Cheap Apple Mac mini

Hi

Thinking about getting a mac mini. Just searched google shopping and it returned:-

http://magicexpress.eu/product/apple-mac-mini-mc270b...

What's the catch, why only £273. Is this too good to be true?

Possibly because of...

We are a FREE TAX Company (Offshore Corporation), this is why we can practice the most competitive prices for electronics on the Internet.

They don't seem to list any company information any where and the domain registrant uses a free @live.com email address. Edit: It states off-shore but the registrant is in France.

I'd be vary wary.. as there are a few red flags right there.

Also... seems it has been asked before, but is too good to be true.
http://www.hotukdeals.com/misc/anyone-used-http-magi...

Matt

Edited by uno (Mon 18-Apr-11 18:59:55)

As I thought.

Thing is I'd like a mac to play about with and to use to learn how to make iphone apps but I simply can't justify ~£612.

I'll have to keep any eye out on eBay.

Build a cheap PC that can be made to run Mac OS. The basic specs needed are pretty basic indeed. My Dell Mini 9 (cost under £200 new and would cost lots less now second hand) runs it wonderfully. There are lists of netbooks, laptops, PCs and motherboards out there showing the extent to which they can be made to run OS X with the right bootloader.

The payment options say it all, bank transfer, e-check, e-voucher, Ukash and Toneo. The credit card icons are just there for show, that site does not accept credit cards, only anonymous cash payments, the site only ships with EMS, the Chinese post office.

SCAM SCAM SCAM

Certainly looks too good to be true and in this case it probably is.

That's true but I gave up on that idea last time I tried it (2006?). OS X would install and then boot but only once. I have no idea what the stability of any 'fake' mac system would be and it's not worth the time messing about, I'd rather buy a real mac.

Where to start?

If you go through the purchasing process:

You can use fake information.
It doesn't check postcodes.
Payment options do not include debit or credit cards, only bank wire transfer and some other odd payment systems.

Even if it did turn out to be legit, which it isn't, you'd have to pay import duty @ 3.5% and 20% VAT to get it delivered, which would take the total up to £360 approx.

Stay well clear, complete scam by the looks of it.

Look out for a refurb on the Apple Store. You have to check every day as they come and go rather quickly.

You'd probably get about £100 off.

A refurb Macbook is only about £100 more at about £730:

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/FC516B/A?mco=MTg0N...

Edited by deleted (Tue 19-Apr-11 08:20:34)

I have a used, boxed Mac MIni that I have just decided to sell for £300. Let me know here if you are interested. It's a 1.83GHz core 2 duo, with 1GB ram and 80GB hard drive. I can put more memory or a bigger hard drive in for the cost of the parts.

Scrumpy's!

http://www.scrumpymacs.co.uk/

really helpful

Still expensive when used

I'll probably bite the bullet and get a new one as I prefer the look of the new mac mini's and the fact that they have an HDMI port built in (no stupid adaptor needed to connect to my TV).

I actually want to run a virtual machine on it as well (ubuntu server running in VirtualBox). I'm doubt the standard 2GB ram will be enough. Any thoughts?

In reply to a post by 5km:

That's true but I gave up on that idea last time I tried it (2006?). OS X would install and then boot but only once. I have no idea what the stability of any 'fake' mac system would be and it's not worth the time messing about, I'd rather buy a real mac.

It's come a long way since 2006.

I guess but Apple being Apple I doubt it's easy to do if it goes wrong you can't exactly ask Apple for help.

Come to think of it my PC back then might have had an AMD Athlon CPU which probably didn't help.

You would not be able to ask apple for help regardless, unless had applecare or icare or whatever. But yeah, basically, intel dual+, nvidia, nothing too fancy like usb3 and you're set.

Why run Linux on a Mac? get some dirt cheap X86 hardware for that.

Coz I want a mac anyway to learn OSX and possibly learn/make iOS apps. I don't want 2 computers, one mac and one PC sitting under my TV (the only place I have to put them).

Edited by deleted (Fri 22-Apr-11 18:39:53)

osx will run in virtualbox/vmware on the right machine/with the right hacks.

I don't want to mess about with things that might not work at all or might be unreliable.

I can see you have good programming career ahead of you. Are you likely to be this guy?

In reply to a post by 5km:

things that might not work at all or might be unreliable.

12eason to a "T"

That was a low blow billford.

Lol very good!

At the end of the day it is the software I want to learn. I don't want to have to [censored] about with the hardware because I'm trying to run OSX on a PC.