few dumb questions before i order

[russdev]

if i go with 512 mb of mem can i at later date upgrade it and then same with hard drive as well...

 

also on top model has airport or what ever wireless is called assume this works ok with normal wireless hubs...

 

as can see complete mac novice.

 

 

Russ

[DMcCoy]

if i go with 512 mb of mem can i at later date upgrade it and then same with hard drive as well...

 

also on top model has airport or what ever wireless is called assume this works ok with normal wireless hubs...

 

as can see complete mac novice.

 

 

Russ

 

I choose everything!

 

You can add memory but its a bit fiddly but may or may not have warranty implications (you can probably find out with a google). The airport card is quite good and supports wpa and wpa2 (with mac os updates).

 

I have the bluetooth option too and its quite handy. It might have changed, but the internal wifi and bluetooth were not possible to add afterwards yourself when I got mine (special riser card).

 

Its quite nice being able to install the os with a bluetooth kb and mouse, although this only works with the built in option. Despite my vga issues (although mostly ok as I have changed to a tft), I rather like it.

[ajbritton]

Last chance to reconsider ... http://www.divisiontwo.com/articles/MacMini2.html

[russdev]

Last chance to reconsider ... http://www.divisiontwo.com/articles/MacMini2.html

 

well.....

 

got to say that article is very one sided and obvious mistake there is norton av for mac...

 

but then person is trying to compare it to windows pc and think that is mistake as they are seperate platforms and do stuff differently...

 

@DMcCoy

 

well top model has wifi/bluetooth in standard it has 80 gb hd and paying way too much extra for extra 20 gb so that is out...

 

mem is 512 and could upgrade it to 1gb mem but then extra 65 quid and already paying a lot...

 

if going to get mem upgrade i would proabably pay that extra and get mac store to do it.

 

also getting warrenty so any problems and i am on phone to them.

 

also last stupid question plugging vga monitor in it shouldnt be an issue it already comes with the adapter dont it?

 

Russ

[kingswood]

The Mac Mini is a great little machine Russ- you will enjoy it. Don't listen to the negative hype- it's small, quiet, and pretty good at the things people expect of a Mac Mini.

 

Get a bigger HDD if you can afford it though- RAM is easier to fit than the hard drive (trust me). And yes- the cable comes with it for VGA connection (it's obviously a DVI to VGA adapter).

 

Enjoy it!

 

Paul

[DMcCoy]

Last chance to reconsider ... http://www.divisiontwo.com/articles/MacMini2.html

 

well.....

 

got to say that article is very one sided and obvious mistake there is norton av for mac...

 

but then person is trying to compare it to windows pc and think that is mistake as they are seperate platforms and do stuff differently...

 

@DMcCoy

 

well top model has wifi/bluetooth in standard it has 80 gb hd and paying way too much extra for extra 20 gb so that is out...

 

mem is 512 and could upgrade it to 1gb mem but then extra 65 quid and already paying a lot...

 

if going to get mem upgrade i would proabably pay that extra and get mac store to do it.

 

also getting warrenty so any problems and i am on phone to them.

 

also last stupid question plugging vga monitor in it shouldnt be an issue it already comes with the adapter dont it?

 

Russ

 

It does come with an dvi to vga adaptor. There is a risk that the crt you use will be dull compared to a pc. There is also a risk that it wont display anything at all, that is unless Apple have fixed that problem.

 

One other thing to remember is that it has only one memory module slot. so if you want more memory you would have to take the 512 out and put a single 1GB in.

 

Look here and here

[kingswood]

Never had a problem with connecting to a CRT here...

 

Like I said, enjoy!

 

Paul

[russdev]

well got two monitors can try now needs tips on convince my better half to let me use it before xmas

 

Russell

[Ric_]

@russdev: You will HAVE to test it when it arrives so that you can send it back immediately if it does not work and everyone knows that you shouldn't turn computers on and off unecessarily

 

Hopefully you can find something girly to show her so that she won't make you pack it away in its box again.

[GrumbleDook]

A good trial is to put *all* of your photos onto it and then get her to select various ones to stick into an album. Then make that into a slideshow / movie, burn it to DVD and give it to her as a pre-Christmas pressie for allowing you to play with your pressie.

 

The hard drive ... weigh up the cost of the larger drive with that of an external drive. There are some good ones around now that actually fit underneath your Mac mini (no names and URLs to hand ... heck, go to Jisaw24.co.uk and look)

 

Have fun.

[russdev]

well decided over hard drive an extra 65 quid for extra 20gb was not worth it..

 

well cant say my partner would want something girlie think she be more impressed by technical stuff....

 

russ

[GrumbleDook]

In that case load the photos into iPhoto and then get her to use iMovie, choosing between transitions, sampling music in garageband ... in fact, get her a .Mac account as an early pressis and get her to use the tutorials.

 

It may mean you don't get to use the machine until Christmas anyway because she will be on it all the time instead. :-)

 

But then you have an excuse for getting a second ;-)

[kingswood]

When she sees it, she will want it ;-)

 

Paul

[russdev]

well lol

 

all order starts going all week at knees... all

 

check they just increased price of cover it was about 80 quid gone up to just over 100 quid well dosnt matter 3 years for 100 quid can handle that.

 

russ

[E1uSiV3]

So is the mini a maxi value? For me, clearly, no. When I consider that a good deal of my time is spent running applications like Disk Defragmenter, Scandisk, Norton AV, Windows Update and Ad-Aware--none of which are available for the Mac platform--it doesn't make sense for me to "switch" to a Mac at this time.

 

ummm so he must "like" running all these apps, considering you dont need to run them on a mac...

 

and to debunk the theory that none of it exists, Norton AV for OS X IS available, you dont need to defragment a mac hdd cus it looks after itself every time it installs an app etc, no spyware for OS X AFAIK so running adaware would be pointless, and it has a system updater rofl, ive only been using macs a month and am still a novice, but this guys clueless...

 

And the fact a mac cant run windows xp.... yes it can... but why would you want to?

[kevinmcaleer]

There are Antivirus applcations for Mac, but only to get rid of PC viruses from PC files, as there aren't any viruses for Mac OS X. Its part of the secure system design. You can't get 'em. period. Oh and spyware, none of that either.

 

Windows Vista will have a similar system design, but Apple got there first (about 5 years ago!).

 

You still get Spam though.

 

-Kev

[DMcCoy]

There are Antivirus applcations for Mac, but only to get rid of PC viruses from PC files, as there aren't any viruses for Mac OS X. Its part of the secure system design. You can't get 'em. period. Oh and spyware, none of that either.

 

Windows Vista will have a similar system design, but Apple got there first (about 5 years ago!).

 

You still get Spam though.

 

-Kev

 

None - yet. I don't think that its all secure system design, more a by product of the system os x has been built on (bsd). There are more than enough regular security updates to indicate that it is possible, but apple has low market share making it less of a target too. Apple didn't get there first imo, they just borrowed it from someone else

[GrumbleDook]

Actually, the theory of viruses for OSX is an extremely valid one. I could script one now based around automator for a machine running an unpatched version of Tiger ... it is even possible, with a certain amount of targetting, to do it with a patched machine.

 

Norton still checks for viruses that will affect Classic, but these are few and far between too.

 

I think the best description of targetting on Apple hardware is the targetting of the Boot PROM of a machine. This has only had limited success and there are many countermeasures to make this difficult ... but not impossible.

[kingswood]

Without most processes running under authority- i.e. as administrator (in Windows speak) it would be *very* difficult to run something that malicious inside OS X that would damage the entire system. It can be done (of course), but I doubt an automator script not running with heightened priveleges could do it...

 

Paul

[GrumbleDook]

Considering that most general users will use the initial account that is created when they get a Mac out of the box then this has full access rights.

 

It is easy to create an automator script that will open as soon as it is downloaded (in fact this was the default until Apple patched it for a number of things).

 

The best variation of this I saw was actually one of the mac Genius guys at the birmingham store. He created an automator script that added automator to start hidden at login and the request user authentication again as soon as any app was run. It then ran a terminal session with sudo rights and changed ownership of all user areas apart from the logged in user before deleting them.

 

It took him 3 minutes. He then ran it again on a patched machine and it failed to do the initial load and this was regarded as now being perfectly secure. The fact that with all it would take would be a bit more tailoring to the stupidity factor of the human race and it would still be usable.

 

He then went on to demonstrate that the automator script could be turned into a widget and left running in the background and set to auto email everyone in your address book when your hard drive went to sleep. You know have a worm.

[kingswood]

Oh yes. I know about the "exploit" that wasn't- one guy had it online and testable before a lot of people got their heads around what it was and more followed:

 

http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~aaron/files/widgets/

 

Apple's response was to release security updates within the 10.4.1 stream that stopped the issue by prompting the user for permission/acknowledgment that they wanted to download and install said widget. Quote:

 

" *

 

CVE-ID: CAN-2005-1474

 

Available for: Mac OS X v10.4, Mac OS X Server v10.4

 

Impact: Malicious websites can download and install widgets via Safari without the Safe Download Validation warning

 

Description: This update blocks the automatic installation of Dashboard widgets. Mac OS X's Safe Download Validation warning is enabled, requiring user approval before a Dashboard widget is installed by Safari. This issue does not affect Mac OS X versions prior to 10.4. Further information on removing Dashboard widgets that you have installed is available here."

 

What the guy did at the Genius bar in Birmingham (they're good over there aren't they?) is log in with the priveleges needed to do what he did and because he had all of that access he did what he did and scared people. He had to know what he was doing, and he had to know his system and its security. You are right though- out of the box you have "admin" rights, but you *don't* have root access to the OS. That's off out of the box by default.Admin rights on OS X aren't the same as the Windows alternative (as you'l know).

 

In any case Apple responded very quickly to the *possibility* of this kind of thing happening, and patched it in the sense of blocking *automatic* installation of widgets.

 

Not a big deal, because it didn't affect any systems that I know of.

 

Not knocking what you are saying by the way, just have a different perspective on it. Och- I'm a zealot already!

 

Paul

[GrumbleDook]

The quick response from Apple to close the issue is a good thing ... but we shouldn't forget that a number of windows vunerabilities rely on the user being stupid enough to do something that gives extra access to the script. In the case of the demonstration it was a script that asked for your login details again ... which was then used to gain root access.

 

This is going slightly off the track though ... and Norton et al do not cover things like this anyway ... it was just to give an example that mac users should not be complacent ... the viruses will come in one form or another.

[kingswood]

All valid points Tony.

 

Thanks.

 

Paul