Maxing the Mini

Mi Problema

I wanted to get the most performance I could out of my new Mini. So I ordered the top of the line chip and then upgraded the ram to 8 gigs and added a 120GB SSD to complete the job.

Mi Solución

The enterprise went all too well. I was expecting an afternoon of curious excursions into the nether realm of teeny screws, lots of brackets and bits, stuff too small for my eyes to resolve or my fingers to manage. Well, there was all of that but I was done in under an hour. Which left me with three more hours to wonder what to do with. I had so geared myself up for the challenge, it was almost a let down to have finished. I have never had quite such a satisfying time of voiding my warrantee. Just swell. The last bit, the smoke, fire and flame test came at minute 51 or thereabouts. Nothing on the screen. Heard the big drive spin up. Tried to hear the SSD. Seriously, I did there for a moment before the embarrassment set in. Black screen. The connection to the screen on the floor, under the desk was not quite made and all was fine after a little push. But, of course, like checking for the power cable in the wall first, I had gone through all the possibilities of what do I do now? Where do I start? What connection did I screw up inside? Maybe it was actually supposed to take four hours and I'm a dunce. But I was raised catholic.

Anyhow. It is all working fine. The apple forensic mavens would have some trouble determining that I had been inside.

Mi Consejo

Suggest you set aside the four hours with some lovely tea or a beer for whenever it all works. Brian Eno background works well. Have something swell to watch or do on the hugely speedy machine to take up all the time you aren't going to need to get the job done. No cats in the room. That would have saved me about ten minutes.

I printed out all the instructions and laid them out side by side on a couple of tables. All the parts related to that page went on that page on the table. Once done, all I had to do was back up and only touch the bits that went with those instructions. Might be an idea for the instructions to have both the picture and text and a space to set the bits.

Be prepared to be amazed at how teeny and well engineered everything is inside the box. Go back even ten years and compare. There is no comparing. For 1100 bucks the box looks like the million dollar stuff I used to work on for the military in the seventies. Only a lot smaller and a lot better.