OSNews

Recently our company's VMware virtual machine test server (running Debian Etch) hardware failed (it was 10 years old and the capcitors on the motherboard dried up). So we started looking for replacements.

Tried to get bits for a commodity PC that would fit in a 1U rackmount. Hard to do in New Zealand (where we're based) without a lot of effort and waiting for shipping.

So we looked at Sun gear. Their low Intel-based stuff was surprisingly cheap, so we placed an order but it took a couple of days for their sales guy to get back to us, so we looked at other alternatives.

In the mean time we looked at the specs of a Mac-mini. Did the same stuff as the Sun (Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz, 2GB RAM) and was about the same price. Come in a timy little form factor that was extremely quiet. So we got one. Rather than put it in the noisy server room we 'll just plonk it on a corner of someone's desk. After looking at the pre-installed Mac OS X where everything just worked we nearly cried wiping it off to put Debian Etch on (but we needed a Linux kernel with vserver so we had to).

The Mac Mini is a great little machine that definitely served our needs as a SMB developing Java J2EE on mostly Ubuntu desktops (with one Windows holdout). You might want to consider this if your company doesn't require an enormous server farm.

Also, we were extremely impressed with the little remote control that came with the Mac Mini. Our company director saw it and decided that a MacMini makes perfect sense in his TV lounge ('den' for you US fellows?). Though Apple haven't completely won us over, personally I'm gonna use my Playstation3 for the same purpose (BluRay movies look great, as to regular DVDs 'upscaled' to 1080p by the PS3 firmware!). None chance of a MS MediaCenter PC being there since even the xbox360 that sounds like a turbojet taking off in comparison.