Mac Mini Help?

My parents have been looking to buy me a mac for my room for sometime now, but didn't want to spend too much for an iBook. When I showed them the mac mini they sayed that they would buy me it. I agreed that it would be enough for my need as it is. Anyways they said they would spend $600 on the nicer model and that I could chip in for all the extras I wanted.

Being a young high school musician I don't have that much money on me right now. I need an airport card and I would like bluetooth but I would like to wait a while. My question is can I upgrade all these things in a couple of months?

AirPort - Yes
Bluetooth - No..you can buy an external USB dongle but internal has to be done by apple

Wow that was really fast. Can I take it to a certified apple retailer and have them do it?

As far as I know it is an option that can only be installed upon purchase but I could be wrong

trpnmonkey41 said:

AirPort - Yes
Bluetooth - No..you can buy an external USB dongle but internal has to be done by apple

Click to expand...

That's for other Macs, but the Mac mini can be upgraded later with both, bluetooth and Airport.
But it has to be done by a certified Apple technician

Avalon said:

That's for other Macs, but the Mac mini can be upgraded later with both, bluetooth and Airport.
But it has to be done by a certified Apple technician

Click to expand...

Wow..thats interesting...How do you know this?

We read a lot of the other mac sites, get rss feeds and so forth I was also hearing that you can buy a combo, where the airport card and bluetooth are on the same card, which is the only way that you can get both in.. so if you bought airport and then eventually want bluetooth also, you have to buy a combo card, which then leaves you with an extra airport card... I read this on one site, so I would ask them first before purchasing if this is indeed the case.

Murlyn said:

We read a lot of the other mac sites, get rss feeds and so forth I was also hearing that you can buy a combo, where the airport card and bluetooth are on the same card, which is the only way that you can get both in.. so if you bought airport and then eventually want bluetooth also, you have to buy a combo card, which then leaves with an extra airport card... I read this on one site, so I would ask them first before purchasing if this is indeed the case.

Click to expand...

I can't believe how wonderful the members are in this forum. :mac:

Murlyn said:

We read a lot of the other mac sites, get rss feeds and so forth I was also hearing that you can buy a combo, where the airport card and bluetooth are on the same card, which is the only way that you can get both in.. so if you bought airport and then eventually want bluetooth also, you have to buy a combo card, which then leaves you with an extra airport card... I read this on one site, so I would ask them first before purchasing if this is indeed the case.

Click to expand...

...and knowing an Apple technician also helps :yinyang:

On the Mac mini's mainboard is a MiniPCI connector, which basically is nothing else than the connector that the Airport Extreme card uses. But because of the extremely small housing, you need a riser card, that includes Bluetooth and on which Airport will be connected horizontally.

As Apple won't sell that Bluetooth riser card to anybody else than a certified Apple reseller, they are the only ones that can install them.

What's kinda interesting is that, in the future, this MiniPCI connector could get some other interesting hardware...it makes the Mac mini somehow expandable. :mac:

And MiniPCI isn't Apple proprietary...so there really might be some interesting stuff to come...