http://www.osnews.com/story/9450/Does_the_Mac_Mini_Stack_Up_A_Comparison Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:08:04 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The processor is somewhat weak and the video card isn't that hot. The mini-mac isn't a horrible deal though.

Let the flames begin. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 17:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? They are not, in fact, trying to capture the build it yourself small pc market. They're trying to capture people buying Dimension desktops for $499 or eMachines, and the like. This would be why their marketing literature specifically mentions Dell. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 17:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? great job bro. thanx ! I will go out and buy a mini.
:)
Bas M Wed, 19 Jan 2005 17:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I know that wired said freeipod was legit back in august, but I haven't heard anything about it since then.

Now there is http://www.freeminimacs.com/?r=14040623 ... Anyone know if it is worth the time?

(E. I apologize if this isn't the place to ask such questions) Wed, 19 Jan 2005 17:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The hard drives aren't the same. The hard drive in the MacMini is a 4200RPM Laptop drive from everything I've read and seen. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 17:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? When the G5 came out, everyone said "Yeah, but I could build a dually for less that was (maybe) faster!!" Are we seriously back to this again? I think it's safe to say that the macmini won't be stealing many customers from the cheapass BYO market. However, contrasting a BYO box with the minimac ignores on crucial fact: that BYO box doesn't, and won't ever run OS X. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? anonymous two posts above me is clearly trying to get people to unwittingly sign up on his link so that he can get their referral credit. Save it for your friends. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? ... it's about the SOFTWARE! Apple's software in general is _VERY_ high quality, follows user interface guidelines and is designed for ease of use.

Everyone just compares hardware in numbers against Mac mini and forget that *software* is where the real value is.

It ships with great set of multimedia appls: iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, iPhoto, GarageBand.

Also two games included: Nanosaur 2 and Marbleblast gold

Fully-featured, altought already a bit aged, but still very good for home usage office suite: AppleWorks.

Great webbrowser, email app, and lots of other goodies.

Not talking about The Great Operating System!

PC-solutions cannot offer any of these for the same price. Not really even with higher price. It always falls to usability. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Even if the Mac Mini had an ATI 9600 Pro, people would be complaining that they should have included at least 9600 XT. And Ad Nauseum.

It's a value Apple PC. Get over it. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I have a AMD 64 3200 Shuttle based system with 1gig of ram and a Radeon 9700 in it..

But I'm buying a Mini also..


The 64 box sucks down so much power I cant leave it on all day unless I feel like I want to pay the bill. Even my bigger systems were sucking down too much juice.

I use another shuttle box for Linux use and the wife has another that runs XP.

I will probably buy a mini for her so she can continue doing what she normally does on the internet without all the hassle.

I will either buy a Mini or a iMac G5 depending on what I consider my needs to be.

Also the 80 gig drive for the mini is a 80 gig 4200 rpm drive unless someone has something saying it's not..



This is not a gamers Mac though I'd be tempted to see how world of warcraft plays on it..

I'll also buy my parents one to replace that POS dell they currently have and hate also. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? When the G5 came out, everyone said "Yeah, but I could build a dually for less that was (maybe) faster!!" Are we seriously back to this again? I think it's safe to say that the macmini won't be stealing many customers from the cheapass BYO market. However, contrasting a BYO box with the minimac ignores on crucial fact: that BYO box doesn't, and won't ever run OS X.

I don't think you even need to go there. According to this review, the machines are, hardware-wise, pretty comparable. They have a similar feature set and similar price. (not quite the same, but neither system is blowing the other out-of-the-water)

This is good news for the mini, since if you stack a Mac mini with OSX and iLife against a BYO with Mandrake, assuming they're otherwise comparable machines, it's pretty clear which setup most consumers will choose. So I don't think he's Mac-bashing at all. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Wow, a comparison that did not completely ignore case size. The DIY computer is still bigger, but thsi guy at least made an effort to build a resonably sized machine compared to other people. This makes so much more sense than the other comparisions out there that pit the mini against a tower cased Dell or DIY machine.

For me the attraction to the mini is because of size and price in that order. If Dell had a computer the size of the mini I would care, but as it stands now I would not consider buying a PC bigger than a shuttle case. Since 2002 PCs have been fast enough for me, now I want my desk back. It is the same reason I do not consider CRTs, sure you can get one that is cheaper and can do better resolutions than an LCD but who cares. The LCD performs good enough for me and comes in a reasonably sized package. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? My 1.25Ghz PowerBook has served me welll - it is my sole computer. I do web development using all of Macromedia's bloatware, Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, along with Photoshop all running in unison. In addition, Watson, Safari, OmniWeb, Text Edit, Preview, Notebook, iTunes, iChat, Fire, Fetch, Mail, CocoaMySQL, MySQL, Address Book, and iWork (now called iBiz) are usually all running too.

In school as a student of Computer Animation, way back in '98, we were stoked to be running SoftImage and 3D Studio Max (yechh!) on 300mhz P3's with 128 megs 'o RAM. That was a smokin' set up.

Granted, with OS X, RAM is huge - I myself will be upgrading from 512 to 1.25 GB's as soon as possible - (the kind folks at my local Apple store allowed me to test my set up with a Gig chip swapped in for one of my 265'ers - what a difference!!!!)

This Mac Mini will be a great machine. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I was amazed at the specs on this guys PC so I started to look into it to get one for myself. The motherboard he says he uses doesn't come with a 8 in 1 card reader or a firewire port http://www.soyo.com.tw/products/proddesc.php?id=273 also why would he buy a serial ATA drive for a motherboard that does not support it. Maybe if could get his specs correct with the prices then I will read what he has to say. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "great job bro. thanx ! I will go out and buy a mini.
:)"

I will to and my dad who has a Dell, he's getting one too. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "While the G4 performs well, the Celeron seems snappier and, for a bargain chip, has a much better bus speed than the G4"

Yes the celeron FSB is at 400Mhz but his pipeline has 31 stages against the 7 stages of the G4.
So the fact that you found the celeron snappier is in your mind, knows it. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Why was a Celeron chosen? The AMD Sempron is a cheaper and better chip. Or get a low-end Athlon 64 for almost the same price these days, which would be even faster.

http://anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=2316

Damien Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? You simply can't compare the two systems by comparing the components...

You have to compare the finished system as a one-piece design.

Not by comparing processor Mhz, or Video RAM.

Compare actual user experience...

It's like you're saying a custom Yugo is better than a Volvo, because the Yugo has better tires, or a better stereo...

Please.

Compare the COMPLETE system, including user experience...

I like and use Windows Systems, but I think MacOS X is cleaner, faster, and better than Windows.

I use my Windows PC for some things, and my Macs for other things...

But all this silly commentary that is based on comparing the Video Chip of the Mini to other chips, or the speed of the G4 to the speed of Celeron/P4 systems, without comparing the actual user experience, is just blowing hot air...

COMPARE USER EXPERIENCES. Don't compare components..

I can put together a system using the top of the line components that will work like crap if misconfigured, or loaded with crappy software, etc...

I'm tired of PC Zealots making useless comparisons to be able to say that there's something wrong with the Mini.

There's NOTHING wrong with it.

It's a nice box, at a nice price.

Don't want one?

Don't buy it.

Geez!!!!! Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? it is not realistic to compare a home built machine with a manufactured machine. The included software in the Mac Mini blows away anything on Windows. Of course OS News never misses a chance to be negative to the Mac with unrealistic user reviews. Remember the awful iBook review? Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "The hard drive in the MacMini is a 4200RPM Laptop drive from everything I've read and seen."

Not only that, but also going from an 80 Gig drive on a PC to a 120 Gig (with 8 Mb cache) would cost about $20 extra, while with Mac Mini you are pretty much out of luck in that respect.

Btw, anyone has a link to the picture of the Mini's power supply? Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Everyone is saying how cool iLife package is but I rather have a Mini without one. That is one of the problem with buying a Mac. You are force to buy software that you don't want or need. I rather Apple let me save some money by dropping iLife software package when buying the Mini Mac. I have no use for iLife. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? One benefit of the MiniMac is that prices are going to come way down on used power macs.
People are going to ask the question of why should I buy a 900 mhz G4 for 700 bucks? I can get a new one for 500.

And you really can't make a comparison between a cheap put together x86 box and the mini mac.
I can point to eleventy different combinations of x86 components that will hit the price mark, or any other point I select to compete against, but this is a complete system.
With operating system.

So lets play a number game, if a copy of OS X cost 139 dollars, and a copy of Windows XP cost 139 dollars, in reality that means the minimac only cost 380 dollars.
Put together an x86 box for the same functionality and price.

Figures don't lie, but liars figure. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? @Admiral Horror

No, you are NOT out of luck with a Mini Mac...

You simply buy the 120gb (or better drive) and an External FW case for $35, and you are set.

You don't buy this machine to be an expandable miracle machine...

It's an inexpensive, all-in-one, what you buy is what you get, box...

If you want something expandable, buy a used G4, or one of the newer G5 PowerMacs.

People will "hack" expansions into the Mini. But, it isn't designed for that.

Just like people hacked the "Hyperdrive" or SCSI into Mac 128's/FatMacs. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? s/friends/losers/g

The free mac stuff are pyramids schemes where they try to get you to rat out people you know. Participate at your own risk! Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "You are force to buy software that you don't want or need."

And where exactly is this different from buying a trashy Dell?

Can you actually buy a Dell (or any other brand PC) without Windows of some sort, and thus getting Media Player, Internet Explorer and other kind of unwanted software?

If you don't like the software Apple includes with the Mini, then don't use it - just remove it... Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Even when we know the specifications of the mac mini, it is to early to compare it to anything. None of us have used one yet. So we will have to wait and see how it performs. Later, let us see how it sells. The size is one of the mayor factors to buy one. I havent used a G4, so I cannot compare it to anything. However, 2.9 pounds it is incredible. I hope the computer sells. I would love to see more OS X around. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I don't get articles like this that compare machines that differ in the end user. One who builds his own system is certainly not the target market of the Mac mini. Save yourself the trouble of reading an article like this and visit:

http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2005/01/miniapplesandorange...

This is the type of machine comparison that should be considered with any seriousness. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? dude.... iLife is given away for free with new Macs.. there is almost no added cost when they add software. the hardware costs what they hardware costs, and the software gets put on for free, that is why they are a hardware company, not a software company. you think that Sun adds a cost to the price of their machines because of their software they put on it? no, they don't. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? ...sold my dual 1.24 G4 on EBay (which was promptly snapped up within 30 minutes, btw) and bought one. The only thing I wish Apple would do us take pointers from Dell on how to get one out the door in less than 1 month's time!! 8/ Because I didn't take the default configuration mine isn't due to ship until Feb. 15.

I added memory, bluetooth and airport card. Also got the superdrive and wireless keyboard/mouse (which already arrived to torture me some more).

Mike Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The Mac Mini comes with the full version of Quicken also. That's about a 70-80 dollar added value there.

That really sweetened the deal for me, because i was going to buy a macintosh eventually anyway for Office and Quicken, preferring not to keep a windows machine around. Cheaper mac+quicken sold it for me. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? yes.. much better comparison. the fact that Apple is mentioning Dell and other OEMs in their literature and NOT the BYO market tells you that they are not competing with BYO. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? id get one but i want and ibook more so i need to keep saving Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Well, I don't want to buy a computer without an operating system for sure. Well, either Windows XP or Mac OS X since I don't use Linux. Beside the standard softwares that come with OS(Windows XP), there is nothing else that I am forced to buy from Dell. Of course I can remove iLife from the Mini but then I am forced to pay for it. Unless, iLife doesn't cost anything then I guess I am making a stupid point. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The mini is actually something to consider, if not for the price difference outside US. With a budget plane ticket I can actually pop over to New York and pick up 2 minis to break even:-)

Regarding OS X, how long does Apple support older versions? When do they stop providing security upgrades, forcing you to buy an upgrade?

Does the mini come with any kind of wordprocessor? I'm not sure what iWhatever dos what. Or do you have to buy one? iWorks?? Besides you can get LyX, so perhaps it's not needed:-) Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? My conclusion: the Mini Mac and the shuffle iPod are second class stuff. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I find it difficult to give much credence to reviews and evaluations from users of a machine that is not yet shipping. How seriously are we expected to take an analysis based solely on Apple's published specs?

One example: This article, and others, criticize the Mini's video capabilities, presumably based on the 32 megs of video ram in the machine. But, if you are only doing 2D work -- precisely where this product is aimed -- 32 megs is just fine. Sure, if you want to play 3D games, this video system doesn't appeal. But, it is fair to ask, why would any rational gamer consider buying a Mac Mini? Apple will happily sell it to gamers, but they aren't the intended market.

When it is time for me to buy a new computer, the Mac Mini will be on the top of my tryout list. Why? Because it can do everything I ask my current box to do, and it isn't big and ugly, it isn't noisy, and it doesn't heat up the room. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Like mentioned above the Mac Mini IMO offers a better complete OS solution. No spyware or viruses on OS X. Plus it comes with iLife, so the basic home user won't have to buy and install a bunch of other software, its all included. IMO this puts the Mac Mini over the edge. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I am sure when Apple does their accounting the software division has to claim some profit from the actual inclusion of iLife in every Mac. Of course, they don't claim it at retail price but still at a certain value. It sucks to be in a division that only has expense and no revenue you know. So, somewhere along the line, it does has a monetary value attach to it. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Thank you! Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Oh yes. One for my mom and one for my sister. That saves me at least 4 hours each month to fix up their windows stuff. No spyware, hardly any virus .... and the mini comes with free ilife 5. That's cool too. Apple's order confirmation speaks of 3-4 weeks delivery times already .... which means demand is high! Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? the only place that the software has a monetary value is when it is sold separate to legacy hardware owners. the profits from the hardware sales are just that.. hardware profits... those profits do depend on the quality of the software, but the software is only subsidized by the hardware.

BTW.. on a Dell you get a whole lot of crap as well added on. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >BTW.. on a Dell you get a whole lot of crap as well added on.
And most software on the Dell actually cost you something, since it's not developed by Dell and they have to pay for it. Dell gets great discounts so you get it cheaper than buying separately, but the cost is there. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Interesting choice, putting a celeron system together.
Or was the PC133 SDRAM included a mistake?

He'd almost be better off buying an Chaintech NF2 board with an XP2600+, but that would not include a DVI port. But the price would drop substantially on the whole system, except that he'd have to buy 2 256MB sticks. But I think a reasonable system nowadays should have 512MB on it anyways.

The mac mini is interesting but it isn't anything groundbreaking. Caters to the current MAC fans but I'm not sure if it will have much widespread appeal. Perhaps it might make mini itx systems more popular and therefore cheaper. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Good story? I haven't read it yet, but I thought I'd contribute a similar piece from the other side.

http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2005/01/miniapplesandorange...

"For years, people have criticized Macs for being more expensive than Windows PCs. Although at one time that was the case, those of us in the know realized a couple years ago that when you look at comparably equipped Macs and brand-name Windows PCs—that is, once you add the hardware features and software to a Windows PC that come stock on a Mac—the differences in price are much smaller, if they exist at all. This aspect of "price comparisons" has been lost on many tech pundits and analysts (as is the fact that Macs generally come with an excellent software bundle unmatched on budget PCs)." Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? They have a PPC build right? If they do then yes yes you can. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? What a useless comparison. I got news for you buddy, I have never bought a Mac of any kind and have been a PC user since 1979, and I just ordered one. I am not in the "Apple camp" as you put it. Can't you people see that somebody might want to buy this new Mac just because. Not everything in life has to be a comparison to something else. I don't give a crap what video card it has in it, I just want one! Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? How come home builders never factor in labor costs, shipping costs, the hassle and wait time while purchasing components from 10 suppliers, and waiting on rebate coupons to be cashed in and sent out to you into the cost of their machines?

When I consider the cost of my own time (not only salary but benefits as well), an hour of labor is worth $20-$30 to me.

Of course, builders will say, "I can build you this machine in a half hour", but I don't buy it. It's not just about part costs... Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? When you spec it in a usable fashion like adding a super drive and 1gb of memory. I personally want one to replace my aging titanium to do video editing. Anyone in the market for a fully loaded 15" titanium 550mhz? Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I wouldn't say so just because it's compiled for PPC. They actually need the specs of the Mac hardware to make AmigaOS run on it.
BeOS PPC won't work on any G3 or later Macs.
Apart from that, you can always run it in Mac-on-Linux. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'm somewhat disapointed by this article. The guy is basing his comparison by a tech sheet? I would think he would sit the two computers side by side and actually use them. This article is worthless to someone deciding on whether to buy a mini or not.

Let's hope someone writes a real article in the future and not this crappy fluff piece. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "The mac mini is interesting but it isn't anything groundbreaking."

I beg to differ. It's not just the HW but the combinaiton of the two that makes this product groundbreaking. And unlike anything out there on the market today. The size and form factor and connections that are standard on the HW makes this premium product. When you facter in price $499, Apple's OS and all the iApps and third party Apps this becomes unlike anything seem in the computing market today.


"Caters to the current MAC fans but I'm not sure if it will have much widespread appeal. Perhaps it might make mini itx systems more popular and therefore cheaper."

Google the term Mac Mini and see the results you get. You've got every thing from the ultimate home theater system to car multimedia centers. And it's been out on the market, what, a week? Jan 11. HA!

4,850,000
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&... Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? dude.. itx gets blown away by a mini is power and form.

my 800 MHz Duron can outclass an 1.4 GHz. itx system Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? But does the PC run OS X and all the iApps? No? Well then it's not the same!!! ;-D Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? As someone already pointed out in this forum if you want some kind of zippiness as I do in my machines, the price ends up being 1300 dollars. I built for my friend an athlon 64 3000 with 512 mb memory, ati 9600, 80 gb 7200 rpm hdd, case, heyboard mouse setup with monitor, mobo (of course) for less than 700. The only drawback is that it runs xp and not Mac OS X. I see the only reason to buy a Mini would be....err none. I would rather with that 1300 dollar price by a different apple machine like err...oh wait none of the machines cause for the price you pay mac machines are too friggin slow!!! I love Mac OS X believe me but I have to look at performance for my money as a student. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I fully believe it's people like me who are being targeted by Apple. I purchased my Mac mini the day they were announced and I just saw today that it shipped yesterday and that I should receive it the day after tomorrow.

I'm certainly not a Mom and Pop, don't know anything about a computer user. I have Windows XP and Ubuntu installed on my 6-year-old, built from scratch PC at home. I used to love to tinker with my PC, adding components, formatting my hard drive and reinstalling operating systems once ever couple of months, etc.

Then, I got married. Then, my daughter was born. Now, I've been married 2.5 years and have a daughter who's 16 months old. I'm an IT professional working in the government industry. I now barely have time to even use my computer at home, let alone tinker with it and fix problems with it. I want something that meets my needs of ease-of-use along with advanced technology.

We have an Apple store at a local mall here and I fell in love with Mac OS X the first time I used it. It was so easy to use, yet so advanced. I decided then that I was going to make the switch. Actually doing it though was another issue. I simply couldn't justify the cost to my wife. Not that she runs the show or anything, but when she's a stay at home mom and we live on my salary, money isn't something that's taken lightly.

The iLife apps are built for people like me. I loved the fact that using iPhoto, I could easily manage all of the digital photos we were taking of our daughter. I loved the fact that using iMove and iDVD, I could create movies from the video we were taking of our daughter, burn them onto a DVD, and send it to my parents who live 500 miles away. I loved the fact that everything just worked, and worked well.

I tried to use Linux and find something that worked as well as the iLife apps. I never was able to find anything to suit my needs.

So, I was resigned to the fact that I was going to switch, but would have to save and scrape money together to do it (without making it a priority over the other things needed). I couldn't wait to finally have a Mac companion for my iPod mini.

Then, Apple saved the day and came out with the Mac mini. It was everything I wanted and had the right price to boot. As of Friday, I'll make the switch and not look back.

In my opinion, Apple's strategy is to get people like me first. People who want to switch, but haven't been able to take the leap yet. Then, once people like me are converted, we'll convert people like our parents. I was at my in-laws house last night for 3 hours trying to remove viruses and spyware from their Windows XP computer. I'm going to try to use my mini to convince them to make the switch too. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? good observation... the mini is not meant to be speced out to the max and bought (well you can and apple allows you to do so... perhaps because some folks want the size and the features and they will pay for it) but they have made this perfect for some one to add on to their current systems, or to replace an aging system that has the Monitor they can reuse.

if you want a system with power and features you will need an imac. if you want as system with features, an emac is a possibility ( the emac is respectable running wise, so compared to what you were using you will probably enjoy it, but it is heavy)

but do not expect the mini to be a powermac in a small form factor. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? And don't forget to get on of the best webcams... iSight!!!

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/ichat.html
Four way video chat!!1!one!eleven!OMG!
http://images.apple.com/macosx/tiger/images/ichatvideochat3_2004062... Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? the basic configuration is no slouch. the mini is not a gaming station, not can you do things like motion on it... it is a system built for people who want to get work done and want to not spend a lot of money.

power/price is not a good argument is you do not intend to actually use the power of the system you want.

do I buy a formula 1 car because I want to go to work and the store? heck no. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I just wish Apple had offered a 64MB video card on the higher priced model. And would it have killed them to make 512MB of RAM standard across the board? 256MB is a joke, especially with the 4,200 RPM drive, as your virtual memory file is going to be constantly hitting the disk, thus slowing down the OS. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? IMHO, there's nothing "wrong" with the MacMini... besides the prize. It's expensive comparing with an PC with better components... Also, anyone who uses MacOS X (I do at work, like windows and linux) agrees that it performs a lot better with 512MiBs de RAM... but again... nothing really wrong, just another "iProduct"... (with good software quality anyway!) Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? You are in the same boat I was 3 years ago when I dumped Windows and Linux for Macs just at the time my first child was born. And you know what? I am SO glad I did. The iLife apps are awesome. My dad turned 60 a year ago and I scanned in a ton of photos of him growing up and combined it with some video footage and made a 20 minute movie for him that I burned with iDVD. You can drag and drop songs from iTunes into iMovie for your soundtrack, add fades, titles, and other effects. Made a DVD menu and everything. Piece of cake. I've made movies of my son as he has been growing up and put them up on my .Mac homepage so all our friends and family can watch 'em and they love it.

You will be glad you switched. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Sell the software on Ebay and recuporate your funds... problem solved. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I agree with your point modman. It is for people who dont care about performance. But if I buy a computer I would want performance. And as Fatal Claws pointed out the base config should be a bit higher for example with the RAM. 256 mb is a joke! Especially with Mac OS X I am sure. And couple that with a hard drive running at dinosaur rpms, and you got yourself a nightmare in your hands. All I am saying is that no one can consider the base version of the mini a great deal. All it has going for it is the OS. Why would not a person want the best for their money? If I could afford of course I would buy a formula 1 car!! I use all the power my system provides me. So for me more power less price is better or else the usability of the machine goes down. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "And as Fatal Claws pointed out the base config should be a bit higher for example with the RAM. 256 mb is a joke! Especially with Mac OS X I am sure. And couple that with a hard drive running at dinosaur rpms, and you got yourself a nightmare in your hands. All I am saying is that no one can consider the base version of the mini a great deal."

256 is NOT a joke. It's the minimum amount of ram the os will work with. It does work better with more (as does Windows XP). Yes, 4k rpm drives are slow.

As for saying a base-mini is not a great deal? I beg to differ.

News-flash... this just in... in the base-mini too underpowered for you?... buy a iBook/Powerbook/iMac/or G5 tower...

For 500$ this is a GREAT deal. Is it underpowered for some users? Yes... Will upgrading to their level make it more expensive? Yes... Are there other systems that Apple sells that would better suit their needs... YES. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? //The 64 box sucks down so much power I cant leave it on all day unless I feel like I want to pay the bill. Even my bigger systems were sucking down too much juice.

...

I will either buy a Mini or a iMac G5 depending on what I consider my needs to be. //

So ... you've got the dough to go buy a freakin' G5 ... but at the same time, you can't afford to pay the electric bill 'cause your Shuttle uses so much power?

Come again? Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? it's a laptop drive. Not all laptop drives are 4200rpm, they're available up to 7200rpm nowadays. I don't know what model is actually in the Mac Mini, does anyone know for sure? Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? the card reader is in the case, not the motherboard. It's terminated in a standard internal USB jack which you connect to any spare USB header on the motherboard. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "How come home builders never factor in labor costs, shipping costs, the hassle and wait time while purchasing components from 10 suppliers, and waiting on rebate coupons to be cashed in and sent out to you into the cost of their machines?"

Last build I did...hmm. I went to the local Netlink store, bought all the components, stuck them in the car, brought them home. That took half an hour. Built the system, that was an hour. If you want to count installing the OS, that took a couple hours, but most of that time I was doing something else. Call it an hour. 2.5hrs, even at $20 per hour that's $50. And I wish someone would pay me $20/hr. Sigh. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? XP Pro costs AUD$479 and XP Home costs AUD$325. (www.microsoft.com/australia/pricing/). Other software may need to be purchaced too to make it equivilent to a Mac Mini.

To be honest, I can't think of too much that XP Pro has that OS X doesn't, but if there is, and you wanted to be really cheap, you can always use Fink (or equivilent) and get it that way anyway ;-)

Please, when BIY guys are quoting prices for how they can build a machine so cheaply, please talk about the cost of s/w that you will need. If you are opting for a Linux solution, then mention that too. When a Mac Mini price is given, the OS and other bundled s/w is included in that price...

I'm still not saying Mac Mini is a bargain, I think its a great price for a Mac, but what I am saying is that you have to factor in the cost of s/w.

B.T.W. A lot of people upgrading from a PC to Mac probably won't be able to use the k/b and mouse they have, as most out there are probably still PS2 or COM, so it's good to be aware of that too. The parallel printer they might be using could be an issue too, not to mention non supported scanners. I'm sure all this has been mentioned before, but still good mention again I guess. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "You've got every thing from the ultimate home theater system"

Just ROFL. If I were in the market for the ultimate home theater system I'd want hi-fi grade audio and enough power to upsample to HDTV resolution, encode to high-quality MPEG4 on-the-fly...this thing ain't scoring very well so far. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'm wondering if the author of this article has actually physically used a Mini Mac yet ?

I'd love one to be honest, just to get more hands on with osX and because it's got a tiny footprint. It's a little bit bigger than my monitor/keyboard switcher and would look just awesome sitting on top of it.

My one complaint would be lack of a mic or line-in audio port, I guess there wasn't enough space to include it ? Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>B.T.W. A lot of people upgrading from a PC to Mac probably won't be able to use the k/b and mouse they have, as most out there are probably still PS2 or COM,

I was thinking about this the other day. But it is not apple fault. They set the standard. The dropped FD long time ago. But PC keeps thinking about compatibility with old hardware. USB has been around enough, for us to be using PS/2 and COMs. Yes I know they are many applications that still used, and some crazy designers (sometimes I include myself) create some stuff using them (even UPS still use COMs for comunications, and I use a serial microsoft mouse (best mouse ever)). Anyway, I extended this too much. My point is that probably alot of people will have to buy a mouse and keyboard, because PS/2 is still a standard. By the way, I read somewhere that Apple sells a RCS/S-video connector for the mac mini for $16. Hmmmm, if it is true, it makes the mac-mini a very good option for a car computer. Another question, does the ATI Wonder Remote works in Mac hardware? Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? OK, I'm typing this on a iMac G4 1GHZ with 256MB of RAM running Safari, Entourage and importing a few hundred emails right now into Apple Mail with KeyChain open and Activity Monitor. Not fast but totally useable. The Mac mini will not be a race horse with 256MB of RAM but will be quite useable.

In my experience HD speed and memory seems to be more important. I ran MacOSX on a 400MHZ G4 for several weeks but it had a fast 7200 RPM drive. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>My one complaint would be lack of a mic or line-in audio port, I guess there wasn't enough space to include it ?

Many people have complained about it. I gues it is okay. It is not only necessary to use garage band like many have posted. In my case I have a cable box, that I would like to plug to it without any other interface. Just like I have it right now in my PC. But anyway, it is not included so I cannot do anything about it, just find a solution. But I bet that many trying to use the mini for HTPC, will find the lack of the port very annoying. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? You are a prime example of where Mac rocks, and nothing else compares. Yes, there's doze software for that, but none of it will integrate so well and be so obvious to use...
I on the other hand can't stand doze, and don't particularly like OS X.
However, if Mini's are quiet they'd make a great computer, better than a Dimension; which isn't quiet. You see, a G4 does something no celeron, P4, or Sempron can dream of:
Not waste 60 watts of heat energy.

If I remember correctly it runs comparable to Pentium M, at about 14 watts average? But hey, considering things like the audio ergonomics of a machine would be something that people who think ahead do; not the average Dell customer. So, are Mini's quiet?
It is possible to build a quiet P4, I've seen several. ASL sells one with linux preinstalled; the things are about as loud as a pin drop (at the level of ambient noise). Also, the mini uses very little space, yes shuttle does too. And finally, OS X is massively less hassle than Windows XP. And once again, I don't really like OS X! Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? But this lays it out pretty well as to why the Mini is still no great buy:

http://pcnmac.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=145 Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Please, when comparing prices, compare everything. When you spend days fixing / configuring / removing spyware / compiling / screaming frustrated, a mac is a lot cheaper. The mac just works, or doesn't, in which case it will never work and trying to fix it is pointless.

If for example this saves you on average 1 hour a week, and you earn $10/h, you can buy yourself a new mac each year. The TCO really matters, ask microsoft Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? This dude is high on something, a P4 2.6 is in no way the same as a G4 1.42. He needs to get a slower P4 to be mroe equal, more like a 2.0ghz model. And what's with the SATA on the P4 and ATA on the Mac? Gee, talk about no comparison there as well. He should compare a 80Gb ATA drive to an 80GB ATA drive.... And he's really high on something when he quotes $150 for XP SP2 Home Edition. ??? I think not, buddy. More like $99. Then the AGP discrepancy... dear lord... This is one messed up comparison. Apples versus Oranges. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 21:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Ok, how does this get on OSnews? Used to be a good site...now not so sure. Some random guy compares his homebrew box to the stats of the minimac, and somehow, that makes it news.

The telltale is in the second paragrach of the comparison: his box v. her iBook. It's like Road and Track sitting there with a tuned beater and comparing that to a production mustang GT.

Tell you what: instead of posting some fake "comparison", get one from Apple, then tell us how it stacks up.

Can't believe that OSNews is that starved for info. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 21:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I use lower spec 800mhz G4 iMac "lamp" with 512mb of RAM and 60GB HDD to create music and home movies. I also play Quake 3 Arena on it.

My sister-in-law's family has a high end Dell. They used a digital video camera to video tape parts of all their kids (16 and 14 years old) soccer games. Then tried using MS's movie editing software that comes with XP to make a movie. It was OK but they were really frustrated with the software.

I brought my Mac over to their house and showed them what I could do with iMovie (iTunes for music) and iDVD. They were STUNNED at how much better the movie was. And that was with them sitting at the keyboard asking me questions as to whether this or that could be done.

After all that they asked how my Mac compared to the new ones. I told them the specs and that it was a whole generation behind the newest ones. And that iMovie and iDVD would have run faster if I had more RAM in it.

They've always been a MS fans with three Dell computers and an XBox. Guess what. They bought a 20" G5 iMac with 1GB or RAM and love it. Now they all fight over the iMac and their three Dells are being used less and less. When they use them (because someone else is using the Mac) they feel - rightly so - that they are using the second rate computer.

And yes, their kids love playing games on the G5 iMac. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 21:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? But this lays it out pretty well as to why the Mini is still no great buy:

http://pcnmac.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=145


Depends on who you are. For a power-hungry money-starved geek, a PC is probably the better choice - but then again, power-hungry money-starved geeks aren't the target audience of the Mac mini anyway, so their opinion is kinda moot. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 21:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? PS: They bought the G5 iMac four months ago. Now that the Mac mini came out they are looking at buying two of those to get rid of the other two Dells so they won't have to fight for the iMac anymore.

How will they pay for them? They are selling their Dells on eBay. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 21:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? " If I remember correctly it runs comparable to Pentium M, at about 14 watts average? But hey, considering things like the audio ergonomics of a machine would be something that people who think ahead do; not the average Dell customer. So, are Mini's quiet? "

duh there is no ventilation... Wed, 19 Jan 2005 21:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The only software that I don't need to run, won't run on the Mini running Mac OS X is Malware, Viruses, and Spyware.

Most business only need Microsoft and that's on the mac.

Graphic software,,,,,,,,,the mac has it.

Video/movie editing,,,,,,,,it's on the mac

Motion Graphics...................and that's on the mac to.

Linux..........................that too. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 21:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? A guy could sign in once a decade and the same argument is still going on.

Reminds me of a conversation I overheard. Two companions were arguing over who was the biggest idiot. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 21:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? What is it with people always saying you need more than 256MB or a faster CPU to run OS X?

Here in my IT shop I'm running a 400MHZ G4 with 256MB of RAM.
I manage hundreds of MAC's on the network besides using it for the internet, office and so on. This machine runs VERY FAST.

Apple has optimized OS X to run on any G4. Heck I even have hundreds of iMac G3's running 10.3.5 just fine. Its a little slow but usable as they are all logging in to OS X servers.

Needing more RAM or speed really depends on what you are doing.

For most people epecially the average Joe at home the Mini is going to be more than enough and at least you have the option to upgrade the RAM without it being shared and even add a superdive among other things. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 21:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>Can't believe that OSNews is that starved for info.

This article is not the one making news. It is the mac mini. For good or for bad. Some people think is not a big deal, others see it as their way to scape from Wintel. I would love to see statistics about how many minis have been ordered already. I would like to see also how you people are planning to use it (combinations or scenarios to implement it). Wed, 19 Jan 2005 21:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Unrealistic pricing. An OEM copy of XP Pro SP2 from auspcmarket.com.au is AU$253 inc. tax. You are legally entitled to buy an OEM copy with any significant hardware purchase. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "and I use a serial microsoft mouse (best mouse ever)"

Best mouse ever? With a 40hz refresh? I find that tricky to believe. The first two PS/2 Intellimouse generations were identical but with PS/2 connectors in any case, which have 80hz refresh by default and can be adjusted to 200hz via third-party utilities, so all the good points of the MS serial mouse and no downside. A good modern optical mouse is far superior to optomechanical in all cases now, anyway. Find a pro gamer who still uses an optomechanical mouse, except the few hardcore Razer nuts who are still hanging around... Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'd love to get the Mac Mini right now, but with 10.4 (Tiger) around the corner I'll wait. Hopefully, they will add a video card that fully supports Core Image and increase the video ram.

The extra time will allow me to save more money! :-P Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "You see, a G4 does something no celeron, P4, or Sempron can dream of:
Not waste 60 watts of heat energy."

Further down you guess at 14W, as well. Neither statement true. Someone posted in another thread that design max power draw for the G4 is 25W. The Athlon XP-M CPUs have design max thermal power as low as 30W, and they're fairly cheap Socket A CPUs. I run an XP-M 2500+ in my HTPC, cooled with a Vantec Stealth 80mm fan intended as a case fan. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "And what's with the SATA on the P4 and ATA on the Mac? Gee, talk about no comparison there as well."

Why? No current hard disk can come close to maxing out the headroom on either (ATA's max headroom is 100MB/s officially or 133MB/s with Maxtor's unofficial extension, SATA's is 150MB/s). Most standard drives get to 55MB/s or so, max. WD's Raptors can get over 70MB/s flat out. Buy a motherboard which can take either SATA or ATA, buy a Seagate 7200.7 SATA drive and a Seagate ATA 7200.7 drive with identical platter configurations and cache, and they'll perform identically. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? @ Thavith (IP: ---.234.240.220.dsl.comindico.com.au

When purchasing a new PC, refer to OEM release not retail release. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Last build I did...hmm. I went to the local Netlink store, bought all the components, stuck them in the car, brought them home. That took half an hour. Built the system, that was an hour. If you want to count installing the OS, that took a couple hours, but most of that time I was doing something else. Call it an hour. 2.5hrs, even at $20 per hour that's $50. And I wish someone would pay me $20/hr. Sigh."

In one respect, EXACTLY! That would add $50 to the home built machine making it MORE EXPENSIVE for just a free Linux installation.

But, in another respect, you completely miss my point: People who buy sub-$500 computers are not home builders. There is no way they could build a computer in a half hour or even 3 hours including software. It would take them much longer. They wouldn't even know which components operate with one another. They probably don't even know what netlink is. (As far as I can tell, it is a Canadian only store.) So... there is no way you can say that this labor is reasonably estimated at $50... You cannot reasonably presume that this is an option for most people. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? IF the said Sempr0n was a K8-S754 Paris core then it may have cool'n'quiet function.

Download Right Mark's CPU Clock Utility for cool'n'quiet enabling i.e. some mother boards doesn't give p-states profile. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "and I use a serial microsoft mouse (best mouse ever)"

Best mouse ever? With a 40hz refresh? I find that tricky to believe. The first two PS/2 Intellimouse generations were identical but with PS/2 connectors in any case, which have 80hz refresh by default and can be adjusted to 200hz via third-party utilities, so all the good points of the MS serial mouse and no downside. A good modern optical mouse is far superior to optomechanical in all cases now, anyway. Find a pro gamer who still uses an optomechanical mouse, except the few hardcore Razer nuts who are still hanging around...

LOL. You are missing my point Adam. I didnt say the most advance mouse ever. I have optical. For the love of God, of course I know that there are a million better mouse. But this freak has never give me any trouble. I love the dising of the end conector. How many of you get the PS/2 conector damage or where the cable enters the mouse. As a ex Help Desk I used to change that cable alot or redo the connector. However, I never had to do it with this mouse. Comming from Microsoft, well I think that is a great product. So dont take it personal. LOL. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Why the people how says stuff about OS X (performance) are Windows users. I am a Linux/Windows user. But I want OS X user to tell me how does it feel. What are the requirements. I want to hear the people with experience on OS X. Please, if if not too much to ask. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Since when is omni-platform Linux, MacOS X, and Windows?

What about solaris, hp-ux, AIX, OpenVMS, OS/2 Warp, BEOS, and DOS? Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Thank you for your answers!

(please don't moderate me down for this simple question, even if u have a bad day 2day, thx)

I'm interested to run Mac Mini with Amiga OS, is this a bad question??? Come on... Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Refer to http://techreport.com/ja.zz?comments=7857

And I quote...


Here's what I was able to come up with in about 10 minutes poking around Newegg:

Shuttle MK40VN motherboard (10/100 LAN, 6 USB, audio) - $39

AMD Sempron 2300+ 1.583GHz Socket A Processor (Retail box) - $61

256MB PC2700 memory - $31

Radeon 9200SE 64MB (DVI, VGA, TV out) - $36

WD 40GB, 5400RPM hard drive - $54

52x32x52x16 CD-RW & DVD Combo Drive - $31

Black mid-tower case with 350W PSU - $29

That all adds up to $281, which is a far cry from $505. And when you're building a system, you can get an OEM copy of Windows XP Professional for about $150, which is less than the comparison's $199 retail copy. If you're going to spec out a DIY PC, you might as well do it right.


Also refer to HP-USA's SR1000Z models. I reconfig HP-USA's SR1000Z for $599 target.

This HP-USA SR1000Z includes.

Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Professional with SP2
AMD Sempron(TM) 3000+ operating at 2.0GHz
256MB DDR / PC2700, expandable to 2GB @PC3200.
80GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive
48x max. CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive (48x32x16x48x)
9 in 1 Card Reader (Can't deselect)
128MB DDR NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200XT, TV-Out
Integrated 5.1 Capable Sound w/ Front Audio ports (Can't deselect to 2 channel audio)
Compaq Keyboard & Scroller Mouse (Can't deselect)
'MS Works Suite 2005'

Expansion slots includes 3 PCI slots, 1 AGP8X slot.

2 Firewire 400 ports (Can't deselect to 1 port)
USB 2.0: Six (2 front and 4 back)
Headphone: One (front)
Microphone: Two (1 front and 1 back),
Line in: Two (one front, one back), Parallel: One (back)

-------------------------------------------------
Resulted to $$594.99*.

HP also bundles the following...
---
Apple iTunes
RealPlayer
InterVideo® WinDVD® 5 player (in models with DVD drive)
Intervideo® WinDVD Creator (in models with DVD writers)
RecordNow (in models with CD writers or DVD writers)
Intuit Quicken New User's Edition 2005
Adobe® Acrobat Reader 6.0
Adobe® Photoshop Album STE
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--- Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? As usual, PEECEE drones just can't seem to grasp SIMPLE concepts. You can't quantify a Mac just by looking at it from a hardware perspective. There is absolutely NOTHING on the Windows side that even comes close to the Mac mini at this price.

It should be obvious to everyone that separating the OS, bundled software, and user experience from the hardware when doing these types of comparisons is competely unfair. Then again, what can we expect from the Windows world, where tight integration between the OS and hardware is a merely a pipe dream? Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? That's nice, I said Sempron. And I was wrong, Dothan is about 21watts on average; but Pentium 4 is well over 60 watts. And remember, I'm speaking average, not sleep or max. Anyway, G4e is supposed to be about 40watts, so I was remembering that wrong as well.
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:xgLKN66chC8J:arstechnica.com/c...
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:11n3oZJ7190J:arstechnica.com/n...
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:ztSWDvGYyGcJ:arstechnica.com/a... Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The Mini ships with the minimum memory to get up and running with MacOSX. I recommend anyone running MacOSX to at least have 512MB and the more the better.

Apple really should have tried to jam a 3.5"SATA HD into this system. an inch taller and it still would beat every single ITX system in size, its that small. But there is FireWire where you can hook up a fast external HD and you can daisy chain FireWire.

The processor speed is fine. I've seen lots of people being very productive on lesser speed G4s. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? " If I were in the market for the ultimate home theater system I'd want hi-fi grade audio"

FireWire, more than enough for to meet your needs.
http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/firewave/index.php

"And enough power to upsample to HDTV resolution, encode to high-quality MPEG4 on-the-fly...this thing ain't scoring very well so far."

If the applications for encoding are Altivc aware? I don't see why it couldn't do exactly what you requested.

And with a faster harddrive -external firewire drive- and up the ram from a third party, you should be good. Now it's not going to preform like a dual CPU Mac but the PPC chip are very efficient. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? an inch taller and it still would beat every single ITX system in size, its that small.

Yeah but then you couldn't fit it into your car's stereo compartment.

http://www.spymac.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=148458

;) Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I didn't. I merely suggested that you were perhaps overblowing the complexity of building a computer. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? What does the branding matter? It goes in the same motherboard as a Sempron, and it's cheap. AMD just haven't decided to rebrand XP-M's as Semprons yet, big woop. Sempron is a rebrand of Athlon XP in the FIRST place. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? However, contrasting a BYO box with the minimac ignores on crucial fact: that BYO box doesn't, and won't ever run OS X.


I beg to differ with you! As I've been running Darwin version 6.62, "Jaguar", and also version 7.01, "Panther" for awhile now. Were you aware this has been available for some time? Hardware used is a Pentium III 500Mhz! Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? yeah! The Mini is going to end up in a lot of markets it was never intended for!

Take a look at the freescale website. It seems that G4s at 1.5GHZ on 667MHZ MPX bus are coming out along with dual processors on a single core. I don't see these going into Minis but maybe PowerBooks. Now that I think of it Apple really should have just popped a 1.4 or 1.5GHZ G4 in there and only ship one model.

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?nodeId=018rH3... Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? What's the SNR on that thing? Does it decode DTS-ES? What DAC does it use? Does it resample?

Do you get an idea what I mean when I say 'hi-fi quality audio' yet? Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? eh...Darwin is not all of MacOSX. I'm sure the user experience of MacOSX and Darwin are quite different.

Otherwise where can I buy MacOSX for X86? Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? im gona get one this summer to replace my car stero.

ofcourse its more expensive than those machines that most put togheter in this thread.

but its also smaller small things cost more.

yes laptop drives are slower and smaller than normal 3.5"
but then they are smaller quiter and can handle more force.
they are also more expensive than a 3.5" drive

i have seen some pcs that are as small as the mac mini and even smaller machines but they did cost more and often similar or worse performance cus small machines need cpus wich draws litle power.

peformance well this is not a game system. if you need more power then you do not need a mac mini get over it and quit bitching.

my papper reports dosent take any longer time to write on a 500mhz system than on a 3ghz system.

i cant say that i did notice the speed diffrence when i did school work in matlab and such either. Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? the mac-mini must be pricier in the UK than is the case in the States:

Mac-mini -
1.25GHz PowerPC G4
256MB of PC2700 (333MHz) DDR SRAM
ATI Radeon 9200 with 32MB of DDR SDRAM with AGP 4X support
40GB Ultra ATA1
Slot-loading Combo Drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW)
Total ÂŁ339.00

or you could have -
Shuttle SN45G V2.0 AMD AMD Socket A, LAN, USB2, 1394, RAID, 6ch. Audio ÂŁ113.75 ÂŁ133.66
AMD Sempron 2500+ (Socket A) (1.750ghz) CPU Retail inc Heat Sink Fan & 3 Years Warranty ÂŁ41.25 ÂŁ48.47
2 x 256Mb PC2700 (PC333) DDR Memory (Major) Retail ÂŁ16.75 ÂŁ39.36
AOpen Beige/Black/Silver Chameleon 52x CD-RW + 16x DVD-ROM Retail +Software+Media ÂŁ19.39 ÂŁ22.78
80Gb Western Digital ATA-100 (7200rpm,2MB,8.9ms) - PATA ÂŁ31.29 ÂŁ36.77
128Mb ABIT Siluro GeForce 4 x8 AGP Ti4200-OTES (D-Sub, DVI, TV Out)
Net Total ÂŁ288.18 - Carriage ÂŁ10.00 - V.A.T. ÂŁ52.18 - TOTAL ÂŁ350.36

yes, my suggestion costs ÂŁ11.36 more, and doesn't come with an OS, but lets compare a little more closely:
CPU = much of a muchness, neither is blazingly fast.
Mem = mine has twice as much
CDR/DVD = the same
Hardrive = mine is twice the size
Video = mine - faster GPU + 4x memory + faster AGP
OS = OSX is pretty good, but then so are a whole number of free Linux OS's.
Sexyness = Apple may win this one, but not by much. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "I didn't. I merely suggested that you were perhaps overblowing the complexity of building a computer."

Come on, of course, you did. No one recommends a Mac mini to people sophisticated enough to build their own machine, and no one buying a sub-$500 PC knows how to build one.

Whether or not you meant to suggest it, by arguing that you could do so by stopping off at the corner store, build it in a half hour, and for less than $50, meant that this scenario is worth considering in the comparison.

Personally, I think most would dismiss this as an unrealistic scenario, and most would probably agree with me that if you want to compare a Mac mini with a home built machine, you'd better factor in training/researching, more time than 3 hours, additional time and money for component hunting and acquiring, etc...

Of course, I also find that usually when somebody says they can build a sub-$500 computer in less than an hour for nothing but component costs... these are the same people who whine about the mouse and keyboard not being included, even though these are exactly the people with a stack of 20 of them next to their bed...

Anyway, no, I don't think I'm overblowing it. I think you are WAY OVERestimating the number of people who do know what they are doing, who do it (even though Dell and others are providing better machines with warranties at almost the same cost), and who do so without valuing their own time. This number is much smaller than you think. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? http://www.offtopic4.com/uploads/post-52-1106175925.jpg
yes the Mac-mini Ultra is ÂŁ398 too, and i haven't included the ÂŁ35.00 price of a DVD-R, but that loaded with the free version of SUSE 9.2 is match for the mac-mini in most ways. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? and wanted a make a killing in the mediaPC arena in the next few months i would sell a small form factor box with:
> s754 nForce4 SFF
> A64 2800+
> 512MB DDR400
> 80GB SATA drive
> nVidia 6200 128MB
> DVD-R
> TV-card
> preload Ubuntu Hoary with 40GB + 40GB unallocated space
it could be sold for just ÂŁ450

it would hit all the buzz-points:
> SFF media PC stylee
> 64bit
> fast DDR memory
> SATA
> PCI-E
> DX 9.0c
> nVidia system (reliable in windows and linux)
> media capable
it would make a mockery of the mac-mini and cheap dell boxes!

what do you think? Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Here is a movie on how to open your Ipod Mini so you can upgrade the memory. Looks very easy.

http://www.smashsworld.com/2005/01/taking-apart-mac-mini-how-to.php Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? These "I can build a PC for a dollar" arguements are really tired and boring. I like the part where you say Linux and MacOSX are functional equivalents. Thats a good one.

How will you factor in iPhoto 5? Gimp?

iMovieHD,iDVD, GarageBand, iTunes? Supported product by a single manufacturer?

How can you compare two systems if one doesn't come with an OS? Its like comparing cars but yours is supposedly better but it has no body?!? Whatever. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Just another Mac-maven trying to pass himself off as objective .... its getting tiresome really - you cool-aid drinking freaks never cease to amaze me.

By the way the mac-mini will be a hit with (you guessed it) the Mac lemmings ... the rest of tghe world really will not care. There is no! - repeat NO! halo effect from the (so far) succesful iPod. Bottomline is Apple's desktop business is a goner ... wall street knows this and so does everyone outside Jobs' reality distortion field.

Put a sock in it fella ... you are too obvious Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? but i wouldn't buy one.

whoever does want one, fair enough, you have a good deal, but it will be a very shakey proposition technology wise in about 10 weeks time. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? celeron? sdram? 9200 se? come on... Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? the low price dells would probably be better. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I have both a 600 Mhz iBook and a Dual 1.8 GHz G5. Even though the G5 is the only one of the two computers I want to edit video on, I primarily use the iBook.

Why? Because it's just more comfortable to sit in the recliner and browse the internet, read mail, or work on web site development, than it is to sit at the computer desk and do the same.

Yes, the G5 is snappier because of the extra processor and the Quartz Extreme in effect, but the iBook is by no means sluggish or even noticeably slow in any way. People who say the OS X is slow are really reaching.

The Mac mini is certain to have better performance than my iBook, and I'm certain most everyone will be completely satisfied with it. I could see upgrading the memory to 512 MB, but my iBook only has 384 MB and is fine. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Sorry, you're positing a false opposition. If you bothered to do any research you'd have noticed that I've already expressly posted in two Mac Mini threads here that, in my opinion, the Mac Mini isn't competing with BYI PCs. I just happen to like correcting other people's factual mistakes. Please don't try and abuse my corrections by blowing them up into being statements I never made. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? This is great, I just finished reading 120something posts about the mini and realised that after more than a week of hub-ub, the mac has returned to the general parlace of the pc world. Macs matter. This is awesome, it's a cool new era, linux matters too. The whole balance shifted with this one product. Windows is still king and despot-at-large dujour, but for the first time in how many years, there is real, 3 way competition among platforms. And two of them are cheap, secure and *NIX; which is what runs everything that actually matters in the world. Let the games begin! Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Sorry, you're positing a false opposition. If you bothered to do any research you'd have noticed that I've already expressly posted in two Mac Mini threads here that, in my opinion, the Mac Mini isn't competing with BYI PCs."

If you'd bother to embrace reality, you would not expect someone to read and reference multiple posts over multiple days.

"I just happen to like correcting other people's factual mistakes. Please don't try and abuse my corrections by blowing them up into being statements I never made."

No mistake was made. I never said that people cannot build a computer quickly and cheaply. I said they still ignore whatever effort is required, and that for the target market, this isn't an option. So what did you correct?

In other words, you created a tangential argument that is not about qualifying a factual error, but rather becomes conducive to some ignorant and poorly framed arguments.

Whether or not you intended that... Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? How long have you been reading OSNews? Every time anything at all is posted about a Mac you get at least 150 comments like this. Nothing changed in this part o' the world. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 01:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>How long have you been reading OSNews? Every time anything at all is posted about a Mac you get at least 150 comments like this. Nothing changed in this part o' the world.

You are right. The difference here I guess, is that it has changed a bit. Before it was Mac Fans against the world. Now I see PC people who never have tried Mac talking about it, and wanting to try one. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 01:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I mean seriously.
The Mac Mini competes with the Mini-ITX boxes that are out there and they are not all that cheap.

No it's not a Doom3 Box, but neither is many of these mini PCs. Also you have a G5 or XBOX for that

This is a decent and rather stylish box for people who don't build l33t boxes. Plus it is so tiny.

I think the Linux/Window folk are seriously freaking

I bet these take off in Japan. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 01:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I think alot of folks missed the point here. I was putting hardware vs. hardware but if you read a little deeper I heap a lot of praise on OS X as an OS and Apple's software in general. True, I haven't used the mini but I hope to soon. the build-your-own comparison is strictly to stay away from the usual comparisons to Dell, HP and other name brand machines. I hope for the mini's sucess as a low cost alternative to the economy market.

BTW, as Usario Clave pointed out about the "omni-platform" thing, I have used Amiga, DOS, BeOS, BSD, OS-2 Warp and a few other UNIX flavors as the job calls for it. I love playing with different OSes.

Also, thanks for all the comments. THis is my first submission and hopefully, after the ego bruises go away, not my last. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 01:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The author seems to know nothing about PC hardware. His comparison PC had 4x VGA RAM, the hardrive is far faster, the 2.6 Celeron is at 2x performance of the 1.25GHz G4. In fact the author could have built a a much faster PC for his budget.

The point is with the Mac is that once you spec it to a decent level it is much more expensive.

You can add on firewire drives, USB microphones etc to a mini Mac. What is the point of having a small form factor if you have wires and components everywhere?

If you want a small form factor PC you may as well buy an inexpensive notebook. For the price of a mini Mac with a 15" TFT, a keyboard and mouse you can get a much faster, truly portable brand name 15" notebook. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 01:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>If you want a small form factor PC you may as well buy an inexpensive notebook. For the price of a mini Mac with a 15" TFT, a keyboard and mouse you can get a much faster, truly portable brand name 15" notebook.

That is not the point. We all know what a laptop cost. It is not that. What do u think that everybody here is stupid. Is about the oportunity for those who want to try Apple and OS X, period. If you want a laptop go ahead. I am not planning to put my laptop as my HTPC or my car PC. We all know that. Even my grandma knows that. So please, if you gonna make a comment say something we dont know. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 01:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? In the end, what people have to consider is they are paying for the software as well. there's $300+ worth of software here people and a box to play it on. I don't think you would find your bargin basement PC coming with this much software, and software that actually works as well...

This exercise is all about getting the doubters to try the Mac and then if they are impressed go out and buy a "Real" machine ie iMac or G5 Tower. I think Apple are on the right track here, the only other thing they could try and do is actually port MacOS X on to a i386 processor and let people use their awesome OS that way. But any way I guess that's all just a dream ;-) Thu, 20 Jan 2005 01:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The first wave of Mini's are shipping....... Thu, 20 Jan 2005 02:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Check out http://systemshootouts.org for a head to head comparison of $600 desktops. Apple Mini vs. Shuttle XPC G4300h or Apple Mini vs. Dell Dimension 2400. This is the market the Mini plays in, nit the BYO. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 02:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Notice I posted the bundled software with HP box. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 02:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Replace that Dell box with a HP box (e.g SR1000Z). Thu, 20 Jan 2005 02:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The introduction of the Mac mini is a bold statement from Apple. I can honestly say that it is a welcome move in the field of general purpose/home computing.

I've been using computers since I was four. My first computer was a Commodore 64 in 1982. It's been a long ride, and I've used countless hardware and software systems. AmigaOS, BEos, OS/2, FreeBSD, Linux'es far too numerous to bother counting. Windows "experince" was a given, as it's become prevelant. From Commodores, Amigas, Compaqs, and hewlett Packards....so much silicon over the years, most of it X86.

I once said that I wanted PowerPC without handing Steve Jobs a wad of cash. It's been a long time since I've been really excited about hardware. Mac mini, and new PowerPC systems running AmigaOS 4.0..... excitement within the computing world seems to finally be returning.

I've been building systems since 1997, but I might just make an exception for the Mac mini. I've been lusting over PPC970 silicon.....but at $599.00 I can settle for MPC7447. FreeBSD needs some kernel devs for PPC support...... looks like I just found a project for my spare time and money.

Just on the off chance that the man visits this forum...

Thanks, Steve. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 02:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? not upgradeable (as far a hardware goes)

i like a nice big tower with room for extra harddrives -RAID, CD/DVD drives & extra PCI card slots... Thu, 20 Jan 2005 03:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I don't want $300 worth of software I have no intention of ever using, and neither does my grandmother. It's not a selling point. And since it costs Apple $0 to load it onto the Mini, they won't sell me the Mini for less without it.

So when people compare the efficiency of the purchase based upon the nontrivial performance disparity per dollar, you can assume that the value of your $300 software is probably rather low to them and they couldn't care less that it's there. They want a basic, affordable Mac experience, and that does not necessarily have anything to do with audio or video editing to them. If they decide they want that later, then they would presumably purchase the software either from Apple or its competitors, or find free alternatives. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 03:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Well, obviously this computer isn't for you then.

But it is for people who use their computers for personal enjoyment(pics, music, etc).

I love it when posters slam a product because it doesn't fit their needs. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 03:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The must be some interest it this product. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 03:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I don't me to be rude, but are you illiterate? The point is that an argument that it comes with $n worth of software that someone does not want, does not mean anything to the person that doesn't value the software in question. Notice that "personal enjoyment" as you enumerated it does not consist of editing video or audio, it consists of looking at images and listening to music.

Maybe Apple should bundle their Mac Mini with AutoCAD and increase the price, since I'm sure many elderly old women will find it most valuable to them, and if they don't find its purchase cost important to the value of their computer, then they just don't "get it." -drool- Thu, 20 Jan 2005 03:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Against http://systemshootouts.org

Example 1

...............: Apple | Dell
--------------------------------------------------------
Zero-Config : Rendezvous | Universal PnP
Networking : (system-wide) | (must be enabled)
--------------------------------------------------------
File Encryption: FileVault encrypt. | WinXP's EFS**
--------------------------------------------------------

**Windows XP Encrypting File System (EFS)

Reference
1. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307877/EN-US/

Mr Charles Gaba needs to do more research. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 03:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Illiterate?
Your second sentence blows away -that- attempt at snarkiness.

pics ,music = garage band, imovie, iphoto = enjoyment to some folks,but apparently not to you. Enjoyment = value. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 04:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Against http://systemshootouts.org

Example 2

E-Mail/Address Book:
Apple's "OS X Mail/Address Book"

Dell's
1. "Outlook Express 6 SP2" (links to WinXP "Address book")
WinXP's "Address Book"(1) (inside Accessories folder)

Mr Charles Gaba needs to do more research. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 04:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Against http://systemshootouts.org's
Apple Mac-Mini vs Dell 2400 @$600 Desktop.

HP's bundled "Intuit Quicken New User's Edition 2005" is technically superior to "Quicken 2005 for Mac".

Reference
http://accountant.intuit.com/products_services/quickbooks_pro_mac/n... Thu, 20 Jan 2005 04:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? So U don't intend using the MacOS which is good part of the software cost...

Or the music software or the photo organisational software, etc etc...

Think U missed the point here mate, the box the system runs on is only part of the purchase price. If you can find software included for the price as good a quality as what's include with the Mac then go for it, but alas I think you will propably be disappointed. So all one can say is, good luck in your continued use of the Windows experience, with all it's bugs, security flaws and virus's... ;-) Thu, 20 Jan 2005 04:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >That's nice, I said Sempron
Which Sempr0n i.e. K7 Athlon XP renamed or K8 Paris?

IF Sempron 3100+(Paris)@1Ghz (via PowerNow) it consumes 20Watts. Doing office applications or displaying HDTV (with TwinHan DTV) the PowerNow stays at ~800Mhz. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 04:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "HP's bundled "Intuit Quicken New User's Edition 2005" is technically superior to "Quicken 2005 for Mac".

Reference
http://accountant.intuit.com/products_services/quickbooks_pro_mac/n.....
"

Where in the reference is the PC version of Quicken compared to the Mac version? In the chart all of the softwares are Mac versions. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 04:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Google +security flaws +virus +"Mac OS X". Thu, 20 Jan 2005 04:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? There are 10 reasons to buy the mac mini:

1. Size
2. OS X

That's it. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 04:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? What ya trying to get @ mate...


Nothing... Thu, 20 Jan 2005 04:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? HP specifies "Intuit Quicken New User's Edition 2005" Thu, 20 Jan 2005 04:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? He picks one crappy bundle and compares it to the mini-Mac and tries to make a definitive article. In college English we called this the "straw-man" attack. You know what? I can do that too.

512MB DDR333 SDRAM - 1 DIMM
• 80GB Ultra ATA drive
• Combo Drive
• Wired Keyboard & Mouse Set - U.S. English
• 56K v.92 Modem
• Mac OS X - U.S. English
• 1.42GHz PowerPC G4
• ATI 9200 Display Card
Grand Total-$732

HP A800N From Fry's
512MB DDR333 SDRAM - 1 DIMM
160GB UDMA Hdd
1 DVD Drive
1 CD Burner
Wired Keyboard+Mouse
56K Modem
Win XP Home
9-in-1 memory card reader
AMD Athlon 3200+
Unichrome shared memory integrated display card.
Grand Total-$549 After $50 mail-in-rebate

Don't like integrated display? Drop in $99 for ATI 9600. It's still massively less for double the hard drive and 1/3 faster CPU. Not to mention the display card will be massively better and you get a 9 function memory card reader. Oh, did I mention the hdd was faster too? Thu, 20 Jan 2005 04:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The Ram is a great truck because I drove my girlfriend's Viper for a week, it uses the same V10 engine. Perhaps if the Ram had a better transmission, tires, and paint job I would enjoy it more. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 04:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Refer to http://news.earthweb.com/bus-news/article.php/714261 Thu, 20 Jan 2005 04:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "What ya trying to get @ mate..."

Are you implying MacOS X doesn't suffer from bugs and security flaws? Thu, 20 Jan 2005 05:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>The Ram is a great truck because I drove my girlfriend's Viper for a week, it uses the same V10 engine. Perhaps if the Ram had a better transmission, tires, and paint job I would enjoy it more.

LOL. Great comment. There is not more to say. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 05:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? We can also cherry pick other software titles that are better on the Mac like iPhoto. I can see the equivalent to this on the PC side as Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0. Either was I still don't really buy the rationale that Apple's market for the Mini are DIY types and people looking to buy PCs.

As I have said all along the Mini is aimed at people wanting to buy a Mac so I don't see why their are so many PC funboys out here trying to convince people wanting to buy the Mini to build their own PC. It makes no sense at all.

There have been almost 1000 posts related to the Mini in a weeks time here on OSNews with a majority of them positive and their are handfuls of insurgents, the same ones that keeping saying, "Don't buy the Mini! Build your own and steal a corporate version of XP or load Linux, its the same as MacOSX!" or another version is, "buy a Dell, its got 2 memory slots with a 512MB ceiling and uses shared memory and its great" It also comes in that sexy dark purple putty sexy minitower. People look at it and can't tell what it is!!!

I like it when the insurgents say, "Oh yeah I can put it together in an hour and also install XP with SP2 and the 20 security updates. How come no one factors in antivirus malware and adaware softwares on these PCs. Its like jumping out a plane without a chute.

Have fun with your PCs. No one is buying your DIY story of how you built a PC with a dollar . I'm not impressed by how much of cheapskate you insurgents are. Its like, yeah I bought a Kia and your Nissan sux! Thu, 20 Jan 2005 05:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? MacMini is built by Foxconn (refer to Leadtek). Thu, 20 Jan 2005 06:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Brian nice article, I was waiting for someone to do the same thing. All the points were good ones. Two things that piss me off that Apple does is scimp on RAM and put several generations old video chipsets on there. I'm pleased to see that the bus speed is 333MHZ, but compared to stipped down Intel running at 800MHZ, wouldnt it be best to just buy a ibook instead? I think hardware wise if Apple fixes those three points we would have more of a winner. Another thing is we should stop comparing games with PC and Mac. Mac is not a gaming platform, its a business machine. An excellent place to do photoshop and editing videos, surfing etc. Mini could be an excellent media center.(If you have a left over monitor, it beats buying an imac just to watch movies) Finally, most people dont buy a Mac for its hardware. People buy a Mac for its style and its OS and software. To me nothing beats Mac OS X, but of course its only my opinion. I own a Powerbook G4 and someone would have to pry it from my cold dead hands for me to give it up. I use my Desktop Linux and my Mac for the important stuff and use Windows for games. Comparing a PC and Mac is really a done subject anyway. They are nothing alike and one always does one thing better than another. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 06:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? mac mini has 9200, not 9200se... Thu, 20 Jan 2005 06:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Where is this guy getting his PC parts?? Try Newegg! They're a lot cheaper than that!

And a 128mb video card in a budget system?? It sounds like this little comparision was "fixed". But that's just my opinion.

Also, why on Earth would a build it yourself computer person like us pick a Celeron? You can get an AMD Sempron for a lot less than that, and it'll perform better! Semprons are nothing but re-labeled Athlon XP's.

I don't think it's a fair comparision. Not in the least!

And I actually like the Mac mini and think it's a good value! Even though I like the Mac mini, that doesn't mean I've lost all perspective when it comes to comparing it to other systems.

Heck, in my blog I wrote about how the Mac mini has similar specs to the 12 inch PB! So for a Mac, it's a great value! Thu, 20 Jan 2005 06:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The price stated is still too low in this comparison.

Purchasing a similar system at 6"X6"X2" with 1.42 Ghz CPU + 256 MByte Ram + 40 GB Harddisk + CDRW/DVD combo + ATI 9200 is not possible with a PC @ a price of $499 yet unless someone can show me. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 07:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Look here, there is a fair comparison, and i think good explanation on how to compare fairly.

http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2005/01/miniapplesandorange... Thu, 20 Jan 2005 07:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? All these 'mac mini not powerfull enough' proponents are missing the point. I'll buy one because, even though I have 3 computers, I need to replace an aging P3/500 machine with a better one for my kids to use that WONT be infected by all matter of spyware quickly. They do photos/music/email/web browsing which for $800AU this will do magnificently, and it'll Just Work as well. I work fulltime, have 5 kids as a single parent and don't have spare time to fiddle with PC's that much anymore.
The mac mini is ideal and Apple will sell plenty, even before they bring out the upgraded mac mini II that I for one can see coming a mile off. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 08:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? these comparisons had better be SFF boxes, because they ain't relevant if they're not. and preferably sexy (shuttle stylee) ones at that, because this the market Apple is chasing.

so your HP/Dell midi/mini towers are worthless here. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 08:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Actually MAC Mini should be consider as Car PC / Embedded PC class. So, Shuttle is still way too huge in comparisons, try half length of the smallest mini-itx please. None of those has the price of $499 with the same capability. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 09:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Base Shuttle L5600H is only $499.

You get:
Celeron 2.4Ghz CPU (400Mhz FSB)
256MB PC3200 Ram
80GB 7200RPM hdd.
52X CD-RW
Logitech Keyboard and Mouse

Basically, you swap the mini's ATI 9200 for faster CPU, FSB, hdd, and ram. Plus 2X the hdd space. And you get keyboard and mouse.

I would add $16 for DVD and $44 for 512MB ram and you have a better performing system (hardware-wise) for $60 more.

Let's just face it, anyway you cut it, you're not gonna match price/hardware performance in the comparison between PC and Mac. Mac doesn't have high enough volume for economy of scale right now.

The selling point for Macs right now is the software coupled with the hardware which creates a holistic user experience.

All these lame articles trying to defend min-Mac hardware specs. are just delusional. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 09:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Note that Mac-Mini is an entry point for MacOS X based PC i.e. refer to Apple's "it's the cheapest Mac ever" remark. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 09:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "She wanted a Mac mini and I told her I could build her a better PC myself. Now when I ask for sex, she hands me the baby oil and tells me to do it myself. My name is Wayne Kerr and I wish I was a Switcher." Thu, 20 Jan 2005 09:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I am sick of hearing all this "factoring in time cost of my time". This only applies if you are paying someone else to do the work.

So you spend an hour a month tuning your PC. How much does it cost you - zero, zilch,nada. That hour is one hour less you spend watching TV, washing your car or sleeping.

Feminists used to argue that a housewife was worth $150,000+ a year to her husband by saying that everything she did from washing the dishes ($10/hr) to having sex ($300/hr) had a monetary value. The reality is that when you actually pay a professional to do housework (or have sex!) it takes them very little time at all. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 09:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The main selling point of the Mac Mini is that it is a very stylish and affordable device that can run OSX. So it is perfect for people who always wanted to try a Mac but just could not justify the price. It is also an excellent recommendation for people who just want to use a computer and dont want to worry about maintenance.

On a side note I keep hearing that OSX is a so much better user experience than WinXP or Linux. I cant agree with that. Every system has its advantages and disadvantages but it is just laughable that OSX is considered by some as the perfect OS. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 10:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? ...you forgot the $130 annual "upgrade" fee...

Bottom line: it's the ibook in an a non-notebook form, zero upgrade possibility. The cube was a FAR better mini. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 10:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? what? Nobody FORCES you to buy the new versions of os x when they are released. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Of course OS News never misses a chance to be negative to the Mac with unrealistic user reviews. Remember the awful iBook review?

The one where the reviewer was annoyed because he had to give it back?
Er, that'll be me and I got a PowerBook shortly thereafter. I complained about a lot of *little* annoyances in the review but as far as I'm aware almost all of them have been subsequentlyfixed.

Bottom line: it's the ibook in an a non-notebook form, zero upgrade possibility.

I don't think people in this price range are that worried about upgaradeability and people seem to upgrade entire systems so it doesn't matter anyway. In any case this only affects the CPU and graphics, you can add better HD /DVD-RW via wirewire or USB.

I would add $16 for DVD and $44 for 512MB ram and you have a better performing system (hardware-wise) for $60 more.

I'd like to see some (extensive) benchmarks comparing the G4 and Celeron, I doubt they're really that much ahead - if that is, they are are ahead.

In any case the difference between PCs and Macs price / performance wise is now so small as to be insignificant. The big difference is now in the case, OS and apps. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? yeah then you add a quiet power supply and it aint that cheap
no more.

after that you take a sledge hammer to make it smaller like the mac mini and after that is busted.

its ben mentiond a 1000 times making stuff small and quiet cost money and a shuttle isnt in the same leauge. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The Mac vs homebuilt has been beaten to death.

Since many have suggested, that the mini is a desktop, built with laptop components, what would it take, to plug this thing into a battery pack, or a car battery, and go remote, like you would with a laptop.

I don't know that much about power requirements and such, but what would be required, and could it be done? Thu, 20 Jan 2005 13:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The quiet PS comes by default these days.

"its ben mentiond a 1000 times making stuff small and quiet cost money and a shuttle isnt in the same leauge."

That's not entirely true. I bet Apple saved some money by miniaturizing it. By throwing in an old CPU, they left out the cost of a cooling system. The Shuttle system has a fancy expensive heatpipe cooling system. The tiny plastic case is probably cheaper than the Shuttle aluminum case too. Not to mention there's no expansion slots so they saved the money on the connectors. And by soldering the CPU directly to the motherboard, they saved the cost of the expensive CPU socket. A 2.5" 4200RPM 40GB hdd is priced at $69.10. A faster 7200RPM 3.5" 80GB hdd is $50. (http://froogle.google.com on 1/20/05 at 5:30A) They also saved the cost of legacy connectors (PS/2, Serial, Parallel, etc.). Not to mention they saved money on the RAM slots. The only expensive part that they have in the mac-Mini is the slot-loading DVD/CD-RW drive which is priced at $72 at Newegg. The same drive in 5.25" HH is only $50. A laptop power brick is what $20. That's massively cheaper than the Power Supply the shuttle comes with. (Less parts too.)

So if you look at all the parts the mini is missing compared to the Shuttle, it should be much cheaper than the Shuttle. But it isn't because there's not as many minis being produced compared to Shuttles right now.

But if you guys keep buying it, then the price will be able to lower. So Mac fans, go out and buy 4 or 5 of them so the price will fall in line with PC hardware. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 13:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Since many have suggested, that the mini is a desktop, built with laptop components, what would it take, to plug this thing into a battery pack, or a car battery, and go remote, like you would with a laptop.

I don't know that much about power requirements and such, but what would be required, and could it be done?"

A $20 inverter will do what you want to do with a car battery. Turns 12 Volts DV into 100VAC.

Why would you want to? After you add in the cost of a low-power LCD monitor, you're going to almost reach the price of an iBook. $499+$300=~$800. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 13:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I see that "Hammer" has taken my comparisons ( http://www.systemshootouts.org/ ) to task for not including XP versions of several fields (file encryption/zero-config networking/etc.). I will certainly "do more research" on these and will modify the charts as appropriate, but I *am* curious about why he/she didn't bother tipping me off directly on the site--either in the forums or via email. I *do* try to be as even-handed as possible (as much as an admittedly biased Mac user can be); these were honest mistakes (if true) and will be corrected, but I prefer it if people give suggestions to me directly.

As for the Quicken debate, I'm not sure that I see the problem here--the Mac mini includes Quicken 2005, while the Dell system--as configured--didn't include *any* personal finance software, and the Shuttle system--as configured--included MSFT Money. In the first case, the Mac got the "point" since Quicken 2005 trumps not having *any* finance software; in the second, neither one gets the point since Money roughly equals Quicken. Where's the issue? Thu, 20 Jan 2005 14:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? By Hagge wrote:

> the low price dells would probably be better.

I don't think so. The company I work for has bought quite a few of those "low priced Dells". Right out of the box, the damn things take forever to start up. I wouldn't buy a low priced Dell for home.

I am planning to try a Mac mini. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 15:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? i went to newegg and made a machine by myself. if i do not use a small form factor a stronger sempron machine with 60GB HDD is something like 350$. if i use a much faster (comparing to g4) Sempron socket 754 with a real shuttle barebone and 512MB memory, prices are almost same. however, there is no OS. if someone can use it with Linux, this machine is better than mac, but for an end user who is not capable of using linux, mac machine is the way to go. of course, this machine is not for developers or power users. CPU ,GPU and memory is pathetic. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 15:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >Base Shuttle L5600H is only $499.
You are forgetting a few small items:
Windows XP home edition - $99
Nero 6 Ultra Edition - $60
Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2005 - $40
Microsoft Money/Quicken - $30

Approximate prices totaling, that's $229+$499=$728, and that's what I call a totally different pricerange making any point you tried to make moot. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 15:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? So if you look at all the parts the mini is missing compared to the Shuttle, it should be much cheaper than the Shuttle. But it isn't because there's not as many minis being produced compared to Shuttles right now.

Uh, no...

In the first month of sales, more Mini's will be sold than the Shuttle has been produced in it's lifetime.

100,000 a month at minimum.

If Shuttle were selling 100,000 units a month... They'd be a MUCH bigger company.

In a year, more Mini's will have been sold than ALL Shuttle models put together.

I have a Celeron 1ghz Shuttle SV25, a nice little unit (Which I just bought, and am putting on eBay to fund my Mini). My friend has a P4 Based SS51G Shuttle, ALSO a nice unit.

But they are NOT Mac Minis.

And nothing sold on the market matches it. NOTHING.

Comparing it to VERY different systems, doesn't work.

At least not for me.

What's wrong with just saying: "The Mac Mini is a cool machine, and I think Apple is going to sell tons of them..."

Why compare it to anything or criticize it in ANY way?

We all know another model will be released in 6 months that will be better and faster any way... Thu, 20 Jan 2005 15:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? A teenage girl sees this and says "daddy I want that cute computer when I go to college!" and daddy folds and buys it for her to make his princess happy. or his wife says "honey let's get one of those, I don't like that big ugly box." Or it's me, saying "damn, how many of those do you think I could fit in a rack?" Your review was well thought out, but it is not the review of a member of the target buyer for the mac mini. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 15:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Never been a Mac head, but am considering purchasing one for a few reasons. I have a nice Athlon 3000+ Barton core here with 2 GB of RAM and 850 GB of HD spread around it. This thing is hot and loud. I mean LOUD. I'm using an MSI MEGA 180 cube case, which has a TON of multimedia abilities on it. Great machine. But the attraction comes in that the mini uses less juice, is more silent, and the OS includes the stuff I'd do in Windows XP and in Linux. It's combining 2 of the boxen I use into one silent machine. Looks aren't that important, but silence is golden. So is the electric bill. And if I can get it done in one OS without switching the KVM or moving to the other monitor, I'd be happy. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 15:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Are you implying MacOS X doesn't suffer from bugs and security flaws?

None that have cost it's users billions of $$$ and countless reinstalls. With windows it is not even security flaws, spyware is enough to get a unusable system pretty quick. I ran Ad-aware on a friend's XP box and the networking stopped working completely he had to reinstall everything.

I have reinstall most of my firends XP boxes on an yearly basis. Another friend is still running Mac OS X jaguar on a 700MHz iMac for three years, he has never called me for any virus or spyware related problem ever or for stability problems of any kind.

Most of my friends are PC illiterate BTW Thu, 20 Jan 2005 16:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Get a Dell 2.8 P4 with 17" LCD for $499 after rebate.

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/outrageous_d...

If I could get a Mac-mini with a 17" LCD for the same price then that would be a good deal. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 16:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I have reinstall most of my firends XP boxes on an yearly basis. Another friend is still running Mac OS X jaguar on a 700MHz iMac for three years, he has never called me for any virus or spyware related problem ever or for stability problems of any kind.

While I don't defend Windows (because I don't really like it), part of the reason for Mac's better security is the size of their installed base. If I were inclined to write a virus, I don't think I would go after 5% (if that) of the market. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 16:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The tiny plastic case is probably cheaper than the Shuttle aluminum case too.

You really should look at the mini becore making such comments. The has plastic top and bottom, the sides are brushed aluminum.

And by soldering the CPU directly to the motherboard, they saved the cost of the expensive CPU socket. A 2.5" 4200RPM 40GB hdd is priced at $69.10. A faster 7200RPM 3.5" 80GB hdd is $50. (http://froogle.google.com on 1/20/05 at 5:30A) They also saved the cost of legacy connectors (PS/2, Serial, Parallel, etc.). Not to mention they saved money on the RAM slots. The only expensive part that they have in the mac-Mini is the slot-loading DVD/CD-RW drive which is priced at $72 at Newegg. The same drive in 5.25" HH is only $50. A laptop power brick is what $20. That's massively cheaper than the Power Supply the shuttle comes with. (Less parts too.)


All of that is meaningless. The shuttle uses a standard board. The Mac Mini uses a custom board which is dual sided(components on both side) which means double the layers on the PCB of a standard Mac board. PC boards are usually 4 layer boards, very cheap to manufature.

With the Mac Mini you would need more layers to get components on both sides. Also anything customer costs a lot more even with less components on the boards due to volume projections.

Shuttle uses standard mini-itx boards that many manufacturers produces. So the costs for shuttle acquire boards would be significantly lower than the cost of apple to produce thier boards. Becuase they have to get a factory to build a board just for them. Where as VIA, ASUS or whoever can contract thier board production to a single vendor and get cheaper rates per board than Apple. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 16:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I was mistaken Shuttle doesn't use Mini-itx boards. But the jist of the post still remains. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 16:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Shuttle uses standard mini-itx boards that many manufacturers produces. So the costs for shuttle acquire boards would be significantly lower than the cost of apple to produce thier boards. Becuase they have to get a factory to build a board just for them. Where as VIA, ASUS or whoever can contract thier board production to a single vendor and get cheaper rates per board than Apple.

Scratch this paragraph, I was mistaken. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 16:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I should have said Micro-ATX. Which many manufacturers including shuttle make. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 16:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? While I don't defend Windows (because I don't really like it), part of the reason for Mac's better security is the size of their installed base. If I were inclined to write a virus, I don't think I would go after 5% (if that) of the market.

If I remember correctly, Linux was a very popular target for malware authors back when it was only version 1.something - even though back then it had hardly any market share.

And your point was? Thu, 20 Jan 2005 17:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'm sure you won't be playing the latest 3d titles on the mini such as ut2004/doomIII, but I belive that q3, and enemy territory will run fine with decent settings (ditto for warcraft 3), so give the machine a little bit of credit. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 18:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "We all know another model will be released in 6 months that will be better and faster any way... "

Is that why it has been a year since the eMac had a refresh?
How long has it been since the dual 2.5ghz G5 had a refresh...over 6 months.

Apple is notorious for keeping outdated machines way beyond a reasonable amount of time.

A year ago on sale you could get an Emachine for $349 or $379 with a cd drive, 256mb ram, 32mb shared video memory, a 2.2ghz or so celeron, 30 or 40gb hard drive, no card reader etc.

but now today you can get for less money ($329)

http://weeklyad.circuitcity.com/circuitcity/default.aspx?action=bro...

celeron d at 2.93ghz with a much faster bus at 533mhz
512mb memory (faster too)
64mb shared video
much faster cd burner
plus a dvd drive
double the hard drive size to 80gb
a card reader, etc.

Compare that to someone who has been waiting to get a budget eMac and is now at years wait to see a refresh. When, and if, Apple does a refresh on the eMac, will it cost less as well?

I'll be willing to bet that 6 months from now the Mac Mini is still the same machine, but on the PC side you will yet again be able to get more for less in the budget category in June 2005.

All this is not to say the Mini is without value. It is cool looking. It is cheaper than any other Mac. But it is overpriced for the power you get. And since Apple doesn't sell machines for its users to be able to buy parts elsewhere, they hamstring your ability to upgrade by using these silly cases. But yes, a tiny little box will appeal to about 1/10th of 1% of the market. Most people could care less what a computer looks like. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 18:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Most people could care less what a computer looks like.

Sure about that? Most people didn't exactly have a choice so far. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 21:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? There are several perfectly capable free CD burning apps, I use one with some stupid name like Simple CD Burner XP Pro or something like that. It always takes me ten minutes to Google it cos I never remember the name, heh. Anyway, works perfectly (and besides, XP has built-in basic CD burning, too). No need to pay for Norton, which is a hideous resource hog anyway, Ad-Aware, Spybot and AVG are free and form a comprehensive anti-malware suite between themselves. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 22:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "All of that is meaningless. The shuttle uses a standard board."

No it doesn't. Shuttle custom design and build their own boards to fit the Shuttle boxes, they aren't a standard form factor (though the very new BTX form factor is similar, and Shuttle are building a box based on it). The other common small form factors are mini-ITX, which is smaller than a Shuttle board and couldn't accommodate the features of a Shuttle box, and microATX, which is bigger. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 22:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Please do your homework on the Mac Mini -- it has a substantially inferior hard drive -- only 4200RPM. And the affect on overall performance is devastating. Check out barefeats.com to see how it really doesn't compete well with the ancient and still lovable Mac Cube, upgraded. The truth is, Apple is trying to pull one over again -- this machine, while cute, is lame. The only think going for it is OSX and iLife, which comes bundled. Out of the box it's impressive software for the price, but for pure hardware performance, it is a complete joke. A standard Shuttle SFF PC for $100 less is far superior, only excepting the software. And you can upgrade the Shuttle to a real graphics card and play real games on it. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 23:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I think that you are establishing that your language skills were inadequately developed. The point is, again, that an argument that it comes with various pieces of software that have a hypothetical retail value of $300, is not compelling to the people that are repeatedly pointing out that the cost of the unit is not competitive for its performance. The bundled software in question is worth about $0 to them, because it invariably comes with the platform, it has no real resale value without selling the hardware with it, and it might as well be a machine license for AutoCAD.

There are a lot of people that have use for AutoCAD, too, but my grandmother is not one of them. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 23:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Please do your homework on the Mac Mini -- it has a substantially inferior hard drive -- only 4200RPM."

I don't know of a single person bragging about the speed of the HD.

"And the affect on overall performance is devastating. Check out barefeats.com to see how it really doesn't compete well with the ancient and still lovable Mac Cube, upgraded."

Did you even read what you wrote? The Cube has to be upgraded to compete with the Mini?

Here are some excerpts from the barefeats article that you didn't bother to read either,

" The Mac mini is a decent performer when compared to Macs with CPUs running at similar clock speeds. Its "Achilles heel" is the hard drive speed. If you don't have the maximum 1GB of memory, the constant hits in the virtual memory scratch area will slow it down considerably during real world use."

"To my surprise, the Mac mini beats the iMac G5/1.6 in the CPU and Thread tests. It will be interesting to see how that translates to real world performance when we are able to test the Mac mini fully."

"The upgraded Cube is not necessarily the equal of a Mini mac, even if their performance were a match."

"If cost is a factor in deciding between an upgraded 1.4GHz Cube with max memory versus a Mini mac 1.42GHz with max memory, here's a table to ponder...


From a cost standpoint, the Mac mini comes out ahead either way."

Trying reading the article and go back to doing your homework.

http://www.barefeats.com/mini01.html Thu, 20 Jan 2005 23:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "No need to pay for Norton, which is a hideous resource hog anyway, Ad-Aware, Spybot and AVG are free and form a comprehensive anti-malware suite between themselves."

http://www.my-etrust.com/microsoft for $50 firewall and av software free

http://download.zonelabs.com/bin/free/1012_zl/zlsSetup_55_062_004.e...

Where do you get the free firewall for Mac OS X that blocks outgoing traffic?

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=321cd7a2-6...

http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-SE-Personal-Edition/3000-8022_4-10...

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.html

Theres the security stuff all taken care of with ZERO cost. All of the apps receive top marks in reviews. Free and you get some of the best titles on the market. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 23:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? So what you are saying is that there are people buying the Mini that are not interested in running MacOSX? Thats sound dumb but OK. Thu, 20 Jan 2005 23:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "There are several perfectly capable free CD burning apps, I use one with some stupid name like Simple CD Burner XP Pro or something like that. It always takes me ten minutes to Google it cos I never remember the name, heh. Anyway, works perfectly (and besides, XP has built-in basic CD burning, too)."

XP burns cds and you can work with all the following (if you are building a machine you choose a drive that comes with Nero or Sonic):

http://www.burnatonce.com/ free

burnatonce can master data and audio discs, read/write image files and copy on the fly. It's drag and drop interface has multi-language support and is fully compatible with XP themes.

Multisession and bootable disc mastering is supported as well as long filename support using Joliet, Long Joliet and Rockridge. Extra long filename support is provided with the ISO9660:1999 and UDF filesystems.

Audio discs can be compiled from wav, mp3, mp2, ogg and flac files as standard while support for other audio formats can be added optionally. CD-Text can be written from the built in editor, imported from freedb, read from media tags or extracted from filenames. Pauses between tracks can also be set as silence, pregap or postgap of varying lengths.

general features

Cue, toc and iso image burning
Read to toc/dat or cue/bin image
Copy on the fly
Multi-language support
Support for Windows XP themes
Drag and drop disc mastering
Supports SPTI and ASPI Interface
Supports USB and Firewire under SPTI
Supports DVD writing with optional download.

data mastering features

Multisession recording
Bootable disc recording
ISO9660:1999, UDF, and Long Joliet
Create and Verify Checksum
Supports East Asian characters (CJK)

audio mastering features

Supports wav, mp3, mp2, ogg and flac files
Supports ID3v1.1, ID3v2, Vorbis and APE Tags
CD-Text from editor, freedb, tags, or filename
Set silence, pregap or postgap between tracks
Import audio cue/toc sheets Fri, 21 Jan 2005 00:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Where do you get the free firewall for Mac OS X that blocks outgoing traffic? "

Since MacOSX doesn't even need Ad-Aware, Spybot or AVG then why would we need to block outgoing traffic? You make it sound like its a plus to have an OS that needs all of that crap. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 00:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Since MacOSX doesn't even need Ad-Aware, Spybot or AVG then why would we need to block outgoing traffic? You make it sound like its a plus to have an OS that needs all of that crap."

Maybe because it's nice to know that I have full control of my machine and no software that is installed on my machine is sending data out without my permission. Do you like Adobe, Macromedia, Intuit, and dozens of other software vendors collecting data on you, your Mac, and your habits?

It's called privacy. But please don't answer questions with questions. Where is a free firewall for OS X that blocks outgoing traffic? Fri, 21 Jan 2005 00:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Hey I understand what you are saying but some of things that you talk about are not huge issues on the Mac side. There are few programs on the Mac side that do product activation and if you need a Firewall to monitor outgoing traffic then it is available for the Mac, is it free? Maybe not but whats wrong with paying for good software? I will buy Tiger when it comes out but on the PC side I do not know of a single PC tech that would pay for 2K or XP.

http://www.intego.com/netbarrier/home.asp
http://www.versiontracker.com/php/search.php?mode=basic&action=... Fri, 21 Jan 2005 00:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The inclusion of Nero 6 Ultra Edition was not primarily as a CD burning app it was a replacement for iLife, to get the photo/video/music capabilities. As you say it's not necessary since XP itself has CD burning capabilities, although limited. It was only to give an easy all in one solution, you can probably find free replacements for photo and music. But any decent video app, something like Pinnacle Studio 9 are likely to set you back $90 or more. Even with free AV software you have to cut back $150-200 on your system, and then you is not rely that hot anymore. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 00:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "There are few programs on the Mac side that do product activation and if you need a Firewall to monitor outgoing traffic then it is available for the Mac, is it free?"

Netbarrier is $69. I can get Zone Alarm personal for free and its a better product. ZA Pro can be had for $20 if you need full control. Your link to Version Tracker shows commercial, shareware, and beta software. Freeware versions in that list are not firewalls capable of blocking outgoing traffic as far as I can see.

"Maybe not but whats wrong with paying for good software?"

Nothing is wrong with buying software. If you can afford it. If there is no choice but to buy it. But if I can get a free product that is better, I think most people would choose that. So what you are saying is that you have to pay $69 on the Mac to get some privacy but on Windows I can have that functionality for free. Add $69 to the Mac Mini cost then please...if you care about your privacy that is.

"I will buy Tiger when it comes out but on the PC side I do not know of a single PC tech that would pay for 2K or XP."

Do you know no one but pirates then? Last time I saw some stats, Windows XP sold over 300 million copies. I bought XP and I'm a tech. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 00:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "The inclusion of Nero 6 Ultra Edition was not primarily as a CD burning app it was a replacement for iLife, to get the photo/video/music capabilities. As you say it's not necessary since XP itself has CD burning capabilities, although limited. It was only to give an easy all in one solution, you can probably find free replacements for photo and music. But any decent video app, something like Pinnacle Studio 9 are likely to set you back $90 or more. Even with free AV software you have to cut back $150-200 on your system, and then you is not rely that hot anymore."

XP includes Windows Movie Maker and Photostory 3. They compare with iMovie and iPhoto on many levels, but not completely. Not the new iMovie with HD, but then again there are probably less than 10k homeowners in the world that have HD video cameras.

If you want top notch photo and video editing software in a bundle you can get for as little as $80 at http://www.outpost.com/entry?site=op:mfe011405&sku=4185383

Two great Adobe products in one box . Photo and video editing software for the home
Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 plus Adobe Premiere Elements software combines two powerful, intuitive products in one affordable package so you can do more with your digital photos and video.

ps--add this to your cheap pc if you are after a more powerful video and photo editing option. and yeah, with this added to a $329 pc and its stock software bundle, whats ilife look like now?

ilife:
imovie
itunes
idvd
garageband
iphoto
quicktime

pc bundle:
itunes (free)
quicktime (free)
windows movie maker (free)
ms photostory 3 (free)
windows media player (free)
sony acid xpress 5 (free)
adobe photoshop elements 3.0
adobe premiere elements 1.0 (for both add $80 to inexpensive pc total)
nero or sonic dvd burning (free with near all cheap pcs or for self builder if they get a retail drive) (premiere also does dvds) Fri, 21 Jan 2005 00:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Netbarrier is $69. I can get Zone Alarm personal for free and its a better product. ZA Pro can be had for $20 if you need full control. Your link to Version Tracker shows commercial, shareware, and beta software. Freeware versions in that list are not firewalls capable of blocking outgoing traffic as far as I can see. "

Good enough, I don't know of any free firewall programs for the Mac. Have you personally used NetBarrier?

"Nothing is wrong with buying software. If you can afford it. If there is no choice but to buy it. But if I can get a free product that is better, I think most people would choose that. So what you are saying is that you have to pay $69 on the Mac to get some privacy but on Windows I can have that functionality for free. Add $69 to the Mac Mini cost then please...if you care about your privacy that is. "

If you care about privacy why are you on Windows? You have a world of hackers, spammers, viruses, malware targeting Windows and like you said you need all of those programs to keep your Windows box safe, maybe its a good thing they are free on the PC side. These are not issues in the Mac side so having to use all of these programs is actually a disadvantange when you compare the two systems. You can't possibly say that you feel safe on a default install of XP with none of these programs compared to a default install of MacOSX. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 00:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Are you intentionally not understanding? What I was suggesting is that people pointing out that there is a hypothetical retail value of $300 attached to video and music editing software that comes with the Mini, were engaging in mental masturbation with respect to those that were pointing out that the Mini is not competitive in terms of price/performance. They, like my grandmother, probably don't care about editing music, and so won't be swayed by "but it comes with $300 worth of software you aren't going to use!" as a rationale for the platform not being competitive in terms of performance for the price. They most likely want a basic, competitive, Mac platform that doesn't need to rationalize price disparity with software they have no use for. If they did not, they wouldn't care to begin with. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 01:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? ... but it did bring out the Nazi Apple Fanboys which is always fun to see.

Fred. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 01:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? pc bundle:
itunes (free) also on Mac
quicktime (free) also on Mac
windows movie maker (free) I would say that iMovie HD is better but I am biased
ms photostory 3 (free) I do not expect this to be great program
windows media player (free) also on Mac but not as good as PC, add VLC for Mac which is free
sony acid xpress 5 (free) no idea what this is
adobe photoshop elements 3.0 also on Mac, the only truly excellent program on the PC in this list
adobe premiere elements 1.0 (for both add $80 to inexpensive pc total) a 1.0 vs. iMoveHD?
nero or sonic dvd burning (free with near all cheap pcs or for self builder if they get a retail drive) (premiere also does dvds) native CD burning in the Finder DVDs too no need for apps, otherwise their is Toast and Popcorn Fri, 21 Jan 2005 01:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >added to a $329 pc
And ignoring the fact that this was about comparing to a $499 shutle? With your combo it's still an additional $179.

As for firewalling, the mac is built on a BSD core which include a firewall (ipfw), and I think you can Google how to set your level of paranoia. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 01:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Base Shuttle L5600H is only $499.
You are forgetting a few small items:
Windows XP home edition - $99
Nero 6 Ultra Edition - $60
Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2005 - $40
Microsoft Money/Quicken - $30

Approximate prices totaling, that's $229+$499=$728, and that's what I call a totally different pricerange making any point you tried to make moot."

It's not a barebones. Shuttle makes complete systems now. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 01:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Uh, no... "

Um, yes. I said "now." You're basing your numbers on speculation. You're pulling astronomical numbers out of your perverbial ass. If Mac Mini reaches your numbers then they can afford to lower the prices....not before. You can't get economy of scale from what you will sell. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 01:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? anon wrote: "The point is with the Mac is that once you spec it to a decent level it is much more expensive."

You are dead right about that. But I think it's very clever on Steve's part. At $499 it's at a price point where you can get a decent webcruiser with lots o' Mac OSX/iLife goodness. But start hitting the upgrades and the price difference between the Mac Mini and the eMac shrinks to nothing! This is totally on purpose and I would bet it was REQUIRED by Mr. Jobs before he would signoff on the product. He wouldn't dare cut into the bottom line of the higher end iMacs and PowerMacs. It's shrewd marketing plain and simple. He did the same thing with the iPod Mini... priced it just above the flashplayers, but just below the regular ipod. result: the new iPod mini didn't cut into the iPod's sales. instead it stole market share from the flashbasedmp3players. He's trying the same thing in the sub500 PC market. Mac's aren't about specs, they are about look and feel and image! Like the thing or not, you watch the market: this will be OUR generation's Commodore64. They are going to sell gobs of these things. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 01:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "With the Mac Mini you would need more layers to get components on both sides. Also anything customer costs a lot more even with less components on the boards due to volume projections. "

Just because you use two sides doesn't automatically mean you need more layers. It depends on how many traces you have to route. For example, I routinely have boards produced with two sides and guess what...just two layers.

"Shuttle uses standard mini-itx boards that many manufacturers produces. So the costs for shuttle acquire boards would be significantly lower than the cost of apple to produce thier boards. Becuase they have to get a factory to build a board just for them. Where as VIA, ASUS or whoever can contract thier board production to a single vendor and get cheaper rates per board than Apple. "

Manufacturers charge based on board area and tooling density. It would be cheaper to produce Apple boards. It really doesn't take much to adjust their assembly line to fit the product being made. Using the same form-factor board almost has no benefits in high numbers. The cost to alter tool configuration is massively less than the total cost the produce the boards. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 01:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Since MacOSX doesn't even need Ad-Aware, Spybot or AVG then why would we need to block outgoing traffic? You make it sound like its a plus to have an OS that needs all of that crap."

You're delusional if you think Mac OS X can't get Virii, Adware, and Spybots. There's not a single technical reason that it can't.

It's just not enough hackers care right now. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 01:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? No it doesn't. Shuttle custom design and build their own boards to fit the Shuttle boxes, they aren't a standard form factor (though the very new BTX form factor is similar, and Shuttle are building a box based on it). The other common small form factors are mini-ITX, which is smaller than a Shuttle board and couldn't accommodate the features of a Shuttle box, and microATX, which is bigger.

I am pretty sure the Shuttle board is a 4 layer board, as most PCs are. There is no chip on a standard PC board (Intel/AMD cpu, VIA, intel, nvidia chipsets) that requires more layers.

I admit I was mistaken about the XPC's using a Micro-ATX board. The SFF form factor boards are probably a lot cheaper to produce even with more components. The cost of connectors is lesser than the price of multi-layered boards.

Reducing the area of the board by reducing slots is not the same as making a Double sided board which the Mac Mini uses.

Double sided boards with the form factor of the Mac Mini requires denser routing and 4-layers just won'tcut it. More layers is more expensive, period. Most PCB manufacturers for PC motherboards make four layer boards which is comparatively inexpersive. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 01:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Good enough, I don't know of any free firewall programs for the Mac. Have you personally used NetBarrier?"

Yes, I have tried Netbarrier, though it has been awhile. I own a Mac and a PC.

"If you care about privacy why are you on Windows? You have a world of hackers, spammers, viruses, malware targeting Windows and like you said you need all of those programs to keep your Windows box safe, maybe its a good thing they are free on the PC side. These are not issues in the Mac side so having to use all of these programs is actually a disadvantange when you compare the two systems. You can't possibly say that you feel safe on a default install of XP with none of these programs compared to a default install of MacOSX."

I care about privacy and security on both my Mac and my PC. I take all necessary precautions for both and I have not had problems with either platform. There are issues on the Mac side. Macs are hacked, Macs have root kits, Macs have software that violates your privacy...I don't run default installs on either platform as I am reasonably well informed. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 02:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? ">added to a $329 pc
And ignoring the fact that this was about comparing to a $499 shutle? With your combo it's still an additional $179.

As for firewalling, the mac is built on a BSD core which include a firewall (ipfw), and I think you can Google how to set your level of paranoia."

See above where we are talking about $329 PCs. Post #194

http://weeklyad.circuitcity.com/circuitcity/default.aspx?action=bro...

ipfw is a powerful firewall. But I'd love for someone to show me a free, GUI based method of controlling it to have it alert me when something is trying to go off to my network or to the internet the way a decent desktop firewall works on Windows. Anyone know how to make ipfw act like Little Snitch (a great app but not free $25 http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/ ). Fri, 21 Jan 2005 02:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Just because you use two sides doesn't automatically mean you need more layers. It depends on how many traces you have to route. For example, I routinely have boards produced with two sides and guess what...just two layers.


BS. I am not talking about school projects here.

What is the pin count of the biggest part on your two sided board? Do you have anything as complex as a Radeon 9200 and a PowerPC chip on the PCB? What about an Agere northbridge? Didn't think so.

The point is a the Mac Mini board is a lot more denser, it is smaller than a Mini-ITX board by some estimates.

The standard Radeon PCI boards are 4-Layers, unless ATI likes wasting money, they should use your PCB routing technology. LOL. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 02:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Just because you use two sides doesn't automatically mean you need more layers. It depends on how many traces you have to route. For example, I routinely have boards produced with two sides and guess what...just two layers.


BS. I am not talking about school projects here.

What is the pin count of the biggest part on your two sided board? Do you have anything as complex as a Radeon 9200 and a PowerPC chip on the PCB? What about an Agere northbridge? Didn't think so.

The point is a the Mac Mini board is a lot more denser, it is smaller than a Mini-ITX board by some estimates.

The standard Radeon PCI boards are 4-Layers, unless ATI likes wasting money, they should use your PCB routing technology. LOL. "

And how do YOU know for a fact that the Mac Mini is a lot denser? Pin count isn't the only factor. If I layout 500 pins vertically as a bus, do I need 8 layers? And even if it was, a P478 with north and south bridge has a greater pin count.

And there's a reason to try to use 2 layers instead of 4. It's minimizes crosstalk. Duh. If you can layout in 2 what other people do in 4, you're going to have a higher quality signal.

You're making ridiculous assumptions that you don't even know if it's true. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 02:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? BTW having active components on both side makes the manufacturing process more complicated and expensive. Soldering components on both sides, especially huge ASICs like the radeon and the north bridge are not cheap.

If you look a the Mac Mini board there aren't that many traces on the top layers of the board, which means they must be in the inner layers. Just look at the sheer number of decoupling caps they have.

I never said having Active components on both sides automatically means more layers. Just look at the Mac Mini board it is obvious that it is very dense.

Like I said the dual sided nature of the Mac Mini board makes it more expensive than the Shuttle board. Your compontent count theory is BS BTW. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 02:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "(please don't moderate me down for this simple question, even if u have a bad day 2day, thx)

I'm interested to run Mac Mini with Amiga OS, is this a bad question??? Come on... "
Under emulation, but then its more likely to be AmigaOS3.9 or earlier. AmigaOS4 only runs on licienced(?) PowerPC hardware initiallied by Uboot. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 02:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? And there's a reason to try to use 2 layers instead of 4. It's minimizes crosstalk. Duh. If you can layout in 2 what other people do in 4, you're going to have a higher quality signal.

Bull shit again. Your two layer board would have to be without ground and power planes and would only be effective for low frequency ( Fri, 21 Jan 2005 03:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I have two mini-itx boxes. The fastest is 1Ghz, but it is a stipped down crappy cpu that struggles to play high bitrate video. It needs lots of cooling and so is *far* from silent, and the onboard graphics are a joke.

The mac mini on the otherhand has a G4 cpu with 512K cache, nothing stipped down about that.

An old 400mhz imac G3 I had played fullscreen DVD's perfectly with about %30 cpu usage... This little box will fly. Anyone who has played with a 1.5ghz powerbook will understand. And they only have 256k cache.

PPC are expensive. Look at the briq.

Apple are expensive.

The best things in life are for a fee.

We are just spoiled with el cheapo off the shelf, x86 crap costing hardly anything. The mac mini I just ordered costs nearly as much as my smp mp2800+. Is it worth it? Hell yes. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 03:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >Soldering components on both sides, especially huge ASICs like the radeon and the north bridge are not cheap.
Actually there are rarely any difference in cost for soldiering big or small packages, talking sourface mounted components. For PCB's with components on both sides, what can give you problems are "heavy" components on the underside. Eg they are to heavy for the surface tension in the solder. Usual problem components are transformers and coils, larger capacitors and large IC(100+ pins). Any competent designer strives to place such components on one side of the board avoiding the problem. But if it is unavoidable the solution is to apply some glue, to hold the component to the PCB. This on the other hand adds to the cost. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 03:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Home Built isn't an option for most people. When you factor in the cost of Windows and having the system built and tested the mini wins. Check out my blog:

http://macmini.blogpot.com

for my Windows mini Build Challenge. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 04:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Eg they are to heavy for the surface tension in the solder. Usual problem components are transformers and coils, larger capacitors and large IC(100+ pins). Any competent designer strives to place such components on one side of the board avoiding the problem. But if it is unavoidable the solution is to apply some glue, to hold the component to the PCB. This on the other hand adds to the cost.

I think a Radeon, PowerPC the Agere south bridge are large high mass ICs.
While soldering Double-Sided Assembly in the first step, one side of the PCB is fitted with components and soldered. Afterwards the second side of the PCB is fitted with components and soldered again. Packages with a high mass can fall off during the second reflow process. In this case, with high mass ICs like the ones on the mini, they have to be assembled with the last reflow process. Vibrations and the air draft in the reflow oven can also cause them to fall off not only mass.

But any way, I think you confirmed that having large ICs, the Mac mini Dual-side boards are more expensive to manufacture.

I was pointing out that a silly thing like a cpu socket being saved is meaning less. It is more expensive to solder the cpu on the board. There is a reason laptop motherboards are more expernsive than desktop ones. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 05:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I was set to pick up one of these until I saw the specs on the video card. Won't having only 32MB of RAM affect the resolution you can run on this thing? I don't care much about gaming but would be using this for video editing and minor photoshop work. I still might go with one if I can be convinced that I can run with a decent resolution while simultaneously having a good refresh rate and true color. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 07:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "BTW having active components on both side makes the manufacturing process more complicated and expensive. Soldering components on both sides, especially huge ASICs like the radeon and the north bridge are not cheap."

What do you think reflow machines are for? It's not hard by hand so why would you even think it would be hard automated?

"If you look a the Mac Mini board there aren't that many traces on the top layers of the board, which means they must be in the inner layers. Just look at the sheer number of decoupling caps they have."

So what? You need a decoupling cap. for each chip. You're just speculating again. There's no reason you can't do what you want in 4.

"Like I said the dual sided nature of the Mac Mini board makes it more expensive than the Shuttle board. Your compontent count theory is BS BTW. "

Like I said, that's no necessarily true. SMD has been done on two sides for a long time and it sometimes reduces layout headaches. Yeah, right. So if you add more components, it will be cheaper? Heh. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 07:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Bull shit again. Your two layer board would have to be without ground and power planes and would only be effective for low frequency ( Fri, 21 Jan 2005 07:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Not unless you were planning on hooking it up to a pair of Apple Cinemas, no . You don't need much video RAM for normal 2D operation, 32MB is more than enough for any reasonable resolution (I'm talking up to HDTV resolution, here). Modern gaming cards have more because 3D operations need it, not 2D. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 07:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Let's do some rough math. http://www.pcb123.com/pcb123pricing.php as a prototyping service.

Mac Mini=42.25 sq inches.
Shuttle=101.32 sq inches.

So we do 6x8 for Mac Mini. That's $51 in lots of 25.
I'll round down and use 8x10 for 4 layer. That's $65. So as you can see your theory that more layers automatically adds more money is absolutely wrong.

It depends on how much tooling, etc. Can you layout the Mac-mini is such a fashion that it's massively more expensive than the Shuttle? Of course you can. But let's give the Apple engineers more credit than that. So you can't say for sure that it is because you simply DO NOT KNOW. But we know the Mac Mini has a lot less components for a FACT so we know it should be cheaper in respect.

So let's summarize our argument.

1.) We know for sure that Mac-Mini uses a lot less components so we know it's cheaper to produce in that aspect.
2.) You have no clue that producing Mac-Mini boards is more expensive. It could be, but it doesn't have to be. Using two sides of a PCB doesn't necessarily mean you need more layers. Using more layers doesn't necessarily mean it will cost more compared to a bigger board. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 08:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? So why are high frequency analog boards forced to 2 layers? What do you think Faraday cages are for? If you have 4 layers and use an entire layer for ground and an entire layer for power, you're wasting 2 layers. One a VLSI chip, it makes sense to do that to reduce crosstalk, on a 4 layer board, insanity.

It is clear from your explaination that a) you have no clue what you are talking about b) you have no real world experience.

Please get some real world experience. Most PCBs used in PCs today are at a minimum 4 layers. Every manufacturer on the planet must be insane then according to you.

Here is a primer on basic PCB stack ups and why you need a power and ground plane.
http://www.csee.umbc.edu/~plusquel/650/slides/PCB_layer_stacks.html

Here is another one
http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/~veycken/HJ03/slides/7_Electrical_bw...

The slide on PCB layering says this
A well manufactured PCB board for higher
frequencies consists of a ground plane, a power
plane and n pairs of signal planes
A pair of signal planes consists of one plane with
horizontal traces and one plane with vertical
traces
Outer planes are signal planes, to allow for
correction of traces by cutting them with a
knife.
Inner traces can be cut by the risky process of
blowing them like a fuse using a high current.


From your technical reasoning. I take is you are still in school. Grow up get a job and then we can talk . Till then, I am so sorry I wasted my time. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 08:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>1.) We know for sure that Mac-Mini uses a lot less components so we know it's cheaper to produce in that aspect.

Who said that?

Please show me one board you have designed and I will show you the contrary. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 08:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? So we do 6x8 for Mac Mini. That's $51 in lots of 25.
I'll round down and use 8x10 for 4 layer. That's $65. So as you can see your theory that more layers automatically adds more money is absolutely wrong.

Now I see that you can't even do basic math.

From the website that you posted

A 8x10 2 layer board is $47.80
A 8x10 4 layer board is $65.60
A 8x10 6 layer board is $73.40

So adding more layers is more expensive. DUH.

So let's summarize our argument.

To summarize the argument, you don't know squat. Even your own protoyping prices are against you. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 08:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? 1.) We know for sure that Mac-Mini uses a lot less components so we know it's cheaper to produce in that aspect.

Absolutely false. A couple of connectors and a cpu socket don't cost that much. Customer manufacturing does.


2.) You have no clue that producing Mac-Mini boards is more expensive. It could be, but it doesn't have to be. Using two sides of a PCB doesn't necessarily mean you need more layers. Using more layers doesn't necessarily mean it will cost more compared to a bigger board.

I think I have proved adequately that you lack the basic technical skill required to comprehend PCB desgin principles. I will agree that using both sides doesn't automatically mean more layers, I never meant to say that it did. But looking at the Mac Mini motherboard it is possible it has more than 4 layers, given the desnity and visible traces on the top layer.

I have proven using your own sample pricing that more layers means more money. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 08:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? personally i wish apple would sell a low cost apple mac in atx form factor, with more memory slots and expansion slots. i think it would be cheaper and more expandable than the mac mini. or allow cloners sell atx only apple mac comaptible form factors. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 10:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? ">>1.) We know for sure that Mac-Mini uses a lot less components so we know it's cheaper to produce in that aspect.

Who said that?

Please show me one board you have designed and I will show you the contrary."

See "in that aspect." Randomly put 10 components on a board. Now produce the same board without 10 components... Get it? Fri, 21 Jan 2005 11:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "So we do 6x8 for Mac Mini. That's $51 in lots of 25.
I'll round down and use 8x10 for 4 layer. That's $65. So as you can see your theory that more layers automatically adds more money is absolutely wrong.

Now I see that you can't even do basic math.

From the website that you posted

A 8x10 2 layer board is $47.80
A 8x10 4 layer board is $65.60
A 8x10 6 layer board is $73.40

So adding more layers is more expensive. DUH.

So let's summarize our argument.

To summarize the argument, you don't know squat. Even your own protoyping prices are against you."

You can't read properly and you accuse me of not knowing how to add? You took my statement out of context. The example shows that adding more layers does not necessarily add more money COMPARED to the bigger board.

I say it in black and white right after. "Using more layers doesn't necessarily mean it will cost more compared to a bigger board."

And just because you don't agree with me doesn't mean you should be an abusive ***. I've been more than courteous with you, but you don't seem to have any manners today. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 11:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Absolutely false. A couple of connectors and a cpu socket don't cost that much. Customer manufacturing does."

40 pin ZIF for $16 in units of 10. -> http://www.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Criteria?Ref=1990...

Ask Eyetech why they decided to solder down their PowerPC cpus for the AmigaONE.

"But looking at the Mac Mini motherboard it is possible it has more than 4 layers, given the desnity and visible traces on the top layer."

Possible, but you don't know. So we're in agreement.

"I have proven using your own sample pricing that more layers means more money. "

You've proven that you don't read carefully and that you like to go off half-cocked over a misunderstanding. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 11:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "It is clear from your explaination that a) you have no clue what you are talking about b) you have no real world experience.

Please get some real world experience. Most PCBs used in PCs today are at a minimum 4 layers. Every manufacturer on the planet must be insane then according to you."

Sorry, but you went off half-cocked again. The 2 layer boards are my boards, not PC boards. I never said I produced PC boards.

"From your technical reasoning. I take is you are still in school. Grow up get a job and then we can talk ."

Maybe you should quit your job or go fishing. Something stressful is sure making you tense. I appreciate the links, though. You can never have too much information I say. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 11:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Btw. here's the same example worded in a better way.

Mac Mini=42.25 sq inches.
Shuttle=101.32 sq inches.

So to produce a 6 layer board with about 42.25 sq inches, we'll use the 6x8 inch option. This comes out to a grand total of $51.

To produce a 4 layer board with about 101.32 sq inches, we'll round down and use the 8x10 inch option. That's $65.

These prices are for soldermask and silk screening included.

So you can see that your theory that adding more layers on a smaller board automatically increases the cost of the smaller board over that of a larger board is false.

Of course this example is not definitive. There are other factors also. For example, if Apple ordered the Apple logo drilled into the board at 500 holes drilled per square inch... Fri, 21 Jan 2005 11:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I don't know if anyone is interested at this point, but here's a short, low quality video clip, taking the mini apart.
http://www.smashsworld.com/uploads/macminidl.php

And some shots of the motherboard.
http://www.mini-itx.com/news/13909018/ Fri, 21 Jan 2005 12:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The CPU is soldered on for a very simple reason - to prevent the buyer from ever upgrading the CPU - not to save a few cents. That is why is also there is only one RAM slot, etc.

This is a classic Apple strategy to stop cannibalising their high margin products. Make a reasonably cheap entry level product non-upgradeable machine that will be totally obsolete in two years. Then you need to buy a new machine. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 13:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? @xengren

Um, yes. I said "now." You're basing your numbers on speculation. You're pulling astronomical numbers out of your perverbial ass. If Mac Mini reaches your numbers then they can afford to lower the prices....not before. You can't get economy of scale from what you will sell.

No. I'm basing my numbers on a news report that someone found the factory making the Mini's and was told that they will be manufacturing them at 100,000 units a month.

Confirming an earlier AppleInsider scoop, DigiTimes today is reporting that it is indeed Foxconn (Hon Hai) which has signed on as the contract manufacturer for Apple's newly launched Mac mini computers.

According to the report, which cites sources close to the Taiwanese contract manufacturer, Foxconn is expected to ship at least 100,000 Mac mini computers per month to Apple, or roughly 300,000 per quarter.

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=839

I have no problem believing that Apple will sell that many in a months time.

But, let's see...

I'm VERY sure that Shuttle units don't sell in those quantities...

Apple has NEVER sold units based on "Cost of Goods". Apple always bases prices on "what the market will bare."

Apple doesn't go for quantity, it goes for profit...

Which is why it has something like 5 Billion in cash reserves. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 13:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? For all the people whining and moaning that the Mac Mini is too slow...

http://www.macintouch.com/perfpack/comparison.html

For far less money than an iMac or even an eMac costs, you get excellent performance, silent operation and the ability to drive a big beautiful monitor of your own choosing, a critical feature missing from all but the Power Mac and PowerBooks. The Mini's one weakness is disk performance, which may make the eMac a better choice for video editing or heavy audio work, but it shouldn't be an issue in too many applications. For general home or office use, the Mini is perfect.

The best way for Apple to bump the Mini, is to simply incorporate a faster HDD, or offer them as an option...

Probably one of the first things I'll do with my Mini, is replace the HDD with a faster and larger unit. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 13:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The CPU socket is a VERY expensive component compared to others on the board!! Also, any non-soldered connection is less reliable than a good soldered connection. It is soldered for BOTH price and reliability. I've had many memory socket problems because of poor connections. Heat and oxidation also add to the problem.
Also, there is no chance that the PCB is a 4 layer. A P-75 design that I worked on was a 6 layer, and the pin count today is MUCH higher and layout is critical. I doubt that you could even make a modern PC in a 4 layer. It has to be at least a 6 or possibly even an 8. Added layers(& copper) are also used to disappate heat, as well as reduce EMC emissions. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 14:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >I think you confirmed that having large ICs, the Mac mini Dual-side boards are more expensive to manufacture.

Of course it's more expensive to manufacture, since it involves extra work if there is need to apply glue to keep the components in place. Since I haven't looked at the actual board, I can't tell if this is the case or not.

But in my experience this added cost would be minimal considering the total cost of the board. The rule of thumb from my last job was manufacturing cost was less than 20%(including assambly and packing), even less for boards only products. And that's NOT in a low cost country. In China or similar I'd guess you can get the cost down to 5-10%. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 15:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Maybe you should quit your job or go fishing. Something stressful is sure making you tense. I appreciate the links, though. You can never have too much information I say.

No I won't quit my job, I enjoy it too much, but i will quit getting into arguments here on OSNews, after a long day at work, ecspecially on Mac related threads. I think the signal to noise ratio is particluarly high. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 15:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Guys, I searched the whole 253 messages but still.
Did anyone look at SY-P4VGM? Like here http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=31603....
There are "couple" of things that did not fit the bill
1.Memory. On motherboard 184 pin in description 168!?
2.I did not see Firewire.
3.AGP is just 4x!
4.Does it support SATA? Fri, 21 Jan 2005 16:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "You're delusional if you think Mac OS X can't get Virii, Adware, and Spybots. There's not a single technical reason that it can't.

It's just not enough hackers care right now."

Sure hackers care. Their is a lot of anti-Mac sentiment in the PC world but MacOSX has inheritantly better security than Windows.

Sure there are no technical reasons why it can't have viruses and such but all I have seen are concept viruses and Apple tends to be faster than MS is securing exploits.

Don't fool yourself into thinking that MacOSX is not a target for hackers, its no more obscure these days than a Sun, SGI or Linux box. Fri, 21 Jan 2005 17:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I have been working with Mac, Windows and on and off Linux for years now.

The writer misses the point: On a windows machine, you have superficial ease of work, but you end seeing the maintenance of your computer as an important task: keeping an eye on the antivirus, checking for ad-ware, updating patches,defragmenting ....
To keep him free and working, half an hour a week seems normal, when you don't suffer an attack.

A linux machine, can be nice if it is configured and set up, but it just does not work for doing new things. Everything is a problem. Finding and installing drivers or the latest Java; make your USB work flawlessly, ,... Linux is nice in a setting where somebody else installs, but for joe average, who wants to install, uninstall, play around and hates the terminal window, not yet now. Perhaps next week.

A Mac just works. I have a 5 year old IMac, and it just works. New programs install, and work. The network, just works...

This is worth at least a few hundred dollars a year. Sat, 22 Jan 2005 12:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? If you have used any mac you would know that even a low end mac can out preform a windows or linux box any day. I was suprised to see that you compared Doom 3 from a windows box to the Mac Mini, because Asypr just reached the beta stage for Doom 3 on Mac's this month. As for preformance wise I have a Mini and I have run the following games on the standard 256MB, 1.42Ghz Mini: Return to Castle Wolfstein, Myst Exile, Blood Rayne, Sim City 4, Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament, Halo and more and not one of those games did not preform any different then my Power Mac Dual 1.42 Ghz G4. I loaded plenty of images on the computer and it's snappier then my 2 Ghz Windows Box. Already with only 256 MB of memory I could open up over 10 applications, such as iPhoto, iTunes, Safari, Dreamweaver, Photoshop 7, Word, iDVD, and could run Myst Exile at the same time. This is my 6th Mac, I knew it was a low-end when I bought it, but Apple does not skimp on their machines like Dell Does. My roomate is switching to a PowerBook from a Dell Ispiron because his computer never works. Apple even offers great support. My Mini is not my primary box but I use alot, not to mention with my 20 inch it looks great. Basically you cannot go wrong with this machine. Don't listen to the Author he's not a true mac user. Sun, 23 Jan 2005 09:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I am a Windows User as well as a Mac user, and I find myself going to the Mac more and more. Nice apps keep coming under OS X and I find myself having to install OS updates ALL the time with Windows 2000. You spend your time fiddling with the computer and not using it to complete your task at hand. The Mac Mini is the third Mac in my house, while I have 3 or 4 PC's lying around with just one working. My Mac's all work and are being used. I leave my Mac's running but the Athlon PC heats up the room to much and makes one heck of a racket. I have to shut it down when I am not using it.

The mini is silent! No comparision in real use. The one advantage I see is PC's for games vs. Mac. Many more titles available. Sun, 23 Jan 2005 19:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments