Comments on: Why the Mac Mini is the best Mac on the market

The MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac Pro don't hold a candle to the small, yet versatile Mac Mini, which is rumored to be getting an update next month.

[sharpestsharpy]

The MacMini is a gateway drug. I bought one as a toy when they put intel chips in them. Within 2 weeks I'd stopped using my windows PC because life with a mac was more beautiful.

That was nearly 3 years ago and I've given it to my mum, but I've bought another MacMini for my wife, a MacBook for the road and an iMac for myself. I've just bought a Time Capsule and also signed up to MobileMe. An ipod touch is next.

Yep I'm an addict.

[ddanckaert]

I've bought several Mac Minis over the years. Most recently, in Sept I bought a Core2Duo 2GHz model which I upgraded to 4GB RAM (it can access 3GB of it) and a souped up 7200 RPM Momentus hard drive. It was surprisingly easy to open the Mac Mini and do the upgrade.

I have my Mac Mini, under glass, in my entertainment center (back is open for ventilation) hooked up to Samsung HDTV via RGB port. It's extremely sharp. My mini is connected to a gigabit ethernet switch, supported by UPS power, and chained via Firewire 400 to two Lacie 2Big 2TB units for my iTunes media library. I use it with 2 Apple Bluetooth Keyboards (Large and Small) and a rechargeable Microsoft Bluetooth mouse. It's also connected to two Kodak camera charge/sync bases for easy syncing. I have a forward facing powered USB hub for when I need to connect a device to the Mini (I have the rechargeable Microsoft Bluetooth Mouse's dongle connected to this).

The Mini serves as my central media repository which supports two separate iTunes libraries, each with an associated Apple TV (for other areas of my house), 2 3G iPhones, 2 4G Nanos, and a 2GB Shuffle.

I'm not using it for gaming. I do have a WinXP Pro SP2 partition for some periodic XP work (which is better than Parallels or VMWare as there are performance/compatibility issues with them for some applications like DVD ripping). I do have Office 2008 in case I do want to do some document viewing or editing. And I do have my iPhoto library in the mix--which is displayed as a slide show on my Apple TV.

If I want to game, I'll use an XBOX 360, Wii, or PS3. I swore off PC Gaming back in the 90s as too much a pain in the a$$--constantly chasing the latest hardware.

If I want to do indepth document work, I'll use my Macbook.

[grsilver]

Well I use the Mac Mini as my primary computer at work doing spreadsheets, word processing, email, web, etc. I can honestly say doing these tasks, the Mini works fabulous. I never have any problems or slow down. I could see the Mini as a workhorse for podcasting as well.

The problem with most people is the expect any machine to do anything and if it can't - it's garbage. If you use the right tool for the job - you may save money and enjoy a small, quiet footprint on your desk.

Also...I'm only using the 1.83 GHz with 2 GB RAM with Leopard. Works great!

[professionaladventurer]

Hey since they came out with the Intel-core Mac Mini I have had one siting in a server rack getting about 3000+ visitors a day on 6 or so websites running PHP and CGI apps. 30 gig drive, 1/2 gig of ram, the terribly out of date Apache version and all with the only down time caused by me when I screwed something up causing a crash. What's that, 2-3 years go time? I am happy with that!

http://www.professionaladventurer.com

[asmetana]

I'd be hard pressed to call the Mac Mini a gaming machine but I've not really tried. I have 3 of them now, each serving different purposes. My main Mini is my media server--like some others I installed a 7200 RPM hard drive and 4 GB RAM on the Core2Duo processor. With that the thing boots faster than any of my other Windows or Mac computers. It has an attached drive array with 8.5 TB of raw storage, an external DVD burner, 2 Plextor TV tuners, and runs 24x7. It's my central media server (iPhoto, movies, and music), serving it up through iTunes, iPhoto, and AFP and SMB file shares. It's my primary web and database server and it also runs video surveillance software for my IP cameras. The only time the fan comes on is when it's encoding video.

I have another one with a 7200 RPM hard drive using boot camp to exclusively run Windows Server 2008 which is runs Active Directory, IIS, WSUS, and some other stuff. Both of these Minis sit in the ventilated cabinet in my garage and all of their associated gear, including a large UPS, draw at most 200 watts of power. That's less than my single now defunct Dell tower server would draw at idle!

I have an older CoreDuo Mini in the main entertainment center linked up with the garage Mini (also with a 7200 RPM drive and maxed out at 2 GB RAM) that is the primary means of accessing the media from the media center.

I really wanted my Windows and Linux media computers to work, I've tried countless configurations but as the front end, the sleep never worked right, encoding was proprietary for recording TV shows (WMC), they were loud, the interface was clunky, etc. For what it is, and as someone else mentioned, if you respect that and understand it, it can be a great device. Based on form-factor, available services that require minimal to no configuration, reliability, and power consumption, they work out great in my applications. Of course an update with more horsepower and expansion would be welcome anytime!

[SteveW928]

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is how little power a mini uses. Where I used to work, we had a shelf of them (like 10 stacked in a few stacks) in the server room doing various tasks. All of them combined likely used less power than one of our other server class systems, yet all the minis represented far more combined processing power when needed. The mini is really a pretty cool machine for what it is. I can't think of a better low-power consumption system for things that must be 'always on'.

[Gilmoure]

I recently picked up a Mac Mini, iMac, and Macbook; all bottom line refurbs from Apple refurb store. I already had an Apple TV but it wasn't streaming video very well from my older G4 mini. With the current Intel Mini, is working great as a household media server. I've hung a couple 1TB drives, mirrored, off USB and have it plugged in to wireless hub (along with ATV). For it's cost (about $100 less than standard Apple store price), it's worth it. I remote in to it using the Share Screen feature in 10.5. Only thing I would add to it would be some kind of file share setup, that is similar to iTunes or iPhoto, only for text documents. Have a lot of eBooks.

[srk1000]

To say the Mac Mini is the best Mac is a pretty pathetic comment on Macs in general. Have you seen what an HP slimline will do for about half the price ? all of the above and it's a PVR. Media Centre blows away anything on Mac (at least for now, unless they play catch up real soon). And Apple is too cheap to even throw in a keyboard or mouse... And it just has a CD burner ! And a pathetic 80 GB hard drive ! It would be funny people weren't payin serious cash for this thing. Dude, get out of the house a little more often.. There's way better stuff out there.

[mikefarren]

I just got an Acer Aspire L5100 for $319 - with 3 gig of RAM, 320G hard drive, DVD-RW slot drive, 2GHz dual-core AMD, and very, very small form factor. Not quite as small as the Mini (which I also considered), but substantially cheaper. It works superbly - I've already replaced my older computer with it, and as a software developer, I'm quite pleased. Small form factor doesn't mean incompetent, not at all. Yeah, it's never going to be a sooper gamerz machine, but then, I'm not a super gamer. Oh, yeah - it has HDMI output, too, so if I wanted a set-top box, well, there it is...

[hart.bezner_dotmac]

With the g77 Fortran compiler, the little Mac Mini is a veritable supercomputer for cpu-intensive scientific computing. Mine is equipped with a 2-GHz core 2 duo and 2 GB of memory. When it sits there crunching away, I'm always impressed. It's a sweet little powerhouse. Hope the update rumors are true. ¡Viva el Mac Mini!

[coi3ra]

I love my mac mini. I have it and a 19 inch monitor mounted to the wall in my bedroom. The screen hides the mini and all cable mess behind it. I can lay down and surf the web or play games relaxing. It plays my favorite Blizzard games even better then a windows machine with the same specs. With the size of the machine and the power to do everything i want. I agree this is the way to go.

[ChicagoGuy1980]

I am a graphic designer and if the rumors are true about the release of the new mini, will it be powerful enough to handle the adobe products. I will not be working with any large format projects (posters, panels or large signs). It will manly be used for side work ( brochures, invites and web page design) and a little low end photo editing and small imovie projects. I currently have an old G4 imac and need to know if I would be better off with a mac book or mac book pro, but definitely do not have the cash for a power mac.