"MiniMate Mimics Mac Mini"?!?!

Man, that's a tongue twister right there!

And the "either/or" FireWire/USB option kinda sucks.

I want to have my cake and eat it too!

This is what the USB hub that TMO covered last week should have been.

According to MicroNet, if both cables are plugged in, it acts as both a USB and FW hub. So I guess I need to order one.

This device will function as a USB hub at the same time as a Firewire hub. The reporting was confused by the hard drive mounting as only one or the other. When both USB and Firewire are connected, the drive will act as Firewire.

This comes close to what I want, but it needs to have both USB and Firewire simultaneously and it needs to have atleast one of each port in the front. I'm expecting someone to come out with what I want sooner or later.

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Guest wrote:
This comes close to what I want, but it needs to have at least one of each port in the front.

Well turn it round then...

First, dwallin, smart ass... maybe you *can't* use it turned around.

Aside from that, how come they need the same amount of space for a hub that apple needed for an entire computer??

The sleekest solution would be to have a reversible hub that was just high enough for the connections themselves. There should be no reason to make it as thick as the Mini. Part of the beauty of the Mini is its size. Why design something that takes away from that? If you use this hub, then it doesn't look like it'll fit neatly underneath an Apple flat screen.

So close... so close....

And I'm sure, given time, we'll see more space-efficient add ons for the Mini. Just takes a little more time to design one that works.

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metavurt wrote:
Aside from that, how come they need the same amount of space for a hub that apple needed for an entire computer??

Well, maybe the 3.5" drive in there makes a difference..... And it looks to be about 2/3 the height of the mini, which seems reasonable for a drive and two hubs. I would expect the only problem with turning around would be the cable mess. But I plan on turning mine so that the ports are to one side. Since it is square, like the mini, it can be turned to any side.

JeffW.

Metavurt, I believe that the reason it's so "chunky" is because it has a 3.5" HDD in it. Now I'm not saying it should be THAT big, but I think that'd be the reason why it's not just the hieght of the ports. I wish for a smaller one too, but the added HDD space is a good option, especially if you can update it with normal 3.5" drives in a few years time when 500GB is nice and cheap!

Valkyrie.

Anyone know if the miniMate is going to have integrated power management under OS X (i.e. HD spin-down during sleep, OS-level sleep timing control). Or for external 3.5's in general, I guess.

Great idea for a Mac Mini peripheral.

They need an empty one so I can put my own hard drive in it. I dont need to pay $150 for another 80gb external HD.

Cool. I might just get one. Although I agree that having some ports on the front would be nice.

As for the size, really, what can they do? They obviously can't change the footprint since it needs to match the Mini, and the height isn't much more than normal drives and hubs. Also, they need a little extra breathing room to let the disk cool properly without a noisy fan. This is not easy to do, especially when you have a computer sitting right on top of the drive. Most fanless 7200RPM 3.5" drives need aluminum enclosures and open headroom for proper cooling.

Okay, they just lost big, BIG points in my book. I went to their web site, and what do I find? "This presentation contains content that your browser may not be able to show properly. This presentation was optimized for more recent versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer."

Mac sites should not use two-bit PowerPoint presentations. Booooo!

it seems that in theory an owner of the minimate could attach both a FW and a USB cable into the mac mini powering both parts of the hub

anyone out there with the ability to test this

TRO