My first 48 hours with the new Intel CoreDuo Mac mini have unfortunately been somewhat disappointing. Don’t get me wrong—The mini itself is great, I love Front Row, and the fact that I’ve got an optical audio out built-in instead of an Edirol box hanging off the side of the mini is amazing. (BTW, if you need an optical mini adapter for your TOSlink cable, I highly recommend going to Radio Shack and disappointing their salesmen with the purchase of their 98¢ Mini Plug to Toslink Digital Optical Cable Adapter (15-1584))
No, the problems have been 1.) getting it on my wireless network, and 2.) that it’s WAY sluggish. Now, let me qualify both of these statements that I’m still assuming for the moment that they’re not the mini’s fault, per se.
Getting the living room jukebox Mac on the Wi-Fi has always been an ordeal, but this time it seemed no matter what I did, including moving the AirPort Express to within 12 feet of the mini, it still wouldn’t keep a solid connection. My apartment neighbors are using some sort of industrial microwaves or something that’s interfering with the signal in that room of the house, but the old G4 mini connected without too much ado, and the Belkin Wi-Fi adapter for the TiVo seems to link up (although, admittedly, it doesn’t always behave— I have to reset the connection once a month or so). Eventually I resigned myself to running an Ethernet cable along the basebaord. One more reason to move out of this dump.
As for the sluggishness, I’m going to assume for the moment that it’s because I used the Apple setup process to copy all the crap over from my old mini, and there’s something on there that’s running Rosetta all the time and is sucking up what little RAM I have. I have to assume that after I add some more RAM and inventory what’s running, this will resolve itself, but at the moment it’s pretty frustrating.