Mac Mini - Project?

Dylanlewis2000

Suspended / Banned
Messages
965
Name
Dylan
Edit My Images
Yes
I have an old mac mini that i bought a few years ago on a bit of a whim a few years ago as i watned to learn a bit about Mac. Years on and im finding that it doesnt get much use. I have just put a bigger HDD in it (100GB) and upgraded the ram to 512MB, but i dont know what to do with it. Its not fast enough to play youtube videos, and cannot run Photoshop CS5.

Does anyone have an ideas as to what i can do with it? I was thinking of selling it, but figured its not going to be worth a lot.
 
I should have rephrased that, it will play them if set to 240p but nothing higher.
 
Still - I'd suggest network as being first port of call there.
 
What Mac Mini is it? What Version of OS X is it running? Is it Intel or PowerPC? Have you run Software Update on it?

If it is a G4/PowerPC then try MacTubes for Youtube, Adobe has awful support for Flash on PPC and Mac in general. But it really sucks on G4s/G5s
 
Its a PPC 1.25. Im going through the process of installing Leopard now shortly.
 
I use iperf to test network speeds here. Basically a small program that works on Windows/Linux (and I assume Mac) to send packets back and fore between machines and measure throughput. At least it will tell you what you get (my i7-2600K Windows rig is getting a third of the speed the lowly xbmc Intel Atom based box running Linux is at the moment - need to figure out what's going on there....)
 
its defo not the network, as i have windows machines which can stream easily
 
Its a PPC 1.25. Im going through the process of installing Leopard now shortly.

That will be why you can't stream/Watch Flash.

Flash is AWFUL on PPC Macs, Its not much better on the Intels...

Google around for the Quicktime greasemonkey script that lets flash play as quicktime in the browser, but don't keep your hopes up...
 
Yeah i know, its a hog! I dont know why the PPC chip cannot support it after all it should be fast enough!

Anyways back on topic, is there anything that i can do with this mac?
 
Yeah i know, its a hog! I dont know why the PPC chip cannot support it after all it should be fast enough!

Anyways back on topic, is there anything that i can do with this mac?

I know :( But Adobe sucks :P HTML5 runs pretty nice on them though..

Its still a great machine for Web browsing, Word Processing, or Connecting up to your TV to play DVDs/Music
 
Another vote for a media PC, a friend of mine has recently installed a Mac Mini in his actual Mini for music.
 
As said, a media PC is handy if you get the speeds up. A friend uses his as the 'TV' (they don't have TV, just internet TV) and general central computer (with a projector on the wall of the living room) and it is a simple, clean setup. A bluetooth keyboard and magic mouse round out the set.

I want to pick one up and use it as a backup for my macbooks. Either install a big drive or connect a big portable drive to it and use it for automatically backing up photos/files/etc.

Thanks
Rick
 
Back
Top