How reliable is the Mac Mini or iMac (2009) models?

Hi Coventry Crysis,
I have Mac mini's since 2005 and had no problems with them what so ever. I think the Mac mini's are a very thoroughly developed product and quite simple as there is no Display in them. If you follow the discusions here, you can see that there are less posts here than at the iMac side. Of course the iMacs have a fantastic screen in them, are faster and take up less space on your desktop.

My latest mini is from early nov and has no problems. I updated the harddrive with a 320-7200 for a better disk-performance and it did not bring the temperture up inside. It runs more cooler than the G4 mini and I have not heard the fan till now.
In my point of view, the Mac mini is a dead silent and the most reliable product you can buy today

If you go to a hospital, all you see is sick people-does that mean everyone is sick?

This is a support forum for people encountering problems.
People not having issues(the vast majority) do not start posts about how everything is fine. The small percentage that do have issues come here seeking help.

My own experience is that the 2009 mini is not as reliable as pre 2009 mini's. That's not to say the 2009 mini is a bad machine, it just doesn't seem to be as stable as earlier versions. I've had my new mini about 3 weeks now and I've had a couple of Timemachine freezes and a problem with the mini-DVI port.

By way of comparison my older mini, which I've had for 3 years and it is always left switched on, has had zero issues.

Just my own experiences.

Remember, Apple offers a 1 year hardware warranty and 90 days free software support, both of which can be extended to three years from date of computer's purchase. This means if you appear to have what is a technical issue with your machine off the bat, Apple will cover the lemon issue, if it is obvious it is not an issue you the user could have caused. Mind you, if issues appear much later during the ownership, it gets harder to justify that it is a manufacturer issue. As long as you don't upgrade the internal hardware, the hardware test CD that comes with the machine will be able to tell if there is a manufacturer issue with the machine. All bets are off, if you change the RAM, or hard drive beyond the specs of the machine. Apple publishes the specs of the machine on http://support.apple.com/

Your machine shouldn't overheat unless you excede the published specs.

The advantage of the Mac is that malware and viruses are practically a nonissue, and everything you usually could desire is already built-in to the machine. So while you could build your own machine, you can't really get the integrated hardware and software as you do with the Mac.

Yes, the 27" iMac has been hit hard with issues, more around the display than anything else. I for one, if were forced to get an iMac, would get the 21.5".
I've not seen any specific Mac Mini issues really come to the fore.

If sound is lost on a Mac Mini, it usually is due to the fact that minijack connectors themselves are fragile to begin with, and endusers tend to jiggle them a lot in the connector, causing the connectivity to get lost. If you are careful to follow these directions about cables*:

http://www.macmaps.com/frayguide.html

You should avoid most of those issues. Thankfully there are 5 USB ports on Mac Minis, and USB audio is frequently better than the built-in audio, except when adding your own 5.1 speaker system with mini-Toslink connector speakers.

Don't forget the number of posters to this board, don't even amount to 1 tenth of a percent of all purchasers of iMacs, Mac Minis, or MacBooks any one quarter. Thus the remark you said was "rude" is not. It is factual. You are basing your information on what amounts to less odds of happening than a space program disaster with NASA. Mostly people who have problems are posting, and those who don't rarely do post.

I recently had a hard drive die after the three year warranty was spent, but hard drives I've seen die on Acers and Dells on the first day of ownership too, so that's nothing new. Backing up your data is the best way to deal with data loss*:

http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html

- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

Me personally, I have a late 2009 Mini and my mother has a early 2009 Mini. Both have been very reliable. Both had Leopard and upgraded to SL. Both on the same LAN. My mother's is very basic and only has a webcam and printer attached, with internet through the LAN. My Mini is "maxed out". Internally it's unmodified, 4GB, 160GB HD. Externally, two 19" monitors, 4 External HDs (3 Firewire, 1 USB), USB webcam, Belkin N50 Nostromo gamepad and a few other USB devices. Sound to some Altec Lansing satellites and subwoofer. I normally use my Mini to view DVR recordings from my Windows Media Center computer over the network. No distortion here.

The only issue I've had on this machine isn't even a Mini issue, it's with OSX. (It's an issue with OSX not remembering the wallpaper settings after reboot.) But it is such a minor issue; more an inconvinience. If I have one real complaint is that the Firewire 800 port is a little loose and my drives get disconnected occasionally if I bump the Mini. But I believe it's more to do with a poor quality cable, not really poor quality of the Mini.

As for temperature, I live in Hawaii and don't have air conditioning. 😟 But my Mini, which is on 24/7 has never crashed or had any other problems. I run virtual machines in VMWare Fusion extensively on this Mini. I even ran my Exchange 2007 email server in a virtual machine temporarily when the server's motherboard died. The Mini did not have any issues hosting such a "heavy load" virtual machine.

So I don't know what you've read about the problems with the Mini, but my experience, the Mini is a wonderful computer. Obviously, there'll be lemons here and there. And perhaps drivers for older equipment (i.e.: printers, scanners, webcams) may cause instability in OSX if they aren't updated for Snow Leopard. But that's OSX, not the Mini itself. So in general, I say yes to getting a Mini.

Hi Crysis, I'm having no problems at all with my Mac Mini, just got it the other day. Worked perfect out of the box and everything. Though, seeing as i've only had it about a week, I don't know how 'fair' this review is. I've always had windows, I still use windows 7 regularly in my gaming pc. OSX was a nice change. Took me about a day to get used to it from windows.

But yea, great little machine (:

Hope this helps.

Greetings. I have had my Mini 2.26 2G Ram for a little over two months. Stays on 24/7 during that time. Its dead quiet, fan speed stays around 1500 rpm, but I can't hear it. You do need external speakers, well if you want to hear anything. I am very happy with my setup.

I bought it to replace a just about dead 4 yr old iMac G5. Didn't want to invest in another iMac, for the G5 was just trouble during its short life.

Have a early 2009 mini I've had almost a year and it's still up and running fine with zero hardware failures.
If you spend enough time on the forums you'll see that a large number of people that do have or had problems are those that decided to upgrade the ram/harddrive, on their own and messed it up on their own by forgetting to plug stuff back in the way it was or accidently breaking something in the process!
The only part that really gets hot is the video chip inside. I have a windows gpu app that says it runs at 70C at idle which is pretty warm but supposedly it'll work up to around 100C.
Anyways, IMO it matches or exceeds the reliability of any OEM PC i've seen or built myself so you have nothing to worry about.

I run a little application "XRG" under OS X and most of my temps run just under 50ºC while the Northbridge Diode runs at around 58ºC. Also Airport runs at 52ºC and I don't use airport, go figure and its "off"

I'll chime what some others have said. The question is like visiting a hospital and asking how many people feel well.

But since I'm a regular here and come here more often as a doctor than a patient, I'll say that my 2009 Mac Mini with Snow Leopard Server (on which I'm running regular Snow Leopard) so far runs cools and quiet.

The Minis are built primarily with notebook parts which tolerate high heat, but the cooling of the Minis is better than the cooling of the notebooks.

I'd suggest that any mini have free access to room-temperature air, and that it not be placed on other heat-producing equipment, however.

And as always, get as much RAM as you can and keep plenty of free space on the startup drive.