Mac Mini (intel): My First Experience

My work has just purchased a Mac Mini (intel). One of the reasons for the purchase is to test out all out software so that we can test it will run fine on an intel based mac prior to purchasing more expensive machines. We bought a 1.6Ghz Core Duo Mac mini with 512Mb RAM. The first think that I noticed was that running programs took longer to start up. I put this down to the fact that all of my other systems are running a minimum of 1Gig of RAM and the Mac Mini only has 512Mb. With a quick review of the RAM utilization I did notice that there was absolutely no spare RAM. Therefore the first thing that I would recommend is putting in at least 1Gig of RAM (preferably as a single module so that you can expand later if required). The other potential slow down was because many of the applications that I was trying are not yet universal binaries and therefore there is a hit as Rosetta automatically compiles up the code to the Intel native instructions set. However, once the programs were running they responded quickly.

The next item for me to play with was Front Row, as this is the first computer that I have had a chance to play with. On first inspection I really liked the remote. It was very small without being too small, which meant that I could put it in my pocket and not notice it there but still not lose it. One thing that disappointed me was the level of responsiveness when using the remote. When starting up Front Row by clicking on the menu button there are numerous occasions when it seems to take forever to Front Row to start. Also when entering a slide show in the pictures section it would take quite some time. Some occasions it was long enough for me to start wondering if the mac had crashed so i would start hitting more buttons (always a bad thing to do). The end result is that my Front Row experience is mixed, when it does respond I absolutely love it but the occasions when it does not respond and seems to hang really taints my opinion of the software.

Next to test was the new Apple Bootcamp. This has got to be one of the easiest things to do. Simply install the Bootcamp assistant like any other program and then just follow the prompts, there really was not much to do. One thing though is do make sure you have an Windows XP install CD that contains Service Pack 2 as it is an absolute pain to try and install it at a later stage. Without SP2 windows still loads and works but you do not get any network and the display drivers do not work. In addition the drivers CD from apple that is created by the Bootcamp Assistant does not work as it requires some SP2 files. Other than the Service Pack 2 issue, which is my fault, Bootcamp works with no problems at all.

After seeing the speed of running windows straight on the mac hardware I was very keen to try the beta of Parallels. The software installed with no problems and run straight out of the box. Installing windows was a breeze and once I had installed the VM addition tools into the WIndows VM the mouse worked more smoothly and could move between the VM window and the OSX desktop. The beta version does not support full screen but I still found it extremely useful. The speed of windows in the VM environment was extremely good and without doing any benchmarks I would say that it was almost as fast as running windows straight on hardware through Bootcamp; although much less memory was available.

So the end result is that both Bootcamp and Parallels ran windows extremely well with very little fuss to setup. Front Row worked but seemed a little sluggish. Running programs in generally seemed to take a little longer to startup. My final comment is get as much RAM as you can afford as with using Rosetta, VMs and everything else you will really really need it.

April 13, 2006