maybe that Apple saw that happening again and again and took this action to keep the buyer there until they completed the order?
    • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:29PM (#11481077)
      IMO, the built-in Bluetooth ain't worth it. I've got a usb bt dongle from Linksys which is truly class 1 (100m) for $50 and the built-in bluetooth is only class 3 (10m). I can now surf the internet from anywhere in the house on my Palm Tungsten T3, but I wouldn't be able to with the built-in Mac adapter, and they cost the same.

      If you're just looking for wireless mice, printers, and keyboards it might be worth it, but if you have a PDA, skip it.
    • I got caught up in the Mac Mini frenzy. To me $499 is impluse buy pricing. I figured it was worth it to let me have my first Mac to enjoy and learn on. I had been holding out for the next gen PowerBook. I went to the Apple Store and began an order.

      $100 more for the SuperDrive and faster CPU. I'll buy my own RAM and deal with a putty knife to put it in. Yeah, I need Wi-Fi and Bluetooth because you can't add that afterwards. Applecare? Good idea. Now it was $800, even with my educational discount. It was n

    • by infinii ( 27811 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @01:15PM (#11481667) Homepage
      So the added cost of AppleCare (3yr extended warranty I believe) made you reconsider because it became too expensive. And yet when all the Apple-bashers talk about how cheap a beige box is, they NEVER buy extended warranties.

      Speaking of boxes, let me get on my soapbox and address all the bashers.

      I can't believe so many people can't figure it out. Sure it costs more than your x86 box. But you wanna know something? You are paying for industrial design AND the computing experience (software). Bitch and whine all you want about how the harddrive, cpu, video card are slower than your custom built beige gamer box, but in the end it's not about FPS, read times and floating point instructions per second, what counts is how well the computer allows you to do what you want to do. IMNSHO, Apple software along with the design of it's computers makes my life easier and that is worth a price premium. All you turd-fuckers can't figure that out and only cry about the price/performance based on hardware merits. Last time I checked, you weren't pushing and popping bits onto the processor, the most critical thing you are seeing/using is the software. Hardware has become a commodity. The value is in the software. Don't believe me? I think the entire OSS movement has made you delusional. Just cuz it's free doesn't mean it has no value. There is a difference between good software and bad. Ignore the entire hardware argument, sit down and ask yourself how much you think OS X and iLife are worth. Honestly, don't fool yourself...give it a fair estimate. Compare it to other similar software and come up with a dollar value. You can tell me that Windows comes preinstalled or Linux is free blah blah blah...but if I offered you the choice for free, which of those 3 OS'es would you run (ignore all technical limitations such as OS X won't run on x86, etc...this is just for argument sake)? OS X right? There, that tells you that you place more value in OS X than the other two. Now then...that $499 seem so bad?

      How about the software that comes preinstalled, allowing you to literally open the box, power it up and actually be able to use it? Put that in contrast with the Windows or Linux experience, how much time do you need to spend installing and customizing those boxes before they are actually useable? Even assuming that the stuff you install afterwards is all free, it's still time saved. Ok fry-boy, maybe your time is cheap but mine isn't.

      If you bashers insist on comparing it on hardware alone, then move on because there's nothing for you here. You will never think Apple products are affordable. It's funny how many of you bitch that their memory upgrades are a rip-off, so you're not going to make the switch. If you were going into a restaurant to eat a burger but they had an overpriced salad on the menu, would it stop you from eating the burger? The choice is yours. if the overpriced ram is stopping you from buying an Apple, you're lying to yourself because you are only looking for an excuse, you were never going to buy one to begin with.
  • Not likely... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by stienman ( 51024 ) <adavis@NosPaM.ubasics.com> on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:14PM (#11480884) Homepage Journal
    Perhaps Apple actually listened to people complaining about overpriced upgrades.

    Or they misjudged market demand for upgraded units and have warehouses full of units that aren't selling while the bottom end is oversold.

    -Adam
  • by jerk ( 38494 ) <cherbertNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:19PM (#11480950)
    I called yesterday after work and they handled it very professionally...I didn't even have to get upset. They credited me the $31.20 difference for the Airport/BT combo and said that no mini's actually shipped with the 4x Superdrives...they just corrected the description on the webpage. I'm not able to verify this since I'm away on business for the week, but I'll take his word for it for the time being. Can anyone with a mini verify the speed of the Superdrive?

    This is part of the reason people love Apple so much, they really do take care of their customers.
  • by Foobar_Zen ( 774905 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:49PM (#11481336) Journal
    Ok, so I too was curious about the mac mini and I would love to have one at home to play with. So I priced one out. Below is the one I priced out and a comparable Dell system. Now the Dell does have a keyboard and mouse, but I tried to get them as close as possible. They also both have 1 year warranties and free shipping. It should also be said that dell is currently running a 15% off special that ends today.

    Mac mini
    512MB DDR333 SDRAM - 1 DIMM
    80GB Ultra ATA drive
    4x SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
    56K v.92 Modem
    Mac OS X - U.S. English
    1.42GHz PowerPC G4

    Subtotal $774.00

    Dell Dimension 4700
    * Pentium® 4 Processor 520 with HT Technology (2.80GHz, 800 FSB)
    * 512MB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 400MHz (2x256M)
    * 80GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
    * Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 48x CD-RW Drive
    * Windows XP Home
    * 56k Modem
    Subtotal $685.00

    So my big question, besides the obvious price drop from normal Apple systems and putting aside the whole Mac vs. x86 platform, is where is the real price savings for a new user buying a new home computer? Granted the 15% off is a big factor, but Dell runs similar specials all the time.
    • by saddino ( 183491 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @01:03PM (#11481525)
      You're missing the intangibles. According to your pricing, a prospective customer would have to ask "is a much lighter, smaller, cooler looking Mac without the headaches of Windows that includes iLife worth an extra $89?"

      Apple is betting yes. And next quarter we'll see what the market said.

    • Good buy? You bet. (Score:5, Informative)

      by MattHaffner ( 101554 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @01:20PM (#11481718)
      For completeness, you need to add iLife '05 for the Mac. That retails around $79, but I bet you'd be hard pressed to find a suite for a similar price in the PC world.

      You also forgot to configure the DVD/CD drive option the same on the Dell. When you do, it adds $35.

      What's still different in the technical details? The mini includes Firewire and a real video card. You need to add $110 to the Dell to get those. Now you're up to $685 + $35 + $110 = $830.

      The only technical details the Dell has now over the mini is that the (minimum optional) video card is better (I think) than the 9200 in the mini and that the 4700 has 6 USB ports on it instead of 2, if you care to have that many.

      Is the mini a good buy? Uh, well, technically, yes. Unless you're going to quibble about raw processor performance.

      Look. At this level of machine, it's a new game. Make your choice based on what you want. Price is not an issue anymore. Instead, sit down and ask yourself whether you want to try:

      * A new user experience. Yes, there will be a learning curve if you've never used one. There's no Start button. There's one menu bar. It will take you a few days. Big deal, likely.

      * A new level of security--whether through design or obscurity, your choice. This will save you a few days. Each month. No joke.

      * Lower number, but higher average quality (typically) app selection. What do you use? What can't you live without? A lot of good stuff is ported. Some good stuff is not. There are sometimes great alternatives, sometimes not.

      Apple's giving those at this price point the chance to make a personal selection that has very little to do with financials. Enjoy making it.
    • by White Roses ( 211207 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @01:28PM (#11481891)
      I know someone already told you this, but two things:
      1. XP Home isn't anywhere near as powerful as Mac OS X. Put XP Pro on that box.
      2. DVD-RW vs. DVD-ROM. Drop the Superdrive from the Mini, or add the burner to the Dell.
      How's that comparison now? Enough to absorb the missing keyboard and mouse?

      Oh, and for the record, the real savings is in having a system that has fewer annoying habits, has a consistent UI across applications, and is less susceptible to worms, virus infections, and spyware, as well as including a robust suite of polished, easy-to-use applications that will cover most of the needs of the freshman computer enthusiast (photography, music, basic word processing, even movies).

      "How do I get photos from the Sony Mavica to iPhoto?" my wife asked me. Answer: Plug in the USB cable, and when iPhoto automatcially opens, click the blue pill clearly labelled "Import." Tell me that Dell will be able to do that OUT OF THE BOX!

    • Price for iLife 05 on Dell Dimension 4700....uh.. there is no price for iLife 05 on theDell Dimension 4700.

      No, instead you get years of heartache with driver issues with your camera and a corn-you-fscking-copia of bastard-ass photo organization applications that do fsck-all for you actually organizing, printing, and making books from your pictures.

      Why do you think that they finally came out with printers with CF cards and fscking monitors on them? I'm sure easy to use software on windows was the reason!
  • I've had my mini (Score:5, Informative)

    by bob670 ( 645306 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:49PM (#11481341)
    since last Thursday and it has so far exceeeded my expectations in every way. I contacted Apple last night and they are refunding the price difference to reflect the price drops, I cannot complain. Of course if those prices would have been lower initially I might have ordered more upgrades, but overall I can say this has been an excellent experience with Apple again.
    • Re:I've had my mini (Score:5, Informative)

      by bob670 ( 645306 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @01:50PM (#11482201)
      If anyone should care of want details of what life with a mini is like, this is a review I wrote at another forum, maybe you find it helpful....

      I've had my mini since last Thursday so I thought I would post my thoughts for anyone who might be interested....

      Overall the mini is outstanding, right now my list of stuff I run frequently includes....

      Safari

      FireFox

      Mail

      iBlog

      Pages

      KeyNote

      iTunes

      iPhoto

      PhotoShop Elements 2.0

      iSync

      Transmit 2.0

      CandyBar

      Diablo II

      and to a lesser extent...

      iMovie

      GarageBand 2

      Chess

      MacJanitor

      CockTail

      Specs:

      G4 1.42 / 80GB HDD / 512MB RAM / DVD/CD +/-RW combo drive / AE + BT

      NEC LCD1735 NXM w/ DVI cable, Logitech Z3i 2.1 Speakers, Apple Pro Keyboard (wired), Apple Pro Wireless Mouse, D-Link DL-524 Router/WAP, Epson Stylus C80 printer on D-Link 301U ethernet printer server

      Everything opens quickly, usually one bounce on the dock and it's up and usable. I have spent a good deal of time moving my vacation photos (about 800-900) and music (about 3400 tracks) to their repsective apps. Both iTunes and iPhoto still snap right open and are usable pretty quickly, although obviously startup scans of large libraries take a few seconds. Application perfromance is great, very smooth and pretty much what I expect of OS X. Pages and KeyNote are very responsive and stable, PhotoShop Elements 2.0 is the only lagard, as it is on any system.

      A big improvement for me is not having to turn off eye candy and little features to maintain performance. This is my third Mac, I've gone from an iMac G3 700 Snow w/Jag to an iBook G4 800 w/Panther to the mini I am currently running. For the first time I don't have to turn off dock animation or magnification, find a hack around transparency or turn off font smoothing to avoid those occaissional chops that would happen to my other Macs. Finder is smooth and responsive and outside of the occaisional delay with iDisk synching is vastly improved from Jag and even my earlier Panther experiences.

      Browsing my network, mapping drives on my Wintel box and even remote managing my DVR is perfection. I have the AE/BT option. AE immediately finds my Dlink DL-524 and works with it's WPA-PSK settings with no hassle. The Apple wireless mouse was found on first boot and OS X shows you a little 2 step pictogram so the OS can pair the device before it is even compeltely launched. BT performance is overall about the same, although it does not ship with the 1.2 firmware upgrade, which definitely made for smoother mouse tracking. Pairing with my Nokia 3650 is still a little wonky, but this appears to be my phone at fault as it pairs poorly with anything.

      The size is truly impressive and you have to see it in relation to the rest of your hardware to really appreciate it. It runs virtually silent all the time, even under moderate load the fan barely kicks up. The fan is a rotary blower similair to the ones in the new iMacs, although obviously a much lower profile and slighlty different form factor. It does kick up during gaming, and while it makes more noise, it is more of a whoosh of air than anything mechanical or clicky. I think most of the noise is due to the shape of the exhaust vents more than the blower. At higher speeds you can definitely feel it moving some air, so I feel pretty confident the mini gets adequate air flow.

      I am the only one home right now at 7:45a.m., there is very little ambient or background noise to be heard currently, it is probably as close as my place gets to 100% silent and I can barely hear the mini at all, the fan is a whisper at best. I can here thee clock on the wall 20 feet away clicking more than I can hear the mini's fan.

      The hard drive is quiet, I rarely even here it seek. In fact, hard drive noise is so rare when I do hear it I tend to notice it. Hard drive performance has so far proven to be pretty decent, it honestly doesn't feel slow or he

  • by Cpyder ( 57655 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:51PM (#11481357) Journal
    Okay, the upgrades were overpriced, but what gets me really upset is how they convert their prices into euros.

    If I want to buy a Mac Mini in Belgium, the entry price is 519 euro, as opposed to 499 in the US. At the current conversion rate (taken from XE.net/ucc), the "correct" EU price should be 381.68 eur.

    Even tough Apple is an American company, they're not going to convince me this price is because the stuff has to come from the US of A. And even then, you'd think that Apple, being a global company, should be able to get some volume discounts from their transport service.

    This goes for all of their products. If I want to buy a Powerbook, it's actually cheaper to take a plane to New York, buy it at the NY Apple store (if there is one, I suppose there is), put it in my bag and fly back to the Old Continent than to buy it here, be it from a store or from the Apple website.

    Come to think of it, anyone from Belgium or Holland who wants to buy some mac stuff? I'll go to NY, pick it up and pass the discount on to you. The more, the merrier.

    (yes, I know I won't be able to walk trough the airport with thousands of $ worth of stuff without being robbed (be it by criminals or by the import tax officers), and I know this doesn't include cab rides.. but you get the picture)

    • by Fishd ( 114843 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @01:08PM (#11481578)
      And how much is VAT in Belgium? Try comparing the price without VAT to the USA price which is without their sales tax...
      • Ok, sure.

        US price without any tax : $ 499,00 - eur 381,41
        US price with 5% sales tax (in some states) : $ 523,95 - eur 400,48
        Belgian price excl 21% VAT : $ 550,35 - eur 420,66
        Belgian price incl 21% VAT : $ 665,92 - eur 509,00

        Okay, so the prices before tax aren't that different ($499 us, $550 eu), it's still worth the trip if you buy say a cinema display. (Which of course I will not.)

        I still think it's illogical to overcharge us "just in case the dollar should become more expen

  • by ThisIsFred ( 705426 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:54PM (#11481405) Journal
    Ha ha, I'm making a stupid pun!

    I know these comments contain the inevitable PC-to-Mac price comparisons, but are they equivalent? One fellow found out that the RAM price difference is only about $29 (installed) if the identical type of memory is selected.

    So my question is this: How about if we compare a Mac Mini to a mini-ITX system? Now we're in about the same price range, with similar limitations on upgrades. Plus it's harder (impossible?) to get a suitably powerful processor in a mITX PC.

    Anandtech compared the Mini with a full-size Dell - they'd have to, there's no mini-ITX Dell systems that I'm aware of. I hope there's someone else here who thinks that's just stupid: "Hey guys, guess what? I just did a price comparison between a dual-Opteron system and a high-end laptop. The Opteron box is so much better for the price. Now excuse me while I place it in my laptop bag and take it on a business trip!"
  • by Xugumad ( 39311 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @01:05PM (#11481543)
    Okay, fed up with everyone saying "1GB of RAM is sooooo expensive". Yes, it is. Bad Apple.

    However, why do you want 1GB of RAM? I use a PowerBook with a 1.5Ghz CPU and 512MB as my desktop replacement at work, and have no problems. I've currently got Thunderbird, Adium (IM), iTunes, Firefox, Azureus and X11 open, with no noticable slowdown or disk swapping.

    Unless you're going to be doing something you know is memory intensive (Photoshop), you probably won't use anything more than 512MB. If you're that worried, and live anywhere near an Apple store, see if you can try one of these out, open half a dozen applications and see what performance you get.
    • A linux kernel tree (without any object files) is about 230MB.

      Doing deltas between different versions is much faster if both versions are in memory. This means you need at least half a gig for the page cache, with nothing else running.

      For me personally, a gig is the minimum for development, and 2 gigs is noticeably nicer.

      My personal machine has a half gig though, as I don't do as much kernel work there.
      • All the kvetching (Score:3, Insightful)

        by guet ( 525509 )
        If anyone is considering buying this machine to try to compile a Linux kernel tree (or any application/os that size) on it regularly, I think you need to rethink the purchase. Same goes for heavy video editing.

        It's a budget, CONSUMER, box, it's not even the 'pro' consumer model (the iMac). The point of the parent was that perhaps 4% of the computing populace would even notice 1GB of RAM in their machine (as opposed to 512MB), which makes all the kvetching about the price of 1GB on Slashdot seem a little sp
    • I can confirm that. I went to the London Apple store last week-end to see how a Mac would perform because I am seriously considering getting one. I had with me a USB memory key with a high resolution scan of a photograph I took: 5400dpi from a negative scanner. ie about 5000x7000 pixels, 17Mb JPEG, 113Mb in memory when uncompressed. So I wanted to see how a Mac would manage with a image like this. Here is what I did:
      1. Open in Photoshop on a PowerBook (all the G5s were busy) that had 768Mb RAM and already qu
    • ... and I'm fed up with people telling me what I do and do not need. Are you omniscient? Can you see the future? Are you God?

      (If you are God, I'm really sorry about asking you to damn my luck last Friday at poker night, and I hope that you don't tell Santa because I'm really pulling for solid placement on the "nice" list this year.)

      ... ahem ...

      Inevitably, someone writes a tool or program that takes advantage of a lot more memory to do what it does. What might seem to be a perfectly acceptable amount o

  • by Tangential ( 266113 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @04:51PM (#11484580) Homepage
    I bought mini w/512 and wifi, $653. Got it last Friday and love it.

    Went to the apple site and went thru the order process again out of curiosity. Same price.

    I feel better.

Everybody needs a little love sometime; stop hacking and fall in love!

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