Upgrading a Mac Mini

A few posts back I mentioned that I was buying a Mac Mini to replace my often-maligned Fedora linux box. I also had a brief blurb about Apple overcharging for RAM and pimped Other World Computing as a good source of Mac RAM. I stand by that but I have to say that upgrading a Mac Mini isn't for the faint of heart. I thought it would be like the Powerbooks where it's either underneath the battery (as in my 17" Powerbook) or under a special "RAM goes here" hatch (like the 12" Powerbooks). It's not - the Mac Mini has "no user serviceable parts" as the manual tells you. Other World has a video about it, but to get at the RAM starts with using a putty knife (!) to open the case itself and then a lot of fiddly screw-removal and connector-disconnecting. I dug it open before the replacement RAM arrived, but it took about forty minutes to put it all back together when I got to it.

But it did work - the Mini (which doesn't have a name yet - Mini-Me is too obvious and I've gone and used TinyGod as the machine name for my big Mac Pro) is now running happily with it's expanded RAM. At the moment it's downloading software updates, but I'm not in the mood to start wrangling software onto it tonight. Maybe tomorrow I'll spend some time with it. It's so green right now - it doesn't even have QuickSilver!

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