sidewinder Posted January 10, 2017 Posted January 10, 2017 (edited) We have a suite of ageing 2010 Mac Mini's with Core 2 Duos and dog slow 5400RPM drives - they are awful. So finally the time and money becomes available to refresh them, but since we bought them, Apple have seemingly stopped caring entirely about their desktop lines. I can either replace them with 'new' Mac Mini's which are 2 years old in terms of spec (yet cost far more than the ones we originally bought) and pay through the nose for the privilege of buying them with SSDs since Apple still insist on using horrible spinning drives by default. Or I can wait a few months in case Apple update them. But then equally they could kill them off completely. I could buy iMacs and pay all that extra money, but they still are overdue an update and honestly I don't think they would physically fit in a room that was designed around compact computers. All this literally just for Garageband. There is nothing else that we cannot get on PCs, apart from Logic Pro too I suppose. But I've never had any issue having Macs in the school, even if configuration is occasionally a headache. And I have a music department who wants them - I can't tell them 'no - we're going to PCs that can't run the one piece of software you want' but Apple are almost making me do this Any ideas/thoughts? One idea I suppose is putting SSDs in the current ones as they have enough RAM but realistically how long are Core 2 Duo's really going to be good enough? It might get me an extra year but the problem remains. Edited January 10, 2017 by sidewinder
XiJ Posted January 10, 2017 Posted January 10, 2017 I put an ssd in a core 2 duo iMac 21" and it made a huge difference. Definitely useable. However I think you'd struggle with the OS version. What's the latest it will run ?
psydii Posted January 10, 2017 Posted January 10, 2017 Kick it up to senior management. Bodging it just delays the tough decision that they have to make. They may say 'bodge it, we'll decide what to do in the long term next year' but at least they then own the problem/solution.
XiJ Posted January 10, 2017 Posted January 10, 2017 I do share your pain though. I'm known as an Apple fan boy but I'm struggling to justify the cost of the new macsbooks. The iMacs are due to be updated soon - but apple seem to be taking useful features away and adding expense.
sidewinder Posted January 10, 2017 Author Posted January 10, 2017 (edited) Kick it up to senior management. Bodging it just delays the tough decision that they have to make. They may say 'bodge it, we'll decide what to do in the long term next year' but at least they then own the problem/solution. Oh they will be happy to pay - they know what is coming and although it may be more than they are expecting, they will go with whichever solution I suggest, within reason. But that doesn't change the fact that we could spend £15k on 2 year old hardware only to see it refreshed in a few months. At least I know when I'm buying PCs that I'm always able to get the latest technology, or at least less than 1yr old. If I'm honest perhaps I'm to blame a bit - I should have gone with the SSDs last year to tide them over, then waiting a few months to see if anything new is released wouldn't seem so excruciatingly long. Also as they are now the only machines in the entire school without SSDs, they seem even slower to staff than they actually are. It's the same situation for me personally. I love Apple hardware and I would desperately like a new Macbook Pro. But with the prices jacked up SO much, and my 2011 one still working, even if it does feel very bulky, theres very little to get me to upgrade Edited January 10, 2017 by sidewinder
tech-man Posted January 10, 2017 Posted January 10, 2017 We use http://www.cmtc.co.uk for our Mac stuff - haven't looked back. Managed solution, works great.
sidewinder Posted January 11, 2017 Author Posted January 11, 2017 We use Counterpoint MTC Ltd - Creative Technology Solutions for Education for our Mac stuff - haven't looked back. Managed solution, works great. Ok.....has nothing to do with what I asked though. My beef is with the lack of options and updates hardware wise, not configuring it.
psydii Posted January 11, 2017 Posted January 11, 2017 How much faster is the 2016/17 Intel hardware than the 2015 kit in real terms? My understanding everything is about efficiency these days. If you wait, Apple may do the iMac range what they did to the MacBook Pro. 20% increase due to the exchange rate, and +£300 per unit because they integrated what is essentially an Apple Watch, and very little improvement in application performance.
sted Posted January 11, 2017 Posted January 11, 2017 you can fit your own ssd still to mac minis as far as I remember might be cheaper to buy a kit to get into mac minis and shove in a generic 2.5" ssd than have apple do it for you (you cant upgrade ram though)
Blue_Cookeh Posted January 11, 2017 Posted January 11, 2017 I have to wonder if you could get away with some kind of Mac thin client setup... Get a few Mac Pros, get a third party rack mount for them, load VMware ESXi on them and run a load of Mac VMs, using your old Mac Minis as the thin terminals. You're legally allowed to virtualise ESXi on Mac hardware. Maybe it's a crazy idea.
sidewinder Posted January 12, 2017 Author Posted January 12, 2017 How much faster is the 2016/17 Intel hardware than the 2015 kit in real terms? My understanding everything is about efficiency these days. If you wait, Apple may do the iMac range what they did to the MacBook Pro. 20% increase due to the exchange rate, and +£300 per unit because they integrated what is essentially an Apple Watch, and very little improvement in application performance. That is what I worry about, and may well happen. So perhaps I'm thinking a bit too much into this. Afterall I don't boot up my 2011 i7 MBP and think oooh this processor is really showing it's age
Strawdog Posted January 18, 2017 Posted January 18, 2017 Personally I'd just stick SSDs and more RAM in them, CPU wise they're good for a few more years yet and any SSDs/RAM you buy can always be reused/sold on. You could also consider removing the optical drives, if you don't use them and large amounts of storage is a requirement, and add the SSD as an additional drive in its place. Mavericks is happy away with 4GB but El Capitan tends to prefer 8GB - both are stable and solid OS:X versions (Yosemite is an absolute dog and we've not done enough testing of Sierra to form an opinion).
Strawdog Posted January 18, 2017 Posted January 18, 2017 Personally I'd just stick SSDs and more RAM in them, CPU wise they're good for a few more years yet and any SSDs/RAM you buy can always be reused/sold on. You could also consider removing the optical drives, if you don't use them and large amounts of storage is a requirement, and add the SSD as an additional drive in its place. Mavericks is happy away with 4GB but El Capitan tends to prefer 8GB - both are stable and solid OS:X versions (Yosemite is an absolute dog and we've not done enough testing of Sierra to form an opinion).
3s-gtech Posted January 18, 2017 Posted January 18, 2017 Our 2009 iMacs (Early 2009 20" 2Ghz C2D) with an upgrade to 4GB of RAM and an SSD were massively faster than brand new out-of-the-box Core i5 Mac Minis with 5400rpm HDDs (Late 2014 model). It's appalling how slow they are. We waited until the warranty expired and I've swapped them all to SSD now, but updating the old Macs was more than worthwhile. They're still in use running El Capitan with Pro Tools and Logic Pro 9 on them. 1
3s-gtech Posted January 18, 2017 Posted January 18, 2017 Our 2009 iMacs (Early 2009 20" 2Ghz C2D) with an upgrade to 4GB of RAM and an SSD were massively faster than brand new out-of-the-box Core i5 Mac Minis with 5400rpm HDDs (Late 2014 model). It's appalling how slow they are. We waited until the warranty expired and I've swapped them all to SSD now, but updating the old Macs was more than worthwhile. They're still in use running El Capitan with Pro Tools and Logic Pro 9 on them. 1
2ilent8cho Posted January 18, 2017 Posted January 18, 2017 Since the 2009 Mac Mini will only support up to El Capitan , i'm going to guess the 2010 won't be far behind the support cut off in terms of MacOS, but you should still be able to get a good 2 year run out of them maybe 3 if you upgraded them to SSD's and put more RAM in. Apple still release security updates for the previous MacOS's normally the previous 2, just this week some El Capitan security updates were released. So we know they can get MacOS 10.12, so that should take security updates to 2019, even longer if the 2010 Mac Minis get support for MacOS 10.13 . On the other side if you were to get new Mac Mini's i would not worry about them being 2014 models so longs as you did a build to order and changed them to SSD's, as CPU's in general have not been a bottleneck is systems for many years excluding specific use cases.
2ilent8cho Posted January 18, 2017 Posted January 18, 2017 Since the 2009 Mac Mini will only support up to El Capitan , i'm going to guess the 2010 won't be far behind the support cut off in terms of MacOS, but you should still be able to get a good 2 year run out of them maybe 3 if you upgraded them to SSD's and put more RAM in. Apple still release security updates for the previous MacOS's normally the previous 2, just this week some El Capitan security updates were released. So we know they can get MacOS 10.12, so that should take security updates to 2019, even longer if the 2010 Mac Minis get support for MacOS 10.13 . On the other side if you were to get new Mac Mini's i would not worry about them being 2014 models so longs as you did a build to order and changed them to SSD's, as CPU's in general have not been a bottleneck is systems for many years excluding specific use cases.
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