New Apple Lust Objects for 2010 and onward

iMac owners are like the happiest people i know

my work loaned me an imac and love it

its a 2007 model and its run fantastically since i maxed out the ram for like $50

Basically my temptation is to get the bare-bones Mac Mini, take it apart and stuff it with RAM and an SSD, and get a cheap monitor to go with it..

yeah the intel graphics will do stuff that's not games w/o problems

my santa rosa 2.3 ghz MBP 15" has a scratched display, a full 120 GB HD, a busted optical drive and two missing keys (r and +).

still, i am wondering whether it would be more cost-effective to "rehabilitate it" vs getting a new MBP / macbook pro air (if and when that happens)

it seems like lion is built for a different machine, no matter what i try to do to tune it up lion just crawls.

lol i have just checked out the instrux for installing a second HD in the mini and..... fuck that

v4h1d i'd imagine your machine would be plenty fast. RAM maxed out? 10% free on HD? you could try getting a faster and bigger HD maybe..

i have 2x2 gb ... does this go up to 2x4 gb?

CS5 is actually really zippy, oddly what seems to crawl is the OS and stuff like iphoto and iwork. that would indicate i need more HD?

maybe i should get an SSD

^

I just want the bare bones mini with a goddamn SSD, why is the universe conspiring against me??

for what a mini with SSD costs i may as well just get an air!!

why not get an air and plug it into a cheap monitor?

yes, that's sort of what i'm thinking

my days of knowing where the "spudger" tool is in my house are behind me, i think

it seems like lion is built for a different machine, no matter what i try to do to tune it up lion just crawls.

― funk master friendly (moonship journey to baja), Friday, September 30, 2011 11:37 AM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark

probably because of the full HD. you don't have enough virtual ram/swap space

a 500 gb hard drive is like $50 now, p cheap. if you have a unibody the swap is pretty easy to do, just need a torx mini screwdriver.

you can remove the optical drive while you're in there and swap in a drive caddy, carry around 2 HDs in yer mac.

use time machine or super duper to clone the old drive to the new. voila!

drive caddies are cheap now too [via ebay] like $20

vahid, if you need hard drive space and want reasonable performance increase (not ssd levels) get one of those momentus xt drives. I have that + 8GB in a MBP from... uh, 2009? Works great.

btw 8GB of memory is like $50

thinking abt putting a drive caddy w/an ssd drive in my mbp to run the system stuff and keeping all my files on the 1tb drive thats already in there, what i really want is an air tho

airs are pretty sweet def

maybe i am getting carried away... maybe i don't need all the razzmatazz. what if i don't get an SSD, am i gonna die? no. maybe i should just get a cheap mini + monitor. all the same, given my past form this is gonna be my computer for the next six years...

who wants to buy a 1 y/o mbp!

u should get an imac tracer serious

all this is reminding me of my freshman year roommate's advice, still sage today: "don't ask yourself what computer you want, find out how much you can spend, and then just buy that"

My new desktop PC at work has a SSD and since 90% of my work is doing stuff in an IDE that recompiles shit constantly... my life is about one million times better now.

I don't really notice a big diff between my air w/ the ssd and my mbp w/ a magnet drive, the only diff is in opening apps

It really depends what kind of apps you run! Also, if you reboot it's a lot faster with a SSD.

yeah but the point of having a mac is to NEVER REBOOT

most of my work consists of not doing any work and reading this one plain txt message bord, described as a percentage how much more efficient will i be w/a ssd

i keep oscillating. starting to come back around to the imac. and then my latent SSD-want kicks up, and i'm faced with shit like this, which makes me pull my hair out:

1TB Serial ATA Drive
2TB Serial ATA Drive [+ £112.80]
256GB Solid State Drive [+ £375.60]
1TB Serial ATA Drive + 256GB Solid State Drive [+ £451.20]
2TB Serial ATA Drive + 256GB Solid State Drive [+ £564.00]

i mean i want SSD - i have even convinced myself i need it - but do i really want to spend the price of a 1999 Ford Fiesta on it?

honestly I don't think the SSD tradeoff is worth it unless you are a pro photoshop or final cut user

one pro of the mac mini is that everything, including the monitor, is discrete and replaceable should it breaks. imacs are all or nothing after applecare is over, yeah?

yep

well I guess a fried logic board (aka motherboard) is a fried logic board. but a ram/hd would be pretty swappable in a mini if you had a spudger. think you need like magnets and suction cups and a crowbar to get into an imac

by the way i have an Expresscard SSD drive for sale if anyone wants it. never used. it will work on any Macbook with an Expresscard slot (except the very first two Macbooks ever produced, i.e. 1.1 and 1.2, i.e. mine)

it is a FileMateSolidGO 48GB

reckon you should just get the base mini with the 7200rpm hard drive and all the accessories you like

discarding my SSD dreams is making things a lot clearer, and that ^ is a compelling case.

thanks for all the hand-holding everybody

I don't think dayo has actually used a SSD so ymmv

lol I am posting from one right now. yay my apps open 2 seconds faster. what else is a SSD going to help with if you're just browsing the web or word processing? I'd trade an SSD for a fat pipe any day.

Listen, is there any reason that if I wanted a Mini, I would need the Lion server option? For ilx and streaming movies/watching DVDs and storing music/photos on?

I am like the Everybody's Mom of computer usage. Or the Morbius. Or something.

xx-post Low power consumption, no file fragmentation issues, more lightweight. I mean, still might not be issues, but hey... I don't even think the MBA would have space inside for a traditional drive.

Laurel, you have absolutely no need, and if at any point you did, the server stuff is a downloadable add-on pack with Lion, anyway.

I've always wanted a mac laptop and I've never been able to even remotely pay for one, so I'm always wondering how to magically put together a package I can afford. Will keep thinking abt it!

lol I don't begrudge the SSD in my air but at the same time it's not making me run towards swapping a SSD into my mbp. paying a 10x premium on price per gigabyte for getting rid of file fragmentation issues? no thanks

laurel I'd look into apple refurbished - significant discounts sometimes and they come with 1 year apple backed warranties. http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac?mco=OTY2ODY3Nw

Thx, dayo! I don't have $900 either but it is less than $1500!