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Don't know why should you buy one, but I know why I should buy one (if at least I wouldn't be waiting PS3 for just the same feature, small compact multimedia center for my room)

Why should I buy one? Because it doesn't run osx, that's why.

p.s. Some people do not like osx and do not like Apple, I'm one of them. And yes, I have G4 and G5 but I don't like them

Some people do not like osx and do not like Apple, I'm one of them. And yes, I have G4 and G5 but I don't like them

If you don't like your G4 and G5 send them to me =)

Damn! You beat me to it!

:) Would love to. But as I whine all the time, those two are unfortunate need for part of my bussines. If I could avoid that, I wouldn't need to buy them:)

Commercial versions of Mandriva 2006 are Intel Centrino certified - any Centrino laptop's wireless will work 100% out of the box.

And WIFI support for my Acer (Centrino) laptop is also flawless with the latest Ubuntu. Including 128-bit WEP support in the installer intself.

Apple didn't grab market share by quality only...marketing...AOpen means what to 99% of people?

Good point!

Why do so many PC/component manufacturers have similar names : AOpen, Asus, Acer, Advent....

It will have to be quite something to stand out from the crowd/Mini - the only difference I can see from this is that it is slightly faster than your run of the mill Mini-ITX PC.....is there something more?

Ben

Pathetic?
Small form factor PCs and Macs exist since stone age, do you remember Cappuccino and Espresso line of palm sized PCs in late 90s and the Mac Cube of the same ages?
Noone is copying from other ones when selling small personal, if you remember personal started as Atari, Amiga, Commodore etc and since the very beginning of the *concept* of "personal" were smaller and quieter than "professional" computers of the same ages.
With Apples and IBM PCs this *initial* concept of personal computing was increasingly sacrificed in the name of more expandible, powerful and flexible machines, in other words making the personals gradually looking more and more like the professionals computers.
So, if Apple or any other x86 (hey!) reseller features a line of small sized personals is simply providing to the consumers the same stuff of *personal* as it was intended in good, golden '70s.
Peace and love anyone!

ACtually, I've seen specs floating around the net. A 1.3GHz Celeron is one of them, 256MB RAM is another. If those are true it'll have less power than a Mini.

Actualy in the article
In contrast to Intel's Mac mini clones, the Pandora most likely will include a single-core 90 nm Pentium M chip with Dothan core.

So I wouldn't agree about having less power

True about 256MB

There was no mention of the type of video card in the pandora either, although the video card in the Mac mini was mentioned. I hope it's going to be a good video card.

I agree about the ram too, it would be better if it had 512 Mb.

So Intel are going to begin reproduction of the now extinct celeron 1.3 just for a few boxes? not a chance

The article says it will be based on Pentium M which makes far more sense and will leave the mini standing.

we don't need trolls like you around here. please take your garbage elsewhere.

your clear bias against mountain dew is indicative of your ignorance.

Hum.. I would have said coke. Probably be more painful.

Hum.. I would have said coke. Probably be more painful.

<flame-on>

You can't waste Coke - it kicks Pepsi's ass in the flavour department!

</flame-on>

"Any small, underpowered PC won't sell, even if it looks cool, because it isn't a Mac."
What's wrong on a Suse 10 (or other good Linux distro at your choiche) workstation small like a brick, capable of running Posix compliant software compiled for linux as well the majority of Win32 software with Wine libraries?
Having usually better support than other *x with drivers of general purpouse hardware and having usually earlier and more mature releases of best open source projects?
Ah, of course "it's not a Mac"... I understand...

"You can get much more out of a $399 Dell, and any PC user knows it."
Certainly, the world is full of <400$ PCs with silent and cold hardware and sold without Windows, with at least one distro of linux fully certified on it...
Are you joking or what?

"Apple has a monopoly on OS X,"
I thought that monopoly was bad, that collaboration was good and that concurrence was better...
Oh, enlight me, Master!

"Copying the Mac Mini form is no way to make money."
What are you saying?
Personal computers started in '70s with Atari, Commodore, Amiga etc with small factor machines as paradigm in contrast with professional, bigger and more expandible, machines.
Apple and IBM (and clones) altered that paradigm in '80s selling bigger and more expandable machines but since then in many occasions (i.e. in late '90s Cappuccino PCs and Apple Cube) they returned to the ORIGINAL small-forma-factor paradigm of home computing as it was intended in the golden '70s.

"There is no hole in the PC market base waiting to be filled by a Mac Mini look-alike."
Any small form factor personal, with reasonable (price / performances / cluessness) balance had sold very well in last 30 years, so, what's up with you?

It's same mistake that C= did ages ago. You cut price by few dollar and loose half of experience (think 68030 instead of 68020EC in A1200). Also, most of people would have to pay extra for putting memory inside of case becasue

a) they can't do it
b) it will void warranty

But I agree that dumping the OEM Windows is a good move. I know you can get refund if you're not using it, but why I should go with the hassle of getting my cash from MS, if I could just not pay the price in the first place? If I'll be intrested in Windows, I can buy a copy.

I like a lot the Sumicom S625F, but it has a HUGE disadvantage: price. If you kit it out with the smallest hard disk, the smallest amount of memory, the cheapest CD (that's right, not even DVD), no operating system and no accessories, the price is.... $968.00 !!!

That's just crazy. Now take into consideration that you probably want at least a DVD, and 512 MB RAM is pretty much standard nowadays, and you're well over a grand.

That's not good.

Yes, and so certain are they of the quality of their product that you can choose to pay an extra $45 to 'build and test'.

That's awesome. Depending on the options you choose you can pay upwards of 5% of the price of your system just to make sure it works. Uh huh.

If Apple got it in their heads to do that the internet would melt with the outrage.

some of the cheaper options aren't. I was originally going to buy a Mac Mini to act as a server machine (running MDV PPC), but I can actually price it about CAN$100 cheaper using a mini-ITX setup from logic supply (or a local shop which sells the same stuff), so I'm going to do that instead. I just picked one which is a similar form factor and really neat (pentium M cpu, so it's powerful, and completely fanless) to use as an example.

and otherwise you just boot it once... remove the keyboard and mouse... and keep it running untill the end of time! (or the moment the hardware breaks down)

Anyone know what the graphic card is in tha thing , the Mac mini is good because it as an ATI 9200 , If this thing as no real graphic card , its just another small form pc.

:) 9200,... ? 9200,... ?? You called 9200 a graphic card? PC version can only be found in some museums. And you called 9200... a real graphic card.... ???

"You called 9200 a graphic card"

Yes its the last bottom card I dare call a graphic card. I dont like IGP , Via ( exept chrome maybe ), SIS or Intel. ( There Good if you whant bare minimum computer with 2d for the accountant , but not for general purpose).

"PC version can only be found in some museums."

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/search.asp?keywo...

I would prefer an X300 or GeforceFX or Geforce 6 at reasonnable price , but ATI and Nvidia did not drop in price too much in those class.

You have to work with the other product to understand not speak from the high end cards.

"You called 9200 a graphic card?"

It's not a gaming card but it's more than enough for regular usage as the 2D graphics are good. And I can play HalfLife 2 smoothly with mine so I guess it's good for some gaming too even if it can't handle the most demanding games.
So yes, it's a graphic card.

I've been using a 9200 quite happily for a while now.
It plays Civ3 perfectly, Colonisation runs like a dream, my desktop is smooth and crisp.
Here at work I have a Matrox millenium II and I can work just fine in my GUI.

Not every graphics card has to be a power-sucking, heat-expending, wallet-emptying monster. Especially if one is not trying to play silly-buggers with ones frame-rate.

Personally, I can manage quite well without those exra fans inside my PC.

Sigh. Don't feed the trolls, MadDwarf. Just don't.

Let's just see, I recently replaced my nVidia TI-4280 with an ATI Radeon 9250 because.. it is a better card for my needs, it's cheap, it's passively cooled and it comes with fully accelerated open source drivers directly in X.org.

Now that makes it a better card than any of them darn l33t gamer cards that need closed source drivers to run accelerated, drivers which taint my kernel and cause oddness in X.

Yes it's slower than your average gamer card, but it's silent and it's affordable - please stop this trend of upgrading all the time, it's just not needed - what the Mac Mini offers in terms of computing power and features is plenty for your average user.

I'd personally love me one of those dual core pentium-m things from Intel, it looks ugly but the specs appeal to me I always wanted an SMP setup and a silent machine to work with that didn't take up my entire desk.

"the Mac mini is good because it as an ATI 9200"



that was a joke right?

9200 is a good card. you can play smoothly many games. maybe not recently released games but what is the problem. you can always buy game console. i could play need for speed underground on radeon 9000, so don't be a troll. try play games on 915g. there is big difference in performance between 915g and radeon 9200.

I think the color scheme of the prototype is horrendous and they really should think of something that is not quite so offensive on the eyes.

I think you looked at the wrong picture, the ugly one is the one made by Intel, the AOpen looks almost identical to a Mac Mini.

The problem with these small systems has always been the processor, heat and noise. The mini took advantage of the G4, and traded off performance for compactness. Before the new Intel chips, if you wanted to try to do the same thing and run Windows, you had a real problem. You could run one of the Via processors, but performance has always been poor. Look at the Lex: it is not even very quiet. Or you could move up to the Shuttle, in which case performance was way over the mini, assuming a reasonable configuration, but size was a lot bigger and noise was a bit higher. This is really about the new Intel chips, more than anything else.

I do believe there is a large market for a reasonably performant small fanless system, which runs Windows. The problem the Mini has in terms of sales is that it is a Mac. An equivalent Windows machine should do very well indeed.

As for the Apple quality issue. That's just the usual stupidity. The Mini is not particularly good quality anyway. Its made by one of the usual gang of Far Eastern suppliers. There is no reason why Aopen, or one of 10 other manufacturers, cannot match or exceed "Apple quality". If you doubt this, read, for starters, the material about which screens will and will not work with the Mini. Shuttle on the other hand, the better Shuttles are really outstanding. The Aopen box will be at least as good quality as the Mini.

1. I doubt a company like Aopen can match the quality of an Apple product.

What makes you think that? Have you actually bought some of Aopens hardware lately? I have, and I think it's excellent quality for the money. Comparable to Apples low end machines.

2. Do people buy mac mini, because it is small and cute, or because it is an inexpensive Mac?

I'd say it's a little bit of both actually. Regular users often wants something that is small, simple and fits with the surrounding environment rather than something powerful that looks like a spaceship. The mac mini is fairly discrete and classy looking, not something you'd have to hide under the desk.
It's the very same reason LCD-monitors are more popular than CRT even though you get much less for the money in terms of quality. They are small and classy looking.

3. PCs are traditionally, tinker with add parts hardware. I doubt this will be very tinkerable.

Not regular users. Most of the addons they want to use are connected through USB or Firewire.

4. Can't you get a Dell for $500 with a flat panel monitor/keyboard anyways. Who will buy this?

You still don't get it do you?