I still got a Mac Mini with the flickering video even though I bought it last week... I posted this elsewhere...
I was never in the market for a Mac Mini but circumstances led me to buy one last week.
I was already smarting from a known manufacturing defect in an Apple model of laptops. I had wanted to wait for the next refresh release of the MacBook Pro to replace my current nearly 3 years old MacBook Pro mid-2010. After non-stop kernel panic due to a manufacturing defect (motherboard replacement needed) on the laptop causing data AND lots of time loss, I had to take it to Apple where David (genius bar) at the Brandon store was great to deal with. It is about a week and I am still waiting for the repaired laptop back.
To tide me over in that time I bought a Mac Mini i7 for $850. And it will be the first Mac I have had since 1984 that I will be taking back for a refund.
I am SHOCKED at how slow and pokey it is. It is literally more sluggish than the 3 year old i5 laptop in several areas. e.g. If I hit Command-Space and the first characters of an app it always nearly instantly appears in the top right of the screen. With the NEW i7 Mac Mini even with NO apps running it misses the first few characters after I hit Command-Space. I literally have to do Command-Space, wait 1 second or more, then type.
And from Day One I have the flickering screen and pixels bug across the display. I even thought it was my monitor or cable so tried it on a different one, and got the same results.
Since it is within 14 days of the purchase, this is definitely $850 I want back and will be returning this Mac Mini this weekend. What a huge (mini?) disappointment.
Imran
