Core Solo Mac mini

Second Class Macs are Apple's more compromised hardware designs. For the most part, they're not really bad - simply designs unable to work as well as they should have.

When it was introduced in February 2006, the Core Solo Mac mini was the smallest desktop computer on the market - and the second-least expensive Macintosh Apple had ever built. As with other first-generation Intel Macs, the price was $100 higher than the model it replaced.

The secret to getting the Mac mini so small: Using notebook computer components. That's also a big part of the reason the Core Solo Mac mini is considered a Road Apple. Not that it's a bad little machine: It has a decent amount of power, tolerable graphics, plenty of ports, and supports up to 2 GB of RAM.

Because of its size, there is simply no way to put a 3.5" hard drive in the Mac mini, so Apple had to use smaller, lower capacity, more costly, generally quieter 2.5" hard drives instead. At least with the Intel transition, Apple specified 5400 rpm drives, not the older, slower, cheaper 4200 rpm drives used in the past. Still, notebook drives are generally designed for low power consumption, not high performance, so this are the first strike against the Mac mini.

The second strike is the case itself, which is not designed for easy access. In fact, looking at it, you'd think there's no way to get inside to add RAM or replace the hard drive. The solution is to carefully insert putty knives between the white case bottom and its aluminum surround, loosening the tabs that lock it in place. Once inside you can replace the RAM or hard drive.

And that's where the next strike against the Mac mini comes in: There's only one bank of two memory sockets, so to upgrade RAM, you have to remove 256 MB modules that came with the computer. That's wasteful.

That said, Other World Computing has discovered that you can use "mismatched" memory in the Mac mini and some other Intel-based Macs where Apple specifies that upgrades should only be done with matched pairs. Their test results show that in general there is more benefit from having more RAM - even mismatched - than there is from having less RAM that is matched.

The fourth strike comes from Apple's decision to use integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics, which are not only horribly slow for 3D gaming and barely adequate for the OS X interface, but also steals 80 MB of system memory - that's over 15% of the stock 512 MB.

Another strike comes from Apple's inexplicable decision to use a single-core Intel Core CPU rather than the dual-core version found in all other Intel-based Macs. 

In addition, the Core Solo CPU doesn't support 64-bit computing; that came later with the August 2007 version of the Mac mini with the Core2 Duo CPU. You can upgrade the Core Solo mini with a "Socket M"/"Socket 479" Core2 Duo CPU, and as that wasn't available when the Mac mini came to market, we won't count this as a full strike against it. With Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard", the Mac gained a full blown 64-bit operating system, leaving Core Solo Macs another step behind the performance curve.

Also not worth a strike, but worth noting, is that the Mac mini did not ship with a mouse or keyboard. Mice and keyboards are cheap, Apple makes some decent ones, and there are lots of good third-party options selling for well under US$100.

On the plus side, the Mac mini is small, quiet, energy efficient, and expandable on the outside. Other than upgrading from the barely adequate 512 MB of memory, the biggest performance boost comes from using an external 7200 rpm FireWire drive instead of the poky notebook drive inside the mini.

In the end, it's a decent little computer for its intended market, but the decision to use a notebook hard drive and give it only one bank of RAM sockets significantly limits it potential.

If you're looking for a "set it an forget it" server, the size and low power draw of the mini make it very attractive. Max out RAM, pick up a big, fast, expensive 7200 rpm 2.5" hard drive, and replace the Core Solo CPU with a Core Duo or Core2 Duo, and you're ready to set up your server.