Digital Trends

Apple Mac mini Dual Core 1.66GHz

April 11th, 2006 | by Jason Tomczak

Setup and Use

Setting up the Intel Mac Mini was one of the quickest desktop computer setups I have ever experienced.  From sealed box in-hand to running OSX in all its glory, only 14 minutes passed. 

Removing it from the box and hooking up the monitor, keyboard and mouse took just 2 minutes 45 seconds.  Granted, a few moments were lost as I scrambled through the contents of the box for the signature Apple stickers, much like how I used to plunge my whole hand into a box of Cracker Jacks in search of the coveted prize.

Once the hardware was set up and plugged in, the Mini sped through the first-time setup of OSX in less than 7 minutes.  After entering in all my user information and wireless network password, I was officially logged into and running OSX in another 4 minutes.

Because Apple has been boasting about the speed increase from G4 Mini to Intel Mini, and because there are people out there who will try to dismiss Apple's claims as marketing gimmick, I think this setup process deserves a recap.  I spent less than 3 minutes on physical prep, and only about 11 minutes of actual OSX setup before I was browsing designtechnica.com.

Comparatively, the last time I ran a Windows XP installation, it took upwards of 60 minutes to get to the Start menu.  For impatient, gotta-have-it-now folks like me, 11 minutes of operating system setup feels lifetimes faster than an hour of dealing with superfluous informational screens and 256-color dialog boxes.

One of the most time consuming steps of properly setting up a computer is the security, software and driver updates.  Strictly using Internet downloads (as opposed to pre-downloaded drivers on CD or USB memory key), XP Pro takes upwards of an hour or more to complete SP2 updates, depending on whether you start with SP1 or release-date-SP2.  In my time-test, the entirety of OSX updates took 8 minutes 36 seconds.

The Mac Mini with the Intel Core Duo processor was a pleasure to use.  Safari browser windows opened in less than a second.  Huge websites with thousands of words of text and dozens of photos took mere seconds to load. 

Address Book, iCal and iPhoto all opened in about 2.5 seconds the first time after booting up.  Thanks to highly intelligent management of cache, these programs opened in less than a second on subsequent uses. 

As a photographer, I make good use of iPhoto on my 20" G5 iMac.  I have well over 15,000 photos on external drives, and 6,500 or so that I keep in iPhoto.  Why do I have less than half of my photos in iPhoto?  The import process for full-res photos, even from a USB 2.0 drive, can often take longer than a Senate filibuster.  The more photos I take, the more grey hairs I get.  Enter the Intel Mac Mini and Intel-optimized iPhoto.  Importing and default organization of 600 full resolution 8 megapixel photos took 7 minutes.  That's about 85 photos per minute!  Holy smokes!  At that rate, if sustained, I could import my 15,000 photos in less than 3 hours.

From the beaming pleasure of my iPhoto discovery, I moved on to testing the Mini's DVD playback performance on my 23" HD LCD television.  I hooked up the Mini by DVI cable and popped in "The Bourne Identity".  OSX's DVD Player was quick to open up, and in seconds I had the FBI, CIA, Interpol, ATF, FDA, HUD and UNICEF warnings on my screen.  A few minutes later, opening credits were rolling.  Once Bourne Identity started playing, the video quality looked quite good.  Colors were brilliant and motion was very smooth. 

I was all ready to give an unequivocal thumbs up to the Mini's integrated graphics chip when I noticed that dark scenes were splotchy when they should have been crisp.  Resizing the DVD Player window from full-screen to "Full Size" (which represents the actual pixel size of the DVD video, not interpolated upwards to max screen resolution) solved most of the grain and washed out black, but not entirely.