Metroxing Mac Mini Buyer's Guide & Recommendations

If you've decided on a MAC MINI, you have three choices and a host of accessories.

Here is the official Apple page with all the specs. And while this might be more information than you really want - here is the most comprehensive overview and review on the Mac Mini from Macintouch (a great Mac site on troubleshooting).

The three choices are physically the same size. There is the entry one at $499 that's slightly slower and has the smallest hard drive (40 GB). The middle one is $599 that's about 10% faster and with an 80 GB hard drive. The high end one is the same speed and hard drive size as the middle one but comes with a DVD burner/recorder. It retails for $699.

They all come bundled "free" with some of the best consumer software out there. If you want to do home video editing, or work on personal photos - including making it into book form, the software available is powerful and easy to use and there is no PC equivalent even for thousands of dollars! A brief overview is here.

To review software options, click here. (remember when you buy a new Mac, you get iLife so no need to buy it again).

So, we're just going to cover what hardware add on's you might consider.

YOU MIGHT HAVE IT ALREADY!

If you have a PC that's less than 2 years old, and you are relatively happy with the keyboard, mouse & monitor - you can just try switching them over. If your keyboard and mouse are USB ones, you can just try plugging them in and in 99% of the cases, the driver needed by your keyboard or mouse is already included from Apple.

It's pretty easy to test out.

With the power off, plug in your keyboard & mouse.

The monitor might be trickier depending on some other factors but it's easy to test out.

Attached the included DVI to VGA adapter. The DVI end goes in the back of MAC MINI, the VGA to your monitor. Power on your monitor.

Restart Mac.

If the monitor springs to life (as it should) - even the icons look really, really small or really, really large and the geometry of the screen is off, that's fine - the important thing is that the Mac recognizes and is sending a screen to the monitor.

First, we'll test out the mouse & keyboard.

You should be able to move your mouse around and you can click on items and starting typing. If that's the case - you are pretty much set. You can go to SYSTEM PREFERENCES > KEYBOARD & MOUSE to adjust the speed if you find it too slow or too fast. If something is not working, make sure everything is plugged in nice & tight.

Now, the monitor. There is a SYSTEM PREFERENCES > DISPLAYS settings. The first step is "sync" the resolution that the MAC MINI "sends" out versus what your monitor can receive. Most monitors are auto sensing so in DISPLAYS, if you change the resolution, your monitor will 'flash' for a second and redraw the screen to match - at the lowest resolution, your icons will be huge and not very crisp. Generally, you'll want to set it at the highest resolution possible for the MAC MINI & your monitor (you can adjust the icon & text size later in the FINDER/DESKTOP > SHOW VIEW OPTIONS). Some cheaper monitors might not be auto sensing so you may need to adjust the resolution to match your Mac output manually - there should be some buttons somewhere on your monitor - they usually are cryptic and not very logical so good luck! :-) But it should be no more than about a 5 minute process to get it working. The SYSTEM PREFERENCES > DISPLAYS also lets you set geometry and brightness/contrast but that might just be for Apple monitors but you can obviously test that out and you'll know right away if its' working or if you need to go back to the buttons on the monitor.

But if you decide you want wholesale changes and out with everything that the PC touched :-), here are some hardware recommendations below - we're just going to offer you some choices in a wide price range so you get an idea of what's out there.

Note that the photos are NOT to scale to each other.


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