Apple Mac mini MC408LL/A Snow Leopard Server

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Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 8.8 x 6.9 inches ; 5.7 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 6.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• Note: Gift-wrapping is not available for this item.
• ASIN: B0013FTCPU
• Item model number: MC408LL/A
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank

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  Computer & Accessories > Desktops

• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 20, 2009

Product Description

Product Description

Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server is designed to help you communicate, collaborate, and share information. Its perfect for any small business or group retail shops, doctor and law offices, classrooms, design studios you name it. Now you can have your own server that supports email on Mac computers, PCs, and iPhone. Sync and share calendars and contact information. Access and swap files securely, and at lightning speed, between Mac computers and PCs. Easily create full-featured wikis and high-quality podcasts. And automatically back up all your important data. separately) Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server lets you add an unlimited number of Mac and PC users without per-user licensing fees. So you can grow your business without growing your costs. And you get amazing hardware and software that are ready to go, right out of the box, for less than the cost of most server software alone. Mac mini Mini-DVI to DVI Adapter 110W power adapter and power cord Install/restore DVDs Printed and electronic documentation

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredibly Powerful and Deceptively Small, December 4, 2009

By	Brian Stucki (Las Vegas, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The new Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server has just been wonderful. We already have about 100 of them running here at Macminicolo as production servers and they've performed great.

A few comments on hardware:

- In this machine you have two 500GB drives. By default, they are two separate drives. When you configure on startup, the default prompt is to have your services running on the drive called "Server HD" and the backups go to the drive "Macintosh HD2." Of course you can change this to however you want, but that is the default.

- You can also put the two drives in RAID 1 or RAID 0. To do this, you'll need to boot from the restore disc that comes with the machine. Since there is no optical drive on the Macmini, you'll either need to use the Remote Disk feature and take advantage of a Mac or PC drive on the network. (This works wonderful) Or you can purchase the SuperDrive for MacBook Air which plugs into the USB drive of the Mac mini and works fine. Personally, I'm not a fan of RAID, but I know others are.

- This machine comes with 4GB of RAM, which is more than enough for most things. You can also upgrade to 8GB of RAM if you'd like to crack it open. This isn't "officially" supported by Apple, but works well.

- Like all other Mac minis before it, this machine is nearly silent. It's wonderful in that sense. It also runs cooler since the optical drive is what produced most of the heat in the last ones.

- For connectivity, you have a FW800 and 5 USB. For a display, you can use mini DisplayPort or mini DVI. (There is a mini-DVI to DVI converter that comes in the box.) And of course, the machine will also run headless without any problem at all.

And now a couple mentions of software info:

- This machine comes with a license of Unlimited Client Snow Leopard Server. That's a wonderful deal since it's $499 if purchased on it's own. This is a full copy with no limitation. You'll have the blue card with the serial in your packet.

-The machine will also run Snow Leopard just fine if you'd rather install it on this machine and use your Snow Leopard Server license somewhere else.

- For the first time on these Mac minis, Applecare also covers basic setup of Snow Leopard Server. (This is a separate, expensive option when buying an Xserve.) You can call AppleCare and they'll help you configure your server. Very useful.

Overall, these new machines are just fantastic. Our customers love them.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great value for money, January 28, 2010

By	D. Kieran Kelleher "DKK" (Palm Harbor, FL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a great little machine. I am replacing a cluster of old G4 and G5 XServes that were used as web-application servers with these little guys and I am very happy with these. Even though OS X server is included, I generally replace it with OS X Client for servers dedicated to Apache-WebObjects-MySQL application hosting since I find remote command line administration of OS X Client is more familiar and convenient to me. However if using some of the many other server services, I will leave OS X Server operating system on there.

Before Mac Mini Server arrived on the scene, many were using regular Mac Minis as servers for small sites and small business. Now Apple has endorsed the use of the Mac Mini as an economical server by selling it in this great sub-$1000 package with two 500GB drives. The extra drive is far more useful than the built-in DVD drive in a server usage scenario. You can use software mirroring, or simply use Carbon Copy Cloner to perform automatic nightly backups to the second drive.

And this little machine consumes a fraction of the power of an XServe and provides near silent operation when compared to a noisy whining G5 XServe.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just what I was looking for!, February 1, 2010

By	Rob (NYC) - See all my reviews

Couldn't have been easier to set up! In very little time I had this little wonder serving media to the entire house. I hooked up a WD 4TB Firewire 800 drive locally and then connected it to my 6TB Network Attached Storage device. The Mac Mini Server acts as the central iTunes server, photo library, Time Machine backup repository, and file storage for the whole family. It also has enough CPU Power to encode and upload videos. I rarely hear the fan kick on and it is uses very little electricity which was a huge selling point! You can either drive two 24 inch LCD displays at 1900x1200 using both the mini-DVI and mini display port connections or just use Apple Remote Desktop to run it headless in a closet.

Lastly, the iChat server is pretty cool if you have lots of kids like I do. I could see it also working great for a small office.

I would purchase this again if I had it to do all over and would recommend this to any of my friends.