I intended to get a Mac mini for my birthday but I decided to
carpe diem...so I'm getting one TOMORROW
The spec for this particular Mac mini is 1.83GHz Core 2 Duo with 1 GB RAM (2x512 MB, expandable to 2 GB RAM), 80GB HDD, DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive, Airport, Bluetooth, Remote and running Apple MacOS X 10.5. Installed software: Apple QuickTime, Apple Hardware Test, Apple Mac OS X Mail, Apple iCal, Apple DVD Player, Apple Address Book, Apple Safari, Apple iChat AV, Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Test Drive, Apple Dashboard, Apple Spotlight, Apple XCode Developer Tools, iWork (30 days trial), Apple iLife '08, Apple Spaces, Apple Quick Look, Apple Time Machine. All for around $450 (it's a closeout model). I'm getting it, as I've said before, mainly for iPhone development purposes (and to finally get myself familiar with the Way of Mac). I already have a monitor laying around but I'm going to pick up a Mac keyboard and mouse, and I'm trying to spend as little money as I can while doing so.
Questions:
1) Will 1 GB RAM be enough, or will I eventually need to bump it up to 2 GB?
2) Can I plug in my external HP DVD-RW drive (bought for a PC) and use it to supplement the built-in CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive? It has a USB connection.
3) Maybe one day, I would like to upgrade the 80 GB HDD. Is it possible, and if so, how easy/expensive would it be to do so?
Thanks in advance for your feedback.