I have looked long and hard for a machine that matches the mac mini, in
terms of both features, power and size. You are paying the apple toll
somewhat, but its still a very cheap machine (although you get nothing
but a small box)
its amazing that a very usable computer is $1000 these days, i remember
paying a few thousand for a tandy 1000 ;)
the shuttle XPC's arent bad, they are expandable (unlike macmini),
but they are quite a lot larger and werent cheaper.
Apple has really found itself a niche, i would buy one for my parents or
grandparent any day.
Dean
Glen Turner wrote:
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.
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