As much as I personally hate Apple and what not, this is a pretty awesome product, as for the idle power consumption.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3843/appl ... mid-2010/7

But the cooler is clearly rubbish, and it's got a hard mounted 2.5" HDD to boot....

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3843/appl ... mid-2010/3

But if the HDD is swapped for an SSD, I could imagine this would be pretty much silent most of the time and probably wouldn't need the fan to go off.

Strid

Have you seen the HDD replace videos on youtube ? You have to pretty much take this whole thing apart (unscrew and remove fan, remove memory, disconnect thermal sensors, push the board part out a bit, unscrew and remove HDD, remove HDD cover and thermal sensor, put the HDD cover and thermal sensor back on SSD and do everything in reversed order . Of course you need at least 2 or 3 different screwdrivers.

Resurrecting the June thread.

I wonder if you can boot from the Firewire 800 port? There are a couple of Firewire 800 external HDD docks/enclosures... downside is you lose access to that port for other accessories.

Don't hate Apple just cos they are Apple. They aren't the bad guys. You even acknowledged their "awesomeness" yourself, and so does Microsoft in a roundabout way.

Mac Mini... wish it was less expensive and better spec'd. Otherwise, not a bad little computer.

firewire is bootable on the mac. hold the option key on startup to select boot partition. as a performer, this is a very important feature for me as it allows for booting from a cloned HDD or another mac in target disk mode. should something bad happen to my main notebook (hard drive crap out, screen dies, etc.), i have multiple boot options at my immediate disposal. downtime tops is 2 or 3 minutes! my backup routines are VERY simple; click clone drive and walk away!


firewire can be daisy chained. some devices/programs are picky about this though.

It should not be hard at all for an SPCR member. We've all built PCs trying to get the darn thing to quiet down. eh? The folks who I got my SSD from had a package deal with an external case for the stock drive and all the tools needed for the swap. Pretty nice!