Macs Are Great!

Last night I opened up the new Core Duo Mac mini I bought from Amazon, before ever even booting it once, and I replaced the original 80GB SATA notebook hard drive with a Seagate 120GB SATA hard drive I bought from NewEgg. While I was in there I also removed the original 512MB of RAM and replaced it with 2GB of RAM I also bought from NewEgg. All in all, the total cost was about $49 more than the first Mac mini Core Duo I had ordered from Apple, and that one had 1GB RAM and a 120GB hard drive. Plus now I have a perfectly good, never even been Out Of Box Experienced 80GB hard drive that I could throw back in this Mac mini if the need should ever arise.

At one of the funerals I’ve attended in the last month I had been given a laminated prayer card. I used that to help open the Mac mini, as I sure was not going to be doing any praying. But that’s another website, innit?

I also had two brand new putty knives purchased at our local Lowes (in the paint department) and I had my lovely MacBook right at hand to consult websites to be sure I was proceeding the right way.

I photographed the procedure, and you can see my photos here.

The main points to keep in mind when opening a Core Duo Mac mini are:

1. Be patient opening the case
2. Spend lots of time loosening the little plastic clips
3. Two putty knives are better than one
4. Once you pop it open take your time
5. Squeeze two black plastic posts to free the Airport antenna in the right rear corner
6. Remove four screws that hold down the drive assembly
7. Disconnect the cable for the infrared sensor in the front
8. Carefully fold back the drive assembly
9. Always wear a grounding strap when handling RAM or a CPU, always
10. It is difficult to reseat the new drive in the connector, be patient

If you have not already, you can see the photos I took here.

The new Mac mini is now installed in our TV room where it will be used as an HTPC. More on that later.

[tags]Mac mini upgrades, Core Duo, SATA Notebook drive, opening Mac mini, Mac mini photos[/tags]

written by Steve Rider

After my original order for a Mac mini Core Duo seemed to have disappeared in the FedEx system, and after Apple had kindly given me a full refund, FedEx delivered the missing computer while I was 2500 miles away at a funeral last week. Boy was I surprised. It had been 10 days since it was shipped from a location 100 miles away, also in Southern California, and I was certain it would never be seen again. The FedEx guy left the computer with one of my neighbors and put a tag on my door.

By this time I had already ordered the $799 Mac mini from Amazon, and it had already arrived, although I had not gotten to it yet. My plan was to upgrade the $799 model to a 120GB hard drive and 2GB of RAM.

So anyway, Apple is a completely honest and trustworthy company, and I prefer to be the same way myself, so I called Apple and they arranged to pickup the wayward Mac mini. It is gone now, and the carton was never opened.

[tags]Apple, FedEx, Mac mini, Apple customer support[/tags]

written by Steve Rider

The replacement Intel Core Duo Mac mini that i ordered from Amazon arrived yesterday, along with the 2gb of RAM and the 120gb SATA notebook drive that I ordered from New Egg. I have not even opened the cartons yet.

There will be a delay before I can upgrade and install the new mini though, as there has been a death in my family and I’m at an airport now on my way to Philadelphia.

Next week I’m scheduled to be on jury duty, but many are called and few serve.

[tags]Mac mini, Core Duo, Amazon, New Egg [/tags]

written by Steve Rider

Apple shipped the new Mac mini I had ordered on August 28th. According to the FedEx tracking system it got to within 50 miles of my home – and then it seemed to evaporate or drop into a black hole somewhere along Interstate 10 on August 29th. It is now 3 days later and no Mac mini has arrived.

This led me to a few telephone conversations with Apple, and I’ve gotta say they were very professional and polite. But they still had no clue where this computer was and neither did FedEx. So I’ve cancelled my original order with Apple, they were very nice about doing so, and I’ve ordered a standard config Mac mini CoreDuo/80gb/512mb from Amazon with overnight shipping. I also ordered a larger hard drive (120gb) and 2GB of memory from New Egg. I’ll do the upgrade myself. It seems I’ll end up spending $40 more to get 2GB of memory instead of one, plus I’ll have an 80gb hard drive and 512mb of RAM that I’ll be removing from the new machine.

This should give me an opportunity to do some photography of the upgrade process. Stay tuned to this channel for more exciting developments in my quest to setup an Apple HTPC.

[tags]Apple FedEx, hardware, Mac mini[/tags]

written by Steve Rider