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Or would a new Mini do the job?

Avatar Eric Jervis
Instead of spending hundreds of pounds having the Mac Pro repaired would a Mac Mini do all that I need? Would it communicate with my LaCie d2 Quadra v2 external drive? Hmmm...it's got USB 3 and the LaCie's only got USB 2, which presumably means I'd be better off with a refurbished one from PC World for £399 as they've got FireWire and run Mountain Lion, and therefore, presumably would operate my printer; Canon MG 3250.
What are the potential drawbacks though?

Re: Or would a new Mini do the job?

Avatar Mick Burrell
That's a difficult one to call Eric and I suspect only you can decide but for what it's worth, USB 3 is backwards compatible with USB 2 so your external drive would be fine. You could even get a Thunderbolt to Firewire converter if you prefer. I'd be very surprised if your Canon printer didn't connect to a Yosemite machine. Apart from that, it's down to you.

Re: Or would a new Mini do the job?

Avatar Eric Jervis
Yes, fair enough, Mick. I forgot to mention though, that the Mac Pro when it was running Mavericks couldn't see the LaCie drive, and that it miraculously could when I had Mountain Lion put back. I'll think about it for a while, whilst waiting for a Mini user to mention their downside, there must surely be one.

Re: Or would a new Mini do the job?

Avatar Mick Burrell
Not easy to upgrade, not supplied with a monitor, keyboard or mouse. But you have those.

Re: Or would a new Mini do the job?

Avatar Eric Jervis
What I'm thinking is £400 with a year's guarantee; if it conks out after that it will have cost me about eight quid a week.

Re: Or would a new Mini do the job?

Avatar Euan Williams
Hi Eric. Your post #3 about mounting your LaCie drive: if it was last reformatted back in the days of yore, you (may) need to copy your data off the drive, then reformat it as MacOS Extended (journaled) and GUID using Disk Utility under Mavericks or Yosemite. It seems that there have been some subtle under-the-hood changes (or a bug) which sometimes stops a particular partition mounting when a recent formatting meets a much older OS X version. Here it is Yosemite formatting meets Snow Leopard causing one (of four) partitions to not mount. I read about this somewhere else, but can’t offer chapter and verse just now.

Post # 5 John Lewis are offering their (free) three year warranty on new Macs until 26th November (that’s one year Apple plus two years JL). Order on-line. This offer pops up from time to time, so if you miss it this time sign up for their newsletter emails.

The latest Mac mini is less User upgradeable/repairable than the previous model, so make sure you get a reasonable amount of RAM from new (8Gb should be adequate), or go for a refurb. from Apple or elsewhere — just one year warranty though!

Re: Or would a new Mini do the job?

Avatar Eric Jervis
Hi Euan, Yes, I've just spotted that JL sell a brand new one for the same price that PC World sell a refurb. Also spotted the lack of an optical drive which is making me have second thoughts.

Re: Or would a new Mini do the job?

Avatar Eric Jervis
Just had an email from The Bookyard offering me a logic board with only one processor for £300.

Re: Or would a new Mini do the job?

Avatar Douglas Cheney
My son bought a Mac Mini to replace a PC, and he finds it to be very good for all the family and any Windows they have to run they use VM Ware. He bought an Apple USB Drive cheaper than the Apple price and it runs very well.

Re: Or would a new Mini do the job?

Avatar Eric Jervis
Thanks, Doug, something to bear in mind.

Re: Or would a new Mini do the job?

Avatar John Surtees
Don't forget that the 28th is Black Friday when a lot of dealers are offering discounts. So if you know what you want, it might be worth seeing what's on offer.

Re: Or would a new Mini do the job?

Avatar Eric Jervis
Thanks John, but I think I've spotted a bargain on eBay, I'll let you all know.

Re: Or would a new Mini do the job?

Avatar Eric Jervis
Yes……it's arrived, and so far everything looks jolly super. A late 2009 model upgraded by an Apple mechanic with a 500 Gb hard drive and 6Mb of memory. It's got all the connectivity I need and runs Mountain Lion. The external drive works well and so does the printer, but what version of Pages do I need for OSX 10.8.5? The App Store seems singularly uninformative.

Re: Or would a new Mini do the job?

Avatar Mick Burrell
I suspect any version will work. I doubt it will let you download one that won't.

Re: Or would a new Mini do the job?

Avatar Eric Jervis
My recollection from about a year ago is that after foolishly downloading Mavericks, buying Pages, reverting to Mountain Lion and trying again to buy Pages, is that you are quite right Mick. Now I must skip to the other post…...
 
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