Old Mac Mini worth purchasing

Zorro, you might consider, too, buying a REFURB Mac mini (latest model) off the Apple Store online. I have had tremendous good fortune buying refurbished (and saving $$) when I do so from Apple. A big plus that the new model of Mac mini has over the older ones is that the power supply/brick in now enclosed in the Mac mini -- it's no longer a separate (and heavy) item you have to tote along if you travel or move your Mini. Plus, a bunch of other good features to the latest version, too. This will give you a Mac with the latest version of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, and iLife '11.

Otherwise, if you are on an extreme budget and can only buy a used Mac mini, make sure it's in good condition, from a reputable seller, and doesn't have too small an internal hard drive (40, 60 or even 80 gig drives are on the sparse side these days). Good luck shopping, and post your buy here so we can pat you on the back. :-)

As others have already said, older Mac minis are definitely still worth watching.

I'd recommend you get an Intel one (Core Duo or Core2Duo) and avoid the older (but now cheaper) PowerPC G4 machines, especially if you want to watch decent-quality Flash videos, any HD material, or copy video from DVD.

An Intel mini will fit your needs, but the older PowerPC models are getting obsolete. They can't run Snow Leopard (or the upcoming Mac OS X Lion), and a lot of software companies are starting to abandon support for older PPC machines, and Mac OS Leopard and earlier.

I agree with all of the above, just thought I'd add some user experience info.

Currently I have a late 2009 Mac Mini (2,26 GHz Intel, the last one before they switched to the unibody design) hooked up to a Full HD Samsung LCD TV. Works like a charm and it will display movies at 1080p without a glitch. The only movie part which gave some trouble is the (apparently famous) ' birds scene' from BBC Planet Earth. Showing 6 billion birds in HD is just too much (besides the fact there are nowhere near enough pixels to show that many birds).. Again: all other Full HD videos I've tried work great (Avatar, Inception, Top Gear, you name it).

So unless you're a big gaming enthousiast (Starcraft II is just barely within reach of it's capabilities), the Mini will do great, as a desktop computer as well as a media center.

One more thing: regarding the media center, when buying a pre-unibody Mac Mini you'll need 2 cables to hook it up to a TV.

1. Video cable - I'm using a MiniDVI-DVI and a DVI-HDMI for the video signal

2. Audio cable - The pre-unibody Mac Mini's are unable to output Audio on the Video cable (the new ones do). This means you'll have to use a separate jack or optical cable to get the audio to your TV or Amp. (the audio port on the mini is both an analog (jack) as well as optical audio port so you can use any of these signals depending on your TV/Amp input ports).

hope this helps,

YanniDepp wrote:

I'd recommend you get an Intel one (Core Duo or Core2Duo) and avoid the older (but now cheaper) PowerPC G4 machines, especially if you want to watch decent-quality Flash videos, any HD material, or copy video from DVD.

An Intel mini will fit your needs, but the older PowerPC models are getting obsolete. They can't run Snow Leopard (or the upcoming Mac OS X Lion), and a lot of software companies are starting to abandon support for older PPC machines, and Mac OS Leopard and earlier.

While certainly rather dated now, G4 minis are still as capable as they ever were, which means that if needing to run the very latest software and MacOS, they are clearly unsuited, but for common tasks such as web browsing, email, word processing etc., where the budget is limited they are still viable and useful systems.

I use a 1.5 G4 mini as a media centre device connected to an HD TV, with DVDs ripped and saved on an external 1Tb drive, and other media content streamed from elsewhere in the house, all controlled via Front Row and a cheap third-party USB remote (the G4 minis aren't compatible with Apple's remote). Other video streams from websites without problems, though Flash does push the system quite hard since it's not efficient media.

What would put me off buying a G4 mini from a source I didn't know and trust is that these systems can be a little prone to overheating issues, so buying one of unknown quality can be a bit of a lottery.

I got one too, for cheaper. And I'm really happy with it.

I have already a Mac Pro Quad Core and a MacBook, but those mac mini could be cool to play to some old games, like unreal, Q3, star wars racer, or to doing some work, like our school etc etc

I have plugged it on my HD 3D TV samsung.