Apple Mac mini M9687LL/A (G4 1.42 GHz, 256 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Drive)

I have always been a pc girl, even though i've work on macs for years. what i liked about this is i could hook it up to, and actualy share my pc's peripherals. i have two towers (this and a dell compact) but one monitor, keyboard and mouse. with a share switch and a simple key shortcut i can go back and forth between the two systems. plus, i found it to be very affordable.

as far as performance this little guy is a powerhouse. i did actually buy it with 512mb ram and upgraded to 1g. it worked out cheaper. i have a huge music library on it, and use my adobe programs all the time. no slow photoshop on this bad boy.

oh, and it is quite a looker.

We purchased our first mac mini after hearing everyone tell us how great mac products are. Unfortunately after one day it crashed and would no longer boot up. We were able to get a replacement after of a good bit of frustration. However we were in the process of moving and were not able to move into our new home and unpack for a couple of months. Whithin a couple of weeks guess what. Our top notch mac mini had started locking up and we had to go through all kinds of things to get it to boot back up and then it quit starting up all together. Of course when we contacted apple all they would do is repair it since we were approaching 90 days since we had purchased it and they only give you 30 days to return it. I erronously thought that given the situation Apple would be happy to replace our second now defunct computer in less the ninety days and it would acutally be our third if you counted our mac pro notebook. Wrong. I wouldn't by an Apple if you want something that works for more than a short while before you need to fix it.

For all those people who are concerned about space restrictions and want a powerhouse computer that will not need a large footprint, the Mac Mini is the perfect solution. Packing a boatload of power into a computer yay bigger than a coaster, there is no better power/space combination in the entire computing world!

For all the Windows users who don't want to make the switch to the Mac, with the newest Mac OS you will not look back once you get used to the ways that Apple does things the way they are SUPPOSED to be done.

As per usual Apple, the design of the Mac Mini is perfect, and it's so quiet that your own heartbeat will no doubt be louder than this quiet monster.

If you need a solid family computer that will allow you to surf the net, work with spreadsheets, check e-mail, or just do 99% of the things that you would like to be doing (I don't say 100% because it's not a gaming machine), pick up a Mac Mini for your home office, kitchen, ANYWHERE and you will NOT be disappointed!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

It's funny how Apple offers a low price computer and everyone feels it should be faster and more full-featured than it is but similarly-priced PCs seem not to carry such expectations.

It's important to face reality before buying a computer that is low cost. No $500-$600 machine is going to be a games/graphics/audio/video powerhouse. The Mini is no exception in this regard. It's a consumer model designed for modest everyday computing demands. It's not that it won't run high end software nor that it won't run such software adequately. I use my Mini for various Adobe applications (and only Illustrator seems sluggish on start up) as well as DVD Studio Pro work. It's not intolerably slow but it's also not lightning fast. It is, however, quite adequate with processor-intensive applications.

When it comes to running OS X and other consumer applications, it works very well. The Mini was my transitional machine between OS 9 and OS X. It's a good way for those who have been reluctant to make the move to spend less and learn OS X.

A lot of people feel too much is made of Apple's designs and any performance/upgrade sacrifices that they force should be more strongly focussed upon but there clearly is a desire for very small computers like the Mini. If using a computer were only a matter of running applications, wireless networks would not have grown in popularity as their signals are inferior to wired connections. People want something attractive and small that they can accomodate more easily on their overcrowded desks.

Form factor isn't everything but it is increasingly important where the power of high end machines greatly exceeds the needs of the consumer level user and the cheaper consumer models are roughly similarly capable despite a few statistical differences here and there. The Mini is an attractive alternative to tower-sized consumer models and those who would like to run the Mac OS as a secondary machine or a machine that only needs to meet the needs of the average user.

Well, first of all let me say that the mini is a relatively large amount of power packaged in very little space. Everything is extremely easy to install and if you get the wireless mouse and keyboard you will be saving a USB port, which is always a good thing.

There are a couple of things that could have been done better. For instance, the RAM, 256 M of Ram is a joke for any system using the OS Tiger, I am sure a lot of people are frustrated because their minis do not perform as they should. Low RAM is a major bottleneck on Tiger; the thing is so big and powerful that anything lower than 512 will hamper your system.

Anyways, after upgrading the ram on the mini I configured it as a small server for a couple of Sites I had to get online and I think it is performing superb. I dint have to spend a cent on extra software (I am using Apache and PHP, both are free and work great on the UNIX based Tiger OS), and my cable Internet connection is up to the task of keeping the sites running smoothly.

I wouldn't recommend this for a huge e-commerce site, but it should be more than adequate for sites that only generate a couple of thousands of visits a day.