I'll never understand why...

my mini is such a turd compared to the G4 iMacs in the comp labs that have the same processor.

because of architecture and RAM.

Graphite said:

because of architecture and RAM.

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The iMac has less RAM.

It's the hard drive 100%

There's an article floating around somewhere about a guy hooking up a firewire drive and making it his primary, got something like a 40% speed boost overall.

The hard disk in the mini is the same as a portable hd. Most of the tests show a substantial gain by swapping it for a faster model or going to an external Firewire drive (as mentioned above).

Badger said:

The hard disk in the mini is the same as a portable hd. Most of the tests show a substantial gain by swapping it for a faster model or going to an external Firewire drive (as mentioned above).

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I have been meaning to try that, I just ordered this really nice Rosewill Enclosure, so I can try that out.

Here is a link , to the site that did the benchmarks, it also includes a how-to for copying your HD image over.

Graphite said:

because of architecture and RAM.

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The architecture is basically the same than the 1.25GHz e/iMac G4, same CPU, same FSB.
It definitely is the slow harddisk. I have two friends with 1.25GHz mini's, one with the 40GB drive (spins at 5400rpm) and one with the optional 80GB drive (spins at 4200rpm). Both have 1GB of memory. The 80GB-one is substantially slower at everything that requires HD access.
And the fact that the optical drive is connected to the same IDE-bus doesn't make things much better...it makes copying files from CD to HD (for example) really slow.

I hear Micronet sells hard drives that sit on top of the mini. They seem nice b/c they match the computer. They are also faster (7200RPM,and come in many capacities.

macEfan said:

I hear Micronet sells hard drives that sit on top of the mini. They seem nice b/c they match the computer. They are also faster (7200RPM,and come in many capacities.

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I have seen those, they match really well, but they are a little pricey. $170 for an 80gb HD is a little much considering I could get the enclosure I bought and an 80gb HD for around $110. I already have an 80gb 7200 rpm drive just sitting here not in use...