Apple Mac mini MC408LL/A Snow Leopard Server
- 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
- Dual 500GB Serial ATA Hard Drives, 4GB of Memory
- NVIDIA GeForce 9400M Graphics, Built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n Wi-Fi3 and Bluetooth 2.1
- Mini DVI to DVI Adapter, 5 USB 2.0 ports, 1 FireWire 800 port, Gigabit Ethernet
- Mac OS X Server Snow Leopard preinstalled
Product Description
Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server is designed to help you communicate, collaborate, and share information. Its perfect for any small business or group retail shops, doctor and law offices, classrooms, design studios you name it. Now you can have your own server that supports email on Mac computers, PCs, and iPhone. Sync and share calendars and contact information. Access and swap files securely, and at lightning speed, between Mac computers and PCs. Easily create full-featured wikis and high-quality podcasts. And automatically back up all your important data. separately) Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server lets you add an unlimited number of Mac and PC users without per-user licensing fees. So you can grow your business without growing your costs. And you get amazing hardware and software that are ready to go, right out of the box, for less than the cost of most server software alone. Mac mini Mini-DVI to DVI Adapter 110W power adapter and power cord Insta… More >>
Apple Mac mini MC408LL/A Snow Leopard Server
Bought this from Amazon with great expectation of an Apple product, having used an iphone and lately an airport extreme wireless router w/c so far is performing rather well. After initial boot and editing the requested server serial # and other wireless data, user name, password and all, i was able to start work on the File Sharing tasks. I am a long-time windows O/S user, not a windows server user, but rather confident that this should be much simpler to use given Apple’s adverts in their website. My observation are below:
Day 1:
to a nearby Apple Store for analysis and repair, if necessary. I am getting worried now.
– Speed is not “Lightning Speed” as claimed in their adverts.
– Pages/windows become unresponsive while tweaking some options i.e. users/groups, sharing and permissions, and displays a colored wheel, not the gray colored progress wheel
– Colored wheel goes on and on w/o any messages letting you know what its all about! and there is not much you can do about it
– did a hard reboot as recommended by pressing on the power button until the system shuts down.
– Push the power button again to turn this damn thing ON again.
– had to reboot at least three times now until, at this point, it refuses to boot up and is now just displaying apple’s logo and a gray-colored progress wheel on a white background.
– plans to call Apple tech support tomorrow as tonight is beyond their working schedule.
Day 2
– two apple techs were not able to make this thing boot up. we did a file system check and repair but to no avail.
– This server on a mac is quite very new and this could be a curse for all version 1.0′s
– am on hold for about 20 minutes for a senior tech support guy…
– finally the prognosis: they are sending me(with this
– Their Apple Time Capsule also did not satisfy the expectation for an apple product and now this!
– this could just be a unique lemon mac mini server but since they are prestige-pricing their products, i can not be forgiving and patient.
– I am now thinking of returning this “beauty”! that’s all it is now
Rating: 2 / 5
The new Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server has just been wonderful. We already have about 100 of them running here at Macminicolo as production servers and they’ve performed great.
A few comments on hardware:
- In this machine you have two 500GB drives. By default, they are two separate drives. When you configure on startup, the default prompt is to have your services running on the drive called “Server HD” and the backups go to the drive “Macintosh HD2.” Of course you can change this to however you want, but that is the default.
- You can also put the two drives in RAID 1 or RAID 0. To do this, you’ll need to boot from the restore disc that comes with the machine. Since there is no optical drive on the Macmini, you’ll either need to use the Remote Disk feature and take advantage of a Mac or PC drive on the network. (This works wonderful) Or you can purchase the SuperDrive for MacBook Air which plugs into the USB drive of the Mac mini and works fine. Personally, I’m not a fan of RAID, but I know others are.
- This machine comes with 4GB of RAM, which is more than enough for most things. You can also upgrade to 8GB of RAM if you’d like to crack it open. This isn’t “officially” supported by Apple, but works well.
- Like all other Mac minis before it, this machine is nearly silent. It’s wonderful in that sense. It also runs cooler since the optical drive is what produced most of the heat in the last ones.
- For connectivity, you have a FW800 and 5 USB. For a display, you can use mini DisplayPort or mini DVI. (There is a mini-DVI to DVI converter that comes in the box.) And of course, the machine will also run headless without any problem at all.
And now a couple mentions of software info:
- This machine comes with a license of Unlimited Client Snow Leopard Server. That’s a wonderful deal since it’s $499 if purchased on it’s own. This is a full copy with no limitation. You’ll have the blue card with the serial in your packet.
-The machine will also run Snow Leopard just fine if you’d rather install it on this machine and use your Snow Leopard Server license somewhere else.
- For the first time on these Mac minis, Applecare also covers basic setup of Snow Leopard Server. (This is a separate, expensive option when buying an Xserve.) You can call AppleCare and they’ll help you configure your server. Very useful.
Overall, these new machines are just fantastic. Our customers love them.
Rating: 5 / 5