Got a 1.42 GHz Mini - suggest an upgrade path...

[Lazarus Short]

Hello all! My first post here.

I have four Macs, two original iMacs, one G4 tower, and the Mini. Only the Mini is in use currently, and I installed/upgraded to a 1 gig RAM module yesterday. The performance increase was incremental at first, but as I used it, things went faster and smoother. Now, my interest is whetted for more.

I'm sure this gets asked here incessantly, but what should I upgrade next? I'm thinking of making sure my USB hub and cable are USB II, but I don't know what to look for. My Mac guru hints at firewire usage, but I know next to nothing about firewire. I will consider any/all ideas, including going back to the G4 tower.

Laz
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Oh, grammar, water bag icer gut! A nervous sore suture bag ice!

[Smithcraft]

You could try putting a faster hard drive in, with OS X being a disk based OS, that really has a tremendous difference in performance. However, with the G4 mini, you will most likely be going from 4x00 RPM model to 5400 RPM model, which is not as great as 4x00 RPM to 7200 RPM model that you can do with Intel models. You can get an SSD which would provide much better performance than a hard drive.

A USB2 hub will be better for USB2 devices. It would have no effect with regular USB devices.

Firewire is generally considered to be better than USB as it offers a constant speed and doesn't need the have the CPU constantly handle it's transactions like USB does.

With the tower you can upgrade just about everything, if you can find the parts for it.

SC
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Grumpy old man of computing.

[Desktop] G4 mini - 1.5Ghz 1GB 80GB HDD - Newer miniStack v2 500GB - 10.5.8

[Media System] Intel i5 mini - 2.33Ghz 8GB 500GB HDD - 4 x Hitachi 2TB HDD in a qBOX-SF - 10.7.5 (Thanks Phil!)

Make sure it has pins!

[macmanmacman]

1.42ghz???

isn't that the g4 mini...

you might have a problem a large problem.

most laptop hard drives have gone to sata and the drive controller card inside that model of mini is not sata but a small form factor ide bus upgrading a hard drive might be harder then you think..

[Smithcraft]

OWC, whom I detest, lists numerous drives for the G4 minis, including some SSDs.

SC
_________________
Grumpy old man of computing.

[Desktop] G4 mini - 1.5Ghz 1GB 80GB HDD - Newer miniStack v2 500GB - 10.5.8

[Media System] Intel i5 mini - 2.33Ghz 8GB 500GB HDD - 4 x Hitachi 2TB HDD in a qBOX-SF - 10.7.5 (Thanks Phil!)

Make sure it has pins!

[jb]

[Lazarus Short]

Thanks, but I don't like laptops, if that's what you're indicating.
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Oh, grammar, water bag icer gut! A nervous sore suture bag ice!

[Smithcraft]

Mini's use laptop drives.

SC
_________________
Grumpy old man of computing.

[Desktop] G4 mini - 1.5Ghz 1GB 80GB HDD - Newer miniStack v2 500GB - 10.5.8

[Media System] Intel i5 mini - 2.33Ghz 8GB 500GB HDD - 4 x Hitachi 2TB HDD in a qBOX-SF - 10.7.5 (Thanks Phil!)

Make sure it has pins!