Wondering how to upgrade your Mini?

I wrote an article entitled "Souping up a Mini" for my website, located here:

http://mini.wiredby.com

There are some good links at the end, too. It is perpetually updated, so if you have anything to add (new products for the Mini, guides, etc.), let me know and I'll drop it in. Comments appreciated. Enjoy!

I am really confused. Your article says that the Mini uses SODIMM laptop memory but I was under the impression that it took standard size desktop memory. What gives?

techster82 said:

I am really confused. Your article says that the Mini uses SODIMM laptop memory but I was under the impression that it took standard size desktop memory. What gives?

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It does take regular desktop memory and you can easily find a decent 1GB stick for under $100.

I agree with techster82, the mini takes a 184 pin DIMM not a SODIM. Your site says it takes a SODIM.

Anyways, thanks for the effort! That's a nice set of links at the bottom.

i am pretty sure it is a typo becaust both links at the end of the page lead to the correct ram. nice lil write up though!

techster82 said:

I am really confused. Your article says that the Mini uses SODIMM laptop memory but I was under the impression that it took standard size desktop memory. What gives?

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Oops, thanks for the heads up! I made the correction on both the article and print page. Thanks!

I'll be adding more links in another week or two; I've found several other external enclosures that match the mini (from LaCie and other companies) as well as a number of good mod sites. Now I've just got to figure out how to organize the ever-growing list of links

Or, you could pimp the **** out of an imac for the same price.

munch said:

Or, you could pimp the **** out of an imac for the same price.

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Yeah, I noted that in the price lineup at the bottom. You'd actually save $100 by getting an iMac and get a 2ghz dual-core processor, 2 gigs of ram, 256mb video card, and 500 gig hard drive in the processor, not to mention Front Row with a remote

Sweet article

Great article and it asks as really good question, is it all worth it.

I gotta be honest in saying that if any of you out there are looking for a fast computer the Mini is so not the way to go if you plan to do all the upgrades, go for the iMac

From my own point of view though I've had my Mini for about 5 months and I've got hundreds of apps funning now (most of which are super Ram hungry). So, I'm thinking about upping my Ram to 1GB and adding 7200 rpm drive. Now Im in the Uk and this is only gonna cost about 200 pounds which is vastly cheaper than a new Mac (Which I'd love if i wasn't a poor student .

Anyway the point is, fab article and definitly worth taking note of it you are just getting into the apple game, but if like me you've had the mini for a while, a few upgrades like this is a really cheap way of breathing new life into your mac.

:yinyang:

areth2j, thanks for the comments! I actually ended up ordering an iMac after I read my own article, lol. I'd love to have a Mini on my desk, but the iMac just turned out to be a better value, plus it had a better WAF Someday I'd like to get a Mini for myself though (the iMac will be my wife's). All it really needs, aside from 1gb ram/Airport/Bluetooth, is a $320 investment for the Pioneer DL DVD burner ($120) and a 7200rpm 100gb Hitachi hard drive ($200). You can get the hard drive even cheaper if you get a smaller capacity (if you don't need all the space or have an extra drive available). Supposedly the new high-end Minis are coming with an 8x Superdrive as well, so that's something to consider too if you're ordering a new one. I have a lot of new links to add to the appendixes, but I've been pretty busy with school and everything. Then again, maybe I should invest some time into my site instead of surfing forums lol.

Burning money (and CD's

Good call with the iMac, I intend to get an intel one, once there are more universal apps out there.

I got the Laci Mini 250 Gb External HD which looks exactly like a mac mini and sits beautifully underneath it which is why I can happily opt for a smaller (and cheaper) 7200 rpm drive.

Also i thought about popping in a superdrive, but at only 8 speed I wasnt convinced so I got the Lacie 16x Porsche external DVD drive. Fantastic investment, I'm buring cds in like just over a minute and dvd's in about 6/7. It rocks!

One thing that does suck, though is that I turned to Apple cause the ibook and mini were more cost effective than my PC which i was burining money on. The same has just happnede with my Macs now, I love treating them with new parts and shiny bits. I might as well just get my salary forwarded to Mr Jobs, lol.

G

areth2j said:

Good call with the iMac, I intend to get an intel one, once there are more universal apps out there.

I got the Laci Mini 250 Gb External HD which looks exactly like a mac mini and sits beautifully underneath it which is why I can happily opt for a smaller (and cheaper) 7200 rpm drive.

Also i thought about popping in a superdrive, but at only 8 speed I wasnt convinced so I got the Lacie 16x Porsche external DVD drive. Fantastic investment, I'm buring cds in like just over a minute and dvd's in about 6/7. It rocks!

One thing that does suck, though is that I turned to Apple cause the ibook and mini were more cost effective than my PC which i was burining money on. The same has just happnede with my Macs now, I love treating them with new parts and shiny bits. I might as well just get my salary forwarded to Mr Jobs, lol.

G

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Yeah, once a computer hardware geek, always a computer hardware geek. Boy don't I know Are you running your Porsche through Firewire? What are your actual burn speeds? I usually hit about 12x internal on my desktop stuff. I'm curious to know if an external drive can actually hit 16x or close to it. Also, have you tried using your external hard drive as a boot drive yet? From what I've read it significantly increases the speed of the Mini (like at boot time) when using a Firewire 7200rpm hard drive.

yeah the porchse drive and the hard drive both run through firewire (daisychained together). At the moment I only have 8x DVD R-'s so I'm sticking to that speed but thats fast enough for me. As I say when buring compliation music CD's its lightning.

I'm thinking on FireWire 400 you'd maybe be hard pushed to hit 16x exactly but economy wise the discs arent cheap enough compare to the printable white top 8 speed ones I am getting at the moment. On thing it does have though is LightScribe, which I''ve not tried yet. I plan to order some disc soon though so I can give it a go and I'll post the results on the forum.

At the moment I'd havent tried booting from the external LaCie, but like you I've heard good things about the speed. I'll maybe try it at some point but the main reason I got mine was that my PC ran out of space, totally, so i had 200GB of files to move to it as soon as I got it (so I've almost ran out of space already .

I'll maybe have to buy another, hehe

areth2j said:

yeah the porchse drive and the hard drive both run through firewire (daisychained together). At the moment I only have 8x DVD R-'s so I'm sticking to that speed but thats fast enough for me. As I say when buring compliation music CD's its lightning.

I'm thinking on FireWire 400 you'd maybe be hard pushed to hit 16x exactly but economy wise the discs arent cheap enough compare to the printable white top 8 speed ones I am getting at the moment. On thing it does have though is LightScribe, which I've not tried yet. I plan to order some disc soon though so I can give it a go and I'll post the results on the forum.

At the moment I'd havent tried booting from the external LaCie, but like you I've heard good things about the speed. I'll maybe try it at some point but the main reason I got mine was that my PC ran out of space, totally, so i had 200GB of files to move to it as soon as I got it (so I've almost ran out of space already .

I'll maybe have to buy another, hehe

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Yeah, on my PC I usually get 12x or so out of the 8x discs; even 8x on my laptop is pretty quick. I really don't do enough burning to need more than that. I usually get Ritek 8x printables too or else just use Lightscribe discs (Verbatim, simply because they were available). I used to print discs using an Epson R200, which has since been donated to my dad. I'm currently working on hacking my Canon IP4000 to turn it into a CD/DVD printer as well (it's the American version). We'll see how that turns out lol. Lightscribe is pretty cool but inkjet printing is way better.

If you get a chance, just use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the internal drive to the external drive, then boot from there. I used CCC to copy my Cube's primary hard drive to the new one, piece of cake. CCC is a nice app. It would definately be more cost effective to buy an external drive, such as the miniStack, and use that as the primary/boot drive and use the slow internal laptop drive in the Mini as a backup solution. A 7200rpm 100gb Hitachi laptop drive is $200, which is also the same price for a 7200rpm 250gb Firewire hard drive. An extra 150 gigs with no added hassle for the same price is definately something worth considering...

Hrm, I'll kepp that in mind. I'm going through loads of Finals stuff in university for the next couple of months so god know what I'll have time to do, but i'll be sure to make a thread of what ever i do to give a bit of a review.

areth2j said:

Hrm, I'll kepp that in mind. I'm going through loads of Finals stuff in university for the next couple of months so god know what I'll have time to do, but i'll be sure to make a thread of what ever i do to give a bit of a review.

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Sounds good! Don't worry about it with school though, I know how that goes If I get a Mini before then, I'll give it a shot too. Ahh, so many things to play with!