MAC MINI SERVER REVIEW 2011 UPGRADE
MAC MINI SERVER REVIEW 2011 PRO
MAC MINI SERVER REVIEW 2011 SOFTWARE

The Fusion Drive feels like a single 1TB SSD. The Fusion Drive is actually 2 drives: a 128GB Samsung 830-based SATA III SSD and a 1TB 5400RPM hard drive.

MAC MINI SERVER REVIEW 2011 PRO

That's faster than my 2006 Mac Pro with a Crucial M4 SSD. My Mac Mini has a 1TB Fusion Drive and boots to the desktop in around 10s. Installing SSD is the easiest way to speed up any computer system. Traditionally speaking, the hard drive has been and still is the bottleneck of computing systems. The default hard drives are 5400RPM, but you can configure them to either a Solid State Drive (SSD) or the new Fusion Drive.īoth the SSD and Fusion Drive are noticeably and significantly faster than default hard drives. I've noticed that this pattern during my photo batch exports and video renders. So even if you have upgraded to 2.6Ghz, you might not get 2.6Ghz worth of processing power. Once the processor starts to heat up, the CPU usage drops.

MAC MINI SERVER REVIEW 2011 SOFTWARE

So far from my usage, I found out that the processors have maximised usage during initial runs - that would be 100% for software that can use quad-core.

MAC MINI SERVER REVIEW 2011 UPGRADE

You can also upgrade it to 2.6Ghz but I'll only recommend it if you work more on videos. The quad-core starts at 2.3Ghz and is really fast. watching shows on your HDTV, a dual-core model is sufficient.įor computing needs and production work that requires rendering, I would recommend the quad-core. If you're looking at the Mac Mini for entertainment, e.g.

Some applications that do not support multi-core: Sketchup, iLife (includes iMovie, iPhoto, etc). Some applications that use multi-core: Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, Final Cut Pro, After Effects, Premiere Pro So depending on what you do, you might not spend more on the extra processing power. Not all applications take advantage of the multi-core. The base model has a dual-core, the middle and server editions both quad-cores. If you're putting your computer facing light source or windows, there will be gloss. If you don't need that level of control over colours, the iMac might be a better buy. If you work for print, and require colour accuracy for reproduction, you have to get a non-glossy screen. Apple displays and that from the iMac are brilliant, but not excellent. The (non-exclusive) advantage of the Mac Mini is of course the ability to pair it up with your own display. Other retail or online stores are selling only standard configurations. I've an office computer (WinXP) with better specs than the Mac Mini but shows all those problems.Ĭustomisation of the Mac Mini is only available from the Apple store online. Whether under stress will it start to show strange things, such as screen redraws, inability to switch from one app to another, missing palettes in software, inability to save files, inability to launch apps. I'm only interested in how predictable the computer is. I'm not really interested in numbers so you won't see much benchmarking - go to Macworld or Barefeats for those. Since I create graphics for newspaper, I'll also comment on its ability to perform under daily deadlines. The set I'm buying is for mainly for photo and video editing, stuff that I do at home. I bought the middle configuration but customised it with a 2.6Ghz quad-core and 1TB Fusion Drive. ConfigurationĪpple's 2012 release of Mac Mini comes in three configurations:

There's roughly two parts to this Mac Mini review.įirst part looks at the specifications and the second at how it performs in the real world with regards to creating graphics, photo editing and video editing.

Mac mini server review 2011