Should I buy another second-hand Mac Mini or wait?

Philtre

Since my Mac Mini died, I've been thinking about getting another one, but certainly not a new one. The specs of my dead mid-2011 Mini were good (i7 2.7ghz, 500gb SSD drive, 8gb RAM) but I'm not so sure how it compares with more recent models.

So should I take the plunge and buy a second-hand one on eBay, or wait and see if Apple will come up with a new model? Anyone had good/bad experience buying s/h Minis off eBay? Any opinions on upgrading these? Can I put my SSD in the more recent models? What sort of price to pay?

PC_Dave

I got a s/h off eBay, dead happy with it as it does everything I want without a fuss.

You won’t be able to upgrade the new model when it comes out - that’s been Apple’s tactic for a few years now. If you want a powerful machine, then you spec it and buy it at point of sale, as everything is soldered onto the motherboard - SSD, RAM etc.

crunchman

PC_Dave said:

I got a s/h off eBay, dead happy with it as it does everything I want without a fuss.

You won’t be able to upgrade the new model when it comes out - that’s been Apple’s tactic for a few years now. If you want a powerful machine, then you spec it and buy it at point of sale, as everything is soldered onto the motherboard - SSD, RAM etc.

Bit useless if the SSD fails.

Is that true of the high end machines as well, or just the laptops and Minis?

PC_Dave

crunchman said:

PC_Dave said:

I got a s/h off eBay, dead happy with it as it does everything I want without a fuss.

You won’t be able to upgrade the new model when it comes out - that’s been Apple’s tactic for a few years now. If you want a powerful machine, then you spec it and buy it at point of sale, as everything is soldered onto the motherboard - SSD, RAM etc.

Bit useless if the SSD fails.

Is that true of the high end machines as well, or just the laptops and Minis?

All of their devices - not sure about the Uber top end desktop macs. They are normally M2 SSD’s, so they chances of them failing are slim to none, but they have a reasonably good warranty and they just expect you to upgrade if and when it dies (which the majority of Apple users will do).

Most manufactures are going this way - Dell XPS, Microsoft Surface, HP etc etc. 

crunchman

PC_Dave said:

crunchman said:

PC_Dave said:

I got a s/h off eBay, dead happy with it as it does everything I want without a fuss.

You won’t be able to upgrade the new model when it comes out - that’s been Apple’s tactic for a few years now. If you want a powerful machine, then you spec it and buy it at point of sale, as everything is soldered onto the motherboard - SSD, RAM etc.

Bit useless if the SSD fails.

Is that true of the high end machines as well, or just the laptops and Minis?

All of their devices - not sure about the Uber top end desktop macs. They are normally M2 SSD’s, so they chances of them failing are slim to none, but they have a reasonably good warranty and they just expect you to upgrade if and when it dies (which the majority of Apple users will do).

Most manufactures are going this way - Dell XPS, Microsoft Surface, HP etc etc. 

Needs to be some kind of government intervention.  Our throwaway culture is getting ridiculous.

The hardware is bad enough, but when the battery can't even be changed, something is very wrong.