thinking about buying a mini....

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thinking about buying a mini....

however, im unsure if i should go brand new or refurbed. what are the pros and cons of this idea? i see an $80 cut on the intel solo mini. they both come with apple remote for front row which i want. 1.5ghz/60gb/512/airport/BT/Combo/ i wont use it for games so im thinking cheaper dell 19" lcd. if its better to go brand new then by all means tell me because im planning to buy tommorow. im so glad that i waited for a little while to buy a mini cuz i like the idea of being able to run windows native.

also, can mini's boot from external drives? this would make it so much easier for me to put windows on a hard drive and save the space of the internal.

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Apple offers the same warrant

Apple offers the same warranty regardless if you buy new or refurb. The only real difference between the two, other than price, is the fact that the refurb one was "fixed" by Apple because it had some sort of problem and comes in a plain brown box (not the fancy retail packaging). Another idea would be to buy a "refresh" mini; when a retail Apple Store has a customer return and the machine is resellable, they'll repackage it and mark it down.

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Go for the refurb.

I've bought about a dozen machines from Apple over the last five years for work, and only two were brand new. And the only one that ended up going in for waranty work was one of the new ones. You can get great bargains from Apple's refurb page.

Yes, the mini can boot into OS X from an external firewire drive, but I'm not sure if it'll boot Windows from that external.

Jon
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That's how I got my top-end G

That's how I got my top-end G4 Mini. Microcenter had several full 1.42/SD/AP/BT Minis for sale, and a few were marked down to $599 from $699. I hadn't planned on getting a SuperDrive model, but for the same cash I was willing to sacrifice the "brand new" of a returned Mini for a nice savings and a hardware upgrade. It even ended up being a 1.5GHz Mini...

i'd certainly give the refresh/return Minis a good looking at.

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im just thinking to myself if

im just thinking to myself if the ability to run windows is a must. ive got a PC for that.... but the remote looks killer. my bed is not on the floor so i have to jump down every time i wanna change a song on itunes or somthing. im not so much worried about the speed difference between the two but i KNOW its going to be faster then my old G4. 667mhz system bus looks nice though Smile

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i talked it over with apple f

i talked it over with apple for quite a while, and found out some interesting info.
when they assemble a new machine, it only gets a basic function check and QA before they send it out the door.
when they get a return they totally tear the computer down, test each individual part, replace anything thats bad, reassemble it, then they do a burn in stress test, where they run the thing as hard as they can for a while (don't know how long). only if it makes it through that process does it get out the door.
also, anything that comes back for any reason goes through the refurb process. even the ones that they get back from lease agreements with production company's

me personally.. i won't buy anything but refurb

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sounds like a great reason to

sounds like a great reason to buy a refurb!

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I haven't gotten a brand new

I haven't gotten a brand new mac since my g4 powerbook, and that was the only one I had any real problems with. Apple refurbs seem to be a much better deal than a new one imho.

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Does Apple wipe the drives on

Does Apple wipe the drives on those refurbs? I'd hate to return a computer and have it just end up in someone else's hands without a reformat.

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mine came just like a new one

mine came just like a new one, OS and related try-before-you-buy apps, and thats it.

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