Lacie’s Little Big Disk. A Thunderbolt external drive for your Mac
At $399.95 for 1TB, we see that we are paying a $329.99 premium for a Thunderbolt equipped external enclosure with two 500GB 7200 RPM drives inside. 190 MB/s is fast, but if you are looking for super fast you are going to have buy more than one. Stacking drives on the Thunderbolt interface will actually increase transfer speeds, instead of becoming sluggish. 4 drives chained together can yield speeds as high as 800MB/s. Speed isn’t the only thing the Thunderbolt port has to offer however. The Thunderbolt tech allows you to have up to six devices chained together through a single port on the computer. The devices can mix and match between monitors and external drives.
The cable will set you back an even $49 from…. you guessed it.
The new Unibody Mac Mini is here! But is it worth it?
First, lets start by making it clear that the Mac Mini has been one of Apple’s greatest ideas. When the first Mini came out you could buy it for $499.99 and it came with a 1.25GHz G4 CPU W/ 512MB ram, a 40GB hard drive as well as a CD/DVD combo drive.
Ever since it’s inception we have seen the Mini’s price, and feature list get bigger. Today with Apple’s announcement of the new Unibody Mini we also see, yet again, another bump in price. This time all the way up to $699. In my opinion this is a big blow to the target market of the Mac Mini. The idea of “value” is now somewhat lost in this $699 product.
But lets get down to what really matters, is the new Mac Mini really worth $699?
The stock CPU is a 2.4GHz (up from 2.26GHz) Core 2 Duo. This CPU, tied with the integrated NVIDIA GeForce 320M GPU actually make for a decently capable machine. (We watched a 1080p video clip with a bitrate of 7.5Mbps and CPU usage stayed below 10%). It’s no HD authoring studio or extreme gaming machine but you will find it has more then enough power to tackle your HD video editing as well as fly through almost any game you can throw at it. The new SD card reader and included HDMI port really go along ways in adding value to the Mini, especially in it’s common role as a home media device.
To continue on it comes with a 320GB (for $699 we really should be seeing 500GB as stock) hard drive, 2GB of DDR3 RAM (up to a total of 8GB) and all the while sucking down less than 85 watts of power.
The 1TB Mac Mini.
iFixit.com has a great do-it-yourself bundle that allows you to upgrade your Mac Mini’s storage all the way up to 1TB. Mighty impressive, even if you do loose your optical drive.
Buy the Package here: ifixit 1TB Mac Mini Package
or, if your just interested to see who they do it, check out the how-to link here. 1TB Mac Mini installation Guide.
Breaking! Leaked Mac Mini, iMac and Mac Pro specs.
Mac Mini:
- 5 USB ports
- 1 Firewire 800 port
- 1 Mini DVI port
- 1 Display Port
- NVIDIA 9400GM
- Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.0GHz (Base Model)
- 1GB DDR3 Memory
- 120GB HD
iMac
- 1 20″ Model and 3 24″ Models
- Intel Core 2 Duo’s clocked @ speeds up to 3.06GHz
- 2GB DDR3 RAM standard on 20″ and 4GB Standard on 24″
- Display Port for video out.
Mac Pro:
- 8-Core model reaching 3.6GHz per core
- 16-Core Configurations reaching 4.0GHz per core
- Two Dual-Link DVI ports and one Display Port
All in all some very descent updates. Nice to see the Mac Mini finally getting some love. I’m sure the slowing economy renewed Apple’s interest in it’s lower end model.
While the Mac Pro is still just a dream to me, It’s nice to know they are staying on the ball.
Via MacRumors and OneMoreThing.nl
The Week In Review.
What did Apple do the week of Febuaray 15th – 21st? Read on to get the goods.
Keep your eyes open for my upcoming review of Linux Mint 6 (64bit) on the MacBook Pro as well more Apple tips, rumors, and news!
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