Pem’s Tech Blog

Unboxing

Because I am only half-serious about the blogging thing and I haven’t stream-lined the photo uploads to ftp (such as get a camera, Eye-Fi and auto-upload to my ftp), this is not much of an unboxing since it has no pictures (or video).  So I’ll just describe it some.

It came in a small box, and it had what it said it should: Mac Mini, mini-DVI to DVI-D (dual link) adapter, power adapter (yes it’s kind of a brick and if you carry it around that adds some weight/space in your backpack), $19 extra for Apple Remote.

I am going to admit that I enjoyed opening it, but I with any good gadgets / computers stuff, not just Apple.

Upgrading the RAM: with a putty knife

I take a while to decide these things, but I settled on the $600 model (120 GB hard drive, 1 GB RAM) but I paid the extra $150 for the faster CPU (2.26 GHz instead of 2.0 GHz): I’m sure it doesn’t increase the performance enough to justify the price difference, but unlike the RAM and hard drive you can’t easily upgrade the Mac Mini’s CPU because it’s apparently soldered or glued (epoxy) to the motherboard.

But I did do the upgrade the RAM, I ordered 4 GB (2GB x2, DDR3 PC3-8500), for $64, but with $4 and $5.61 tax, it was $73.59, which is significantly less than the $150 that Apple wanted for 4 GB.

Upgrading RAM on my HP desktop and my HP laptop is easy and simple.  Upgrading RAM on an Apple product is not so simple, because their cases are hard to open.  Kind of ironic with the “simplicity” marketing stuff.  In fact, on my HP tx1000, you can swap out both the battery AND the optical disc drive without removing a screw (no this is not a typo: you can take out the optical drive just as easy as the battery), and accessing the hard drive, RAM, or wireless chip is 1 or 2 screws each: very simple.  My HP desktop has a simple PDF doc that describes how to do it on their website.

On the Mac Mini, it’s not a big deal, but it’s definitely less simple.  But the good news is you can web search (google etc) to find video and picture tutorials to help make it still reasonably simple.

Upgrade Mac Mini: a few links:
* RAM: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KaHNLR6Aac
* HDD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIiSaunTWWM&feature=related
* HDD x2 (replace optical drive): http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Mac-mini-A1283-Terabyte-Drive/660/1
  * have to solder a non-standard cable
* CPU is soldered so don’t bother upgrading it:
  * http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/03/more-mac-mini-details-soldered-processor-drive-upgrades.ars

So I did some reading and looked at pictures from other people who did it, and then I mostly just followed a video.  So it wasn’t bad.  The biggest difficulty is just opening/closing the screw-less case/shell.  But there are also some details about how the Mac Mini’s particular inside screws and parts come apart and go back together, such as the RAM has to go in at an angle a certain way.

To make it easier to open the screw-less case/shell, I got a 3” metal putty knife and a few other plastic putty knives, from the painting section at Walmart (I’m sure you can order them online or Home Depot, etc).  I guess this was another $5 to $10, so maybe rather than saving $75 I saved closer to $65, and spent a few extra hours deciding, researching, and doing it.  And then I have to admit I did scratch the case a little on the bottom when prying it open with the putty knife.  But overall I’m glad I upgraded the RAM myself instead of paying Apple $150 to do it.  It gave me some more case upgrading experience and now I have these extra putty knife tools

Someday I may do other upgrades too, like replace the DVD drive with (a Blu-ray drive) or (a second hard drive) or (a discrete GPU).  Or just replace the 5400 rpm 120 GB hard drive with a larger/faster hard drive or an SSD drive.

Pem (Admin) :: Jul.10.2009 :: Operating System focused: Mac OS X :: No Comments »

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