Five places to do a better disk upgrade than inside

Mac accessory supplier iFixIt is selling a solution to add two bigger drives inside the well-sealed-up Mac Mini. The concept means cracking the case on this half-shoebox sized computer and replacing the Superdrive with a faster and bigger disk. No more CD/DVD option after this.

Any plan to crack a Mini for this is crackers. The Mini runs without a fan and manages to keep itself cool enough to keep operating. But the back of that little miracle is warm-plus with just one drive running inside. With a Firewire 800 port on the back, putting another heater of a drive inside asks for trouble that Apple won’t fix.

Upgrading the memory inside is a different, better reason to use a putty knife to get that case open. Apparently once you get 2GB of memory inside, the Mini can recognize 256MB of it for better graphics performance.

But adding that memory happens one of two ways: You buy the $799 unit from Apple in the sealed and warranteed case, or you get inside to beef up the $599 model to 2GB. Just because you or your geeky pal can do something like update memory for you doesn’t mean you should. Saving $200 on the cheaper unit (well, about $175 after you buy the extra memory) could cost you later in warranty. The smaller the Mac, the more chance it will need Apple’s service if something goes awry. It’s close quarters inside there. Read the rest of this entry »

The price tags did not rise, but Mac features advanced this week. Is this a way of discounting Macs? Maybe more to the point, can a small business owner or an independent Mac user call his computers inexpensive? I had a chat with a longtime Mac owner this week who doesn’t think so, but still keeps buying Macs.

Analysts and pundits have estimated that the average price of a Mac dropped 8 percent this week. The 24-inch iMac sells for $300 less than its predecessor, and the only thing a buyer seems to give up is one Firewire 400 port and the numeric keypad portion of the keyboard. In exchange there’s twice the memory, more than double the graphics speed, and a disk twice as big as its predecessor. (I know these numbers well, since I bought the 24-in predecessor in January.)

But it’s still a $1,499 computer, my friend says. You can get PCs like this for a lot less. A lot turns out to be around $200 if you stick to a name brand. How much value that $200 represents is the genuine question. Around here, we buy Macs and use them for five years or more. That’s $40 a year difference, about what you spend on one tankful of gas, no matter how big a car you drive. Read the rest of this entry »

Apple announced its new iMac and Mac mini systems today, but the smaller of these two Macs is bringing the biggest improvement in capability for small businesses. The iMacs with their 20- and 24-inch screens got modest bumps in speed, and each model got faster graphics, the latest implementation of Apple’s shift to NVIDIA. (Apple does a compelling sell of the new graphics in a pop-up screen, comparing the four new graphics sets to the prior graphics. Be aware that faster screen speed comes at a price above the entry-level, though.) All models also received more base RAM — so that will tell you how important it is to increase memory on anything that Apple ships you.

Ah, but the Mini. It continues its ascent as the best Mac for the dollar. For the same prices, the system now has solved its old-dog-slow graphics speed with an NVIDIA chipset; doubled the limit for RAM (see above); and increased the top speed of the processor to 2.26 GHz. Mind you, you’ve got to buy the faster of the two Mini models to get all that, but at just a $200 increase, it’s well worth it.

Apple makes much of its new Mini DisplayPort on the mini to connect monitors. It’s a genuine value for the mini if you’re got DisplayPort monitors, but not much of a bump for the mini customer already using a DVI screen. Like Firewire, DVI is getting pushed to the door by Apple, which is shifting its display focus to DisplayPort. The system includes a mini DVI to DVI adapter, but you can see the trend here. Smaller is better, but it demands peripheral replacements, too. Read the rest of this entry »