On Fri, 2007-08-17 at 00:29 +1000, Simon Males wrote: > This evening I was given a demonstration of the (intel) Mac Mini. > Very impressive price point for quite a bit of hardware. > > Has anyone purchased an equivalent system in regards to size and price? > My initial thinking was that there would be a truck load of Mac Mini > clones with similar specs, but the mini-itx and shuttle systems float > around $1000.
I had a look about when I was considering a Mac Mini. The AOpen Mini PC Duo MP965-DR with Intel Core 2 Duo is what you are looking for. But when I looked I couldn't find a AU company that had put it in a box for less than the Apple edu pricing. The Shuttle XPC mini X200 was released after I looked. I'd stay away from the VIA EPIA machines for a desktop unless you know exactly what you are getting. They are a bit underpowered, which is fine if that is what you want. They do make very fine home servers, if that is what you were shopping for. You are better off not getting a Mac Mini if you are going to run Linux. The Mac needs a special utility that does BIOS emulation (well, at least until X.org gets away from using the BIOS for mode switching) and that utility will only allow 50% of the disk to be used for the non-MacOS operating system. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
