Apple Mac mini M9687LL/A (G4 1.42 GHz, 256 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Drive)

by Apple

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 6.5 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0006HU2ZU
• Item model number: M9687LL/A
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,259 in Computers & Accessories (See Top 100 in Computers & Accessories)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: January 10, 2005

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Live the digital life in stylish simplicity. Just 6.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall, Mac mini provides what you need to have more fun with your music, photos and movies -- right out of the box.

Get a Mac for Less
The modular design of Mac mini lets you upgrade your current system to the elegance, simplicity and reliability of Macintosh. If you already own a monitor, keyboard and mouse, you can get up and running in minutes. Or choose any combination of new devices to meet your individual situation. And yes, Mac mini will take advantage of your two-button USB mouse with scroll-wheel and your favorite USB keyboard. Just plug them in.

It Just Works Manage your music for iPod or organize and share your digital pictures with ease. Connect your digital camcorder to Mac mini and start editing your masterpiece. Or plug in your electric guitar or keyboard and make music. How? With iLife, a suite of easy-to-use applications ready to turn your life into a digital wonderland. And Mac OS X makes it effortless — you won’t have to install extra drivers when you add hardware to your system.

Mac mini also offers all the software that you need to finally enjoy the Internet hassle-free -- including email, chat and a web browser that blocks popup ads. You also get a DVD player, calendar software, an address book, faxing and a way to download your contacts to your cell phone or iPod. You can balance your check book with Quicken 2005. And when you want to take a break, play the 3D games Nanosaur 2 and Marble Blast Gold.

Inexpensive, But Never Cheap All that, and not an inch of wasted space. Apple engineers designed this small wonder from the ground up to deliver the most Mac for the least dinero. Inside its petite 2-inch tall, 6.5-inch square anodized aluminum enclosure, Mac mini houses a 1.42 GHz G4 processor, 80 GB hard drive, a slot-loading CD-R/DVD-ROM optical drive, 256 MB DDR SDRAM and ATI Radeon 9200 graphics chip with 32 MB dedicated DDR SDRAM -- all whisper-quiet.

Connect your digital devices, such as cameras, iPod, printer, camcorder or keyboard to the Mac mini over USB 2.0 or FireWire. Built-in 10/100 BASE-T Ethernet and a 56K v.92 fax modem give you access to broadband or dial-up connections to the Internet. A headphone/audio line-out jack lets you listen to stereo sound. Rearrange the Furniture, Anytime Believe it or not, all this technology weighs just 2.9 pounds. Imagine a desktop computer you can easily move from your study to the kitchen on a whim. Mac mini won't break your back when you want to shuffle things around.

Designed With Exquisite Finesse Most low-cost PC manufacturers slap together Frankenstein machines by hacking away features from the high end (of three years ago, anyway) and putting the warmed-over parts in ill-fitting cheap plastic boxes. They don’t really have a choice, since they don’t design any of the parts, from operating system to motherboard. That’s why most budget PC cases seem to be littered with a mish-mash of uncoordinated stickers from every component vendor on the planet. But Apple engineers can handcraft a new machine from scratch. For Mac mini, that means taking the time to decide just which elements make a Mac a Mac and then figuring out how to shrink them. And that process just happened to reinvent the whole concept of a desktop computer.

Pint-sized Perfection
The result? A machine you don’t actually mind putting atop your desk. At just 6.5 inches square and 2 inches tall, Mac mini fits anywhere. Its sleek anodized aluminum styling hints at the refined edges and rounded corners of its big brother, the iMac G5. A reflective white cover picks up the tones of your home decor and makes the ideal mate to put next to your iPod dock. Best of all, Mac mini purrs along at a whisper-quiet sound level, so there’s no reason to hide it under your desk like an old PC to save your ears. In fact, Mac mini puts the digital lifestyle right at your fingertips. Pop a DVD into the slot-loading combo drive or make a mix CD. Connect your iPod, digital camera, printer or DV camcorder via FireWire or USB ports on the back. Surf the Internet over Ethernet, modem or optional AirPort wireless.

Densely-packed Power
It’s all there. In fact, it’s hard to believe that there’s any place left for the rest of the computer. But squeezed in under that optical drive and behind all those ports lie a G4 processor, room for up to 1 GB PC2700 main memory, a Radeon 9200 graphics chip and 32 MB DDR SDRAM for it. And a large enough hard drive -- to store today’s digital media. There’s even space for an AirPort Extreme wireless networking card and an internal Bluetooth module. So you get the option of the power and promise of cable-free computing.

Mac mini looks great no matter how -- or where -- you stack it up.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

185 of 198 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice Mac ... but be careful before you buy., January 25, 2005

By 

Maine Writer "David" (Maine, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Apple Mac mini M9687LL/A (G4 1.42 GHz, 256 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Drive) (Personal Computers)

For all of the things the Mac mini is, there are some that it is not. As the owner five Macs -- from a iMac G4 to a dual G5 tower -- I'll try to help.

(1) If you need a Mac to surf the Web, send e-mails and IM, write the next great novel or screenplay, organize and fix your photos, encode and hold your music library, and do some semi-serious movie editing, the Mac mini is just your ticket. For these tasks, it's downright snappy -- but, please, bump up the RAM to at least 512 MB. (Remember, the Mac operating system, OS X, thrives on RAM. You'll see a noticeable speed improvement between 512 MB and 1 GB of RAM, for example.) In fact if these are your needs, there is no better personal computer to buy. Period.

(2) If you need a Mac to some serious GarageBand multi-track recording, serious movie-editing with long clips and multiple effects (even under iMovie), or heavy photo manipulation, you probably should look elsewhere. If you want to play serious games on the Mac -- and, yes, you'll be able to do that -- you might also want to look elsewhere. (Doom III, soon to come out for the Mac, requires a G5 processor. The bigger and better games will.) For those who fit these criteria, you should seriously look at the iMac G5, or even a G5 tower. Remember, you can get the iMac G5 for just a little bit more than the Mac mini with a screen, keyboard, and mouse. It's a great computer and a real step up from the Mac mini's G4 processor.

Of course, there are other reasons to want the Mac mini. It's a miracle of engineering -- amazingly small and with so much more functionality than Windows computers costing twice as much ... and taking up five times the space! (Don't just go by price tags. Take a bottom of the line Dell and add up the cost of all the extras that come standard with an Mac mini ... a firewire port (essential for many DV camcorders to off-load video), a CD burner and DVD player (for most PC, you might be able to get one or the other -- as an extra), a full blown graphics card with its own 32 MB of RAM (not one of those "on the motherboard" Intel graphics sets that cannibalizes system RAM and does a lousy job of running even rudimentary games), and best-in-the-business photo and movie editing apps, etc.

And on top of all this, you get the best operating system out there. No viruses. No crashes. No fuss, no muss. OS X is a dream ... built from the ground up on solid UNIX foundations. If you've had Windows PCs, you'll immediately know something's afoot ... an operating system that just ... works. What a wonder! And you don't need to but a single anti-virus program or subscription. Not even a utilities program!

Enjoy!

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Lowdown on The Mac Mini, February 3, 2005

By 

jhkl - See all my reviews

This review is from: Apple Mac mini M9687LL/A (G4 1.42 GHz, 256 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Drive) (Personal Computers)

Apple's introduction of the Mac Mini line of computers has attracted the eyes of both PC and Mac users. I picked up the 1.42 GHz model with the 512 MB RAM upgrade recently, because it was the first relatively affordable and small Macintosh computer to be released by Apple. Humming away quietly next to my relatively loud P4 3.0 GHz, 1 GB RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro PC, I've noticed a few things about the Mac Mini that might help potential buyers realize whether or not they want this system:

Pros:

1) Despite what some people might say, this system is very quick. I've read countless reviews of people saying that its too slow for many tasks - one review even said that animations were choppy when the resolution is above 1280x960. I'm currently using 1280x1024, and I saw a demo of this system at a resolution at least 1500/1600 pixels wide, maybe more. At one point in time, I had iTunes, Safari, GarageBand, and a small (very small) 2D game running, and iTunes never once skipped.

Believe it or not, when you take into account the anti-virus software, graphics card control panel, etc..., that has to load for Windows, this little Mac Mini loads about as fast as (maybe even faster than) my P4 3.0 GHz machine.

2) I know it has been said before, but I'm just going to reiterate it - this system is small, and it's hard to believe that Apple could put such a system together. It's also very quiet - but the CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive is really, really loud when it starts up. It's a minor problem, but overall, the Mini is fairly silent.

Cons:

There is only one real con, but unfortunately for some buyers, it might be a big one - whatever you do, PLEASE, PLEASE do not buy this system IF you are buying a computer to run higher-end games. PLEASE! Despite what Apple would have you believe, this little box is not meant for 3D gaming (2D is perfectly fine). Games like Unreal Tournament 2004 or Call of Duty barely make 20-30 FPS @ 1024x768/1280x1024 and are often unplayable even with a lot of the eye-candy turned off. However, some games also seem to do decently well - like the demo of Jedi Knight II (why it works as well as it does is really strange), MotoTrax, or NoLimits Roller-coaster Simulator. It seems to be a real toss up, but generally if the minimum specifications for the game seem to be pushing the limits (like stating that the game needs a 32 MB graphics card), chances are it won't run that well on the Mac Mini.

It is for this reason (and this reason only) that I deducted one star from overall rating.

Final Words:

The Mac Mini is a really nice little system that suits the average home user or even a small developer perfectly. Diehard gamers should definitely look elsewhere (if you're on a budget, look to the PC side of things) as this system is not meant for games. All in all, the Mac Mini has two defined markets:

1) The average home user who just wants to organize his/her photos, write a document, watch a DVD, and so on.
2) The PC user who has a fairly good PC, but is interested in the Macintosh side of things - not to make a complete switch, but just to see what Macs are like, do some development, learn Mac OS X, etc...

If you fit into one of these groups then I highly recommend that you purchase the Mac Mini. If you are a middle of the road user who wants to run some higher end games, but is still budget-oriented, try looking at a budget PC with an upgrade to a Radeon 9600 or GeForce FX 5600. If you want the latest and greatest with no budget limit, then look somewhere else at a high-end PC or Mac.

I'm certainly not sorry that I purchased the Mini, and I hope that Apple decides to make even more middle-of-the-road, fairly inexpensive computers in the future.

To conclude this review, I'd just like to tell anybody debating between getting a Macintosh or a PC that Windows is not as crash-prone/virus-ridden/difficult as most Mac purists would have you believe.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fun, functional machine, March 29, 2005

By 

S. Bush (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Apple Mac mini M9687LL/A (G4 1.42 GHz, 256 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Drive) (Personal Computers)

The price point of the Mac Mini finally convinced me to switch from PC to Mac. Even nicely loaded (bluetooth, airport, 512MB memory, super drive) it only came to about $850 total. If you really sit down, like I did, and do a feature-by-feature cost comparison with a PC, you'll see that this an excellent price, particularly when you factor in the lack of Windows-related spyware, malware, etc. pain.

I am 100% pleased with this device. Set-up was an absolute breeze - I literally unplugged my gnarly cable modem/wireless/wireless music server set-up from my PC and into the mini, and it began to serve wireless internet to my PC laptops, and music to my stereo (you'll need AirportExpress w/AirTunes for this, also recommended) just.like.that. VPN was also easy to install and configure as well - something that had caused me real, ongoing pain with Windows. OS X is rock-solid, relatively simple to learn, and the iLife applications are great.

Let us not forget the bling factor - the thing looks cool, runs cool, is whisper quiet, and consumes minimal power. You'll want to expand your USB ports, and bring them to the front with an external hub - you can do that for $30 or less. I also found that cabling was super-clean - all the ports are placed so closely together at the rear of the machine that you can just run the cables down the back of your desk, cable-tie them into one neat bundle, and forget about it. That was a real, unexpected bonus; the jumble of cables behind my PC often evoked a feeling akin to despair.

Extreme power users, gamers - by all means look elsewhere. For those who want great basic functionality, security, optimal performance and ease of use, I highly recommend looking into this machine.