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The RAM upgrades are expensive from Apple, costing roughly four times as much as a third party supplier but, curiously, the External SuperDrive for CD and DVD functions is competitive at £65. The basic £499 Mac Mini is joined by a quad-core i7 version with doubles the storage via a 1TB hard drive for £679 and a 'server' version with a similar spec and two 1TB hard drives.
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Similarly, if you have a VGA Monitor rather than one with an HDMI socket, you'll need an £21 adaptor which is annoying. If you're using it alongside an old MacBook Pro, you'll feel completely at home and won't notice any difference in performance when using Safari and apps like Pages and Keynote, even while something like Spotify runs in the background.įor a price vs performance level, this is a compelling machine against a home made PC - you may be able to manage a better spec with a PC but Windows won't be as fast or as flawless as this desktop OSX Mountain Lion experience.įollowing the M ac Mini 2011, there's no optical drive here - if you have CDs or DVD to rip or burn, you're going to need to buy an external drive. OSX Mountain Lion is the standard OS and it runs well. The 500GB hard drive is standard and the only spec downside is the Intel HD 4000 graphics chip which means gaming will suffer when compared to high-end MacBook Pro products but it's an acceptable compromise for the price.
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