ISight with Core Solo Mini

Hello,
I wonder if someone knows the answer to this. My mother is in L.A. and I am in New York, and I want to get her a Mac mini Core Solo and an iSight camera so she can talk to me and my family (her grand kids). Would a base model Core Solo be able to handle the iSight camera? We're talking about straightforward one-on-one video conferencing between what would her Mac mini and my iMac. She already has an older monitor, USB keyboard and mouse, so the price point of a Core Solo and iSight camera is just perfect. iSight with iChat are the most processor intensive apps she'll be using on the computer. Has anyone tried it with a Core Solo?
iMac Core Dup 17" Mac OS X (10.4.7)

As you'll see at the bottom of this page, even a G3 can initiate a 1-to-1 video conference. A Core Solo is much more powerful than any G3, and iChat is Universal (no Rosetta emulation), so a Core Solo is more than what you need (you could even consider a 4-way chat .
If you have Cable or DSL internet then you must have at least 100 Kbps downstream (probably more), but you have to make sure that you have at least 100 Kbps upstream if you want good image & sound.

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It seems like the mini is doing alright so far. I think maybe the full erase solved whatever issue it was having. I also got my Core Duo Mini yesterday in the mail and it's performing like a champ. Definitely a nice machine.
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Does an Airport card show in the system profiler?
Is Airport switched on in your mini - the Airport icon in the menu bar should show at least grey bars rather than an empty white 'fan' shape?
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-Unplug all cables from the computer, including the power cord and any display cables.
-Wait at least 15 seconds.
-Plug the power cord back in, *making sure the power button is not being pressed* at the time.
-Then reconnect your keyboard and mouse to the computer.
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Mac mini Core Solo is a great deal slower then 1.5ghz mac mini G4??

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Entourage in particular is almost slow to the point it is unworkable. Is this due to the Rosetta emulation?
Yes, almost certainly. Microsoft Office is not yet Intel-native, so it's gonig to run more slowly than a native edition would. The same will apply to any PowerPC-only software.
What can I do to improve this, will increasing the ram to 1 GB clear these speed issues
I can't say for certain, but other users have reported that increasing the RAM to 1GB (or beyond) has made significant improvements in performance.

Anyone running Parallels on Mini Core Solo?

I've seen widely varying reports (but only a few, not enough to come to a conclusion) about how well (i.e. acceptable speed, or too slow?) the Parallels Desktop virtualization software (which allows running Windows alongside Mac OS X, rather like Virtual PC used to do) runs on the Core Solo Intel Mac mini, which is the only Intel Mac without the Core Duo CPU.
We need to get a Mini for the office, to run QuickBooks (only, no games or anything else); the Core Solo is within budget, the Duo model is beyond it, and more than we need otherwise.
Anyone here tried running Parallels on a Core Solo Mini? Care to share your experience?
Andrew Main

I’ve installed Parallels Desktop and WinXP on my Core Solo with 1GB RAM. I also have a MacBook so I have compared the two.
The Good News:
The speed of Windows in Parallels is what you’d expect from a basic Celeron PC with integrated video from a couple years ago. In other words, if you will be using programs with modest requirements such as word processing, spreadsheet, or database with medium data sets you’ll be fine. Anything that requires graphics acceleration...forget it. Screen redraws are slow because they are done through the Mac. I don’t mean you can watch each pixel be written but you can watch the screen redraw.
I have two tasks that require a PC - one is accessing a .NET based website that only works in WindowsXP and Exploder 6. The day that company has a viable competitor that doesn’t require Exploder we jump. The second is a data mining program. My mini and Parallels Desktop handle this just fine.
The Bad News:
Installing WinXP was something of a challenge and it was only through Parallel’s fantastic forum and tech support that I finally succeeded. But remember - I was on the cutting edge at the time working with a beta product. Parallels ships with a disk image program. I’ve found that it is best to make a disk image of the installation CD rather than use the CD itself. This applies to all CDs.
I also found it impossible to update to WinXP SP2 - my computer always hung during the process. (That may have been a glitch with early beta releases, I don’t know.) Luckily at work we had a WinXP w/ SP2 install CD - and commercial license - that installed without a hitch. But be warned - installing WinXP on a core solo with Parallels is slow. Start in the morning and keep an eye on the screen as it progresses - and don’t expect to use the computer for anything else. The installation will be using 95-99% of the CPU.
BootCamp vs Parallels:
In a word, significant. I’ve not done any benchmarking but when you run WinXP natively you realize just how much horsepower Parallels and OS X is taking away from Windows. Not to mention how much faster the screen redraws.
Differences between Core Solo and Duo:
Night and Day. It is like the difference between running Windows with an older Celeron and a new Pentium (excluding screen redraws which are slow because they are done via the Mac’s graphics package rather than accessing video directly.) On the mini, when I am processing data with the data mining program I can’t use the mini for anything else. Running the same process on my MacBook I can surf, read email, play a couple rounds of Soduko, whatever.
Conclusions:
If your budget is for a core solo consider using BootCamp rather than Parallels. The speed difference isn’t as significant as between solo and duo but it is significant. The Intel Macs boot quickly enough that your downtime isn’t tremendous. Having said that, in my own circumstances I find the speed of Parallels on my mini to be sufficient that I chose it rather than BootCamp. You might also want to consider a refurbished rather than a new core duo. Hope this helps.

Core Solo?

Can iWork and Pages run well on my Core Solo Mini? Can it even run at all? I was just wondering because school is starting soon and I need a good word processor to type essays and reports. I was also wondering, would TextEdit that came withmy Mac work? Does everything come out normal if it is printed? I still need to get a printer too so I can't try it out yet.

From the iWork '06 system requirements:
iWork ’06 requires Mac OS X version 10.3.9 or v10.4.3 or later, a Macintosh computer with a 500 MHz or faster PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5 or Intel Core processor, 256 MB of RAM (512MB recommended), 32MB of video RAM, QuickTime 7.0.3 or later, and a DVD drive required for install.
It doesn't say a Core Duo is required, so it would appear your Mac mini meets the requirements.
TextEdit is much more basic, but is capable of more than it first appears. As for printing, I get just what I expect from Pages. If you come across any problems, post back. Some times problems are related to a specific printer & just making sure you have the most recent driver will fix it.

Planning on the core solo

hey how good is the core solo mini? i need to get my family a new one. there using my imac g5 and having to clean the mighty mouse every three days is annoying. i also dont trust there carlisness on how they treat it. dont say just tell them to be more careful cauz i have. so is the core solo like the g4? that would be great to let me know. i have all the other stuff. just need the mini. the mini would be used for web surfing and light word processing

so is faster or as fast as the g4?
I have two G4 minis, an original 1.25 model and a later 1.5. I have also installed a small number of Core Solos and Duos for users, and had a Core Solo to play with for a couple of weeks recently when the user complained it was faulty (it wasn't) and had the chance to compare it directly with the 1.25 G4. The Core Solo was noticeably faster on native software, far less so when running applications in Rosetta, though in that instance it depended somewhat on the application - MS Word for instance seemed more responsive on the Core Solo, while Photoshop seemed about the same.
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Hello,
For the screen-saver, go into your settings and make sure that "Hot Corners" are not enabled. And, double-check that the "Never" setting was retained for the screen-saver.
As for the text at startup and shut-down, that is "Verbose" mode.
Go in to Terminal (the command line) by going to:
Applications --> Utilities --> Terminal
at the command line, type in the following exactly as it appears:
sudo /usr/sbin/nvram boot-args=""
Then, close terminal, and restart.
Verbose mode is simply a mode that shows you everything that is happening as you start-up. This is useful for figuring out where a system is locking-up during startup, etc.
To see verbose mode, you can also hold down the Command (Apple Key) and the letter "V" while starting up.
Or, you could go into the Terminal again, and type in the following:
sudo /usr/sbin/nvram boot-args="-v"
hope this fixes it for you.
Let me know how it works out.
I hope this helps.
Let us know if you have other questions.
P.S., if you'd like, go ahead and click the "Helpful" or "Solved" buttons on any of the posts / replies above if you feel they were helpful or adequately answered your question.

ISight with USB to IEEE 1394 adapter

Has anyone tried using the iSight with a USB to Firewire adapter? Such as the ones sold on ebay? Will this work or fry the cam?

i used a firewire isight with my mac mini for online confrencing , but i had to use the firewire for a cctv system i had installed in my building.
being the owner of an electronics company i set out to make a firewire to usb converter
unfortunately my cctv system had a higher bandwith so had to use the firewire.
after about 6 hours design i got down to building the circuit. it was hugely expensive to build, cost me about $500 and looking back i guess it would have been easier to buy a firewire hub.
it consisted of a surface mount electronics board with an Ali usb 2.0 and a TI firewire chip attached through another controller.
this other controller is used for PCI ports in motherboards so essentially it was a pci usb card and a pci firewire card in a pc connected in a clever way.
along with other components the final unit was about the same size as the average mobile phone.
MAC recognises it as a usb hub and my isight plugs into the firewire port on it.
i have since used the same design to make an IDE to SATA controller and a usb to bluetooth device (if you want your usb keyboard to run on bluetooth)
certainly because these are one offs they will be far too expensive for most people, and i feel the demand is not high enough for us to produce these is large quantities.
so to answer your question yes you can convert usb to firewire and vice versa, and it is impossible to be done with just a cable, and it would probably be cheaper to buy a pc with more than 1 firewire port

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Hi
I am just curious to know how well will perform Logic Express 7.2.1 with the new Mac Mini Core Solo.
Thanks

Hi
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ISight with Core Solo Mini

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