I have been an omni-platform user, Windows, OS X and Linux user for some time now. I love different things about each platform and loathe just as much as I like about all three. The release of the Mac Mini at MacWorld really made me wonder if Apple made good move in jumping into the low range market. I decided the best way to see was to compare the Mini to my primary box, a similar system in specifications and price.The Works
How does the new Mac Mini stack up to a homemade box? I didn’t want to do the comparison to a Dell or a Gateway/eMachine bargain deal. I wanted to use a system I have built for day-to-day users who want what the Mac Mini market is hoping capture, namely internet and “digital lifestyle”(how I hate that term) markets. This is my present setup at home as well as the setup I have built for a few folks including “Mom and Pop” newbie users:
Antec Aria Case w/300 Watt power supply
Size is 7.9″ x 10.6″ x 13.2″ $119.00
Intel Celeron 2.6gHz chip, 400mHz Bus speed, 128KB L2 cache $99.00
SY-P4VGM v1.0 micro-ATX Motherboard, Socket 478 for Intel Celeron Processors (includes 4 USB 2.0 ports, 1 1394/Firewire 400 port, 10/100 Ethernet, Compact Flash/SD reader, on-board sound w/audio in, out, mic with included 8-in-1 card reader) $65
Xtasy/ATI Radeon 9200SE Video Card, 8x AGP, 128MB DDR w/VGA, DVI- I and TV/S-Video $74
PNY 256MB PC133 SDRAM DIMM 168pin Memory Module $65
Western Digital Caviar SE 80GB, 7200RPM, Internal SATA Hard Drive $75
Sony 52x32x52 Internal IDE CD-RW / 16x DVD-ROM Combo Drive $60
Mandrake Linux 10.1 Download Edition $0 or Windows XP Home Edition SP2 $150
Weight 7.5 pounds
$557 with Linux, $707 with Windows XP
Here is the new, and I admit, very cool Mac Mini:
240 Watt power supply
Size is 2” x 6.5” x 6.5”
1.42GHz PowerPC G4, 167mHz Bus speed, 512KB L2 cache
256MB PC2700 (333MHz) DDR SDRAM, expandable to up to 1GB
ATI Radeon 9200 with 32MB DDR video memory AGP 4x
80GB Ultra ATA hard drive
Slot loading Combo drive at 24x16x24
Built-in 10/100BASE-T Ethernet and 56K V.92 modem
2 USB 2.0
1 Firewire 400 port
DVI or VGA video output
Included TV/S adapter
OS X 10.3 w/bundled software
Weight 2.9 pounds
$599
So, how does the new Mac mini stack up to a homemade machine? Lets take a look:
Appearance, Size and Power: Even. The Mac has the same quality construction as the iBook and appears to be rugged and pleasant to the eye and without a doubt is smaller. That said, the Antec Aria case is stylish and modern with its included blue neon front lights and mirrored black finish. The Aria also has extra power to give with a larger power supply. Advantage: For aesthetics, Mac Mini by a landslide. For power, Home Built for the larger power supply.
Processor: I have had opportunity to use both the Celeron 2.6ghz in my present machine and a 1.25ghz G4 in my girlfriend’s 12” Powerbook. While the G4 performs well, the Celeron seems snappier and, for a bargain chip, has a much better bus speed than the G4. I would like to see how the 1.42ghz chip feels with more RAM than 256MBs. It might change my mind. Advantage: Home Built
Hard Drive: Both are 7200rpm. Who knows the difference anymore? Let’s call this one even.
Removable Media: If we were strictly speaking about the combo drives, the edge goes to the home built machine. The Sony drive is faster, no doubt. We firmly have to give the advantage to the home built machine when we add in the included 8-in-1 reader that comes with the Antec Case. Advantage: Home Built
Video: 128MB vs. 32MB. AGP 8x vs. AGP 4x. Both have DVI, TV/S and VGA connections. Both are ATI branded. One is better in this case but to be fair, I could use the same card in my machine but had the better one in there for the cost comparison. Advantage: Home built unless you use Linux. Due to the lack of games for Linux, unless you want to use Cedega, a 32MB card in the Mac that can run some popular 2D titles makes it a slight, very slight winner. The 3D experience while using XP, however, makes the card in the Mac seem puny and outdated when firing up titles like Half-Life 2 and Doom 3.
Plug-in Ports and Networking: The Aria and Mac Mini are equal here on the surface only. Both have a 10/100 Ethernet card, Two USB 2.0 and one Firewire port included. The Aria has an additional two USB 2.0 ports on the 8-in-1 reader but even with the extra ports, Firewire just works better with Mac. The Mac Mini also has a 56K modem included. Advantage: Mac Mini
Software and OS: No worms or spyware to worry about on Linux or OS X. Mandrake is free and OS X comes with the Mac Mini. Both are stable, professional operating systems that look great. Clearly, though, OS X trounces Mandrake on software with titles like iLife. There are Open Source products that do video, photos and music like KdenLive, Digikam and Rhythmbox but nothing really stacks up in the Linux world to the integration and ease of use available with iLife. Add Garageband and iDVD to the mix and you have a true winner. I still have to choose OpenOffice.org over iWork for now, especially with the great improvements made to the 2.0 Beta. Maybe iWork will prove me wrong when I get a chance to use it. Now, if you add XP to this mix and have either knowledge or access to someone who has knowledge of basic computer security, you will see XP even out the OS X advantages. Advantage: Even for OS under the right conditions. Even for online use and productivity. Mac Mini for multimedia and XP for “big name” titles.
So how does it add up? The Mac Mini is a machine I might buy if it had a better video card and more/faster RAM. 256MB of RAM for OS X is just too little out of the box and 32MB of video is a real disappointment for anyone who was looking for a small form factor gamer of the PPC flavor. At least it isn’t shared video RAM. The cool factor just isn’t enough to push the purchase or make me advise the purchase to newbie users unless they were really set on Apple or had some knowledge of their product line. As a matter of fact, as much as I like the look and idea of the Mac Mini, I think its small size might scare “Mom and Pops” away from it. The Aria was a hard enough sell because the average user still equates size with power. It isn’t like selling an iPod.
Apple has probably produced a winner with this model but the winners are already in the Apple camp. I am sure Mac fans will gobble up the machine in the coming months but I don’t think the “Halo Effect” they were hoping for, namely iPod users looking to switch, will gravitate toward this offering.
Of course, only time and holes in the reality distorion field will tell.
About the author:
Brian Czarski is a omni-platform Systems Analyst at a K-12 school in Baltimore, Maryland. He is a self-professed gadget fanatic and a hack writer at eXtraheavymarcellus.com, a blog about life in Baltimore, Technology and how it all comes together.
” 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.
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
😉
I didn’t. I merely suggested that you were perhaps overblowing the complexity of building a computer.
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.
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!
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…
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?
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?
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.
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 £339.00
or you could have –
Shuttle SN45G V2.0 AMD AMD Socket A, LAN, USB2, 1394, RAID, 6ch. Audio £113.75 £133.66
AMD Sempron 2500+ (Socket A) (1.750ghz) CPU Retail inc Heat Sink Fan & 3 Years Warranty £41.25 £48.47
2 x 256Mb PC2700 (PC333) DDR Memory (Major) Retail £16.75 £39.36
AOpen Beige/Black/Silver Chameleon 52x CD-RW + 16x DVD-ROM Retail +Software+Media £19.39 £22.78
80Gb Western Digital ATA-100 (7200rpm,2MB,8.9ms) – PATA £31.29 £36.77
128Mb ABIT Siluro GeForce 4 x8 AGP Ti4200-OTES (D-Sub, DVI, TV Out)
Net Total £288.18 – Carriage £10.00 – V.A.T. £52.18 – TOTAL £350.36
yes, my suggestion costs £11.36 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.
“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.
http://www.offtopic4.com/uploads/post-52-1106175925.jpg
yes the Mac-mini Ultra is £398 too, and i haven’t included the £35.00 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.
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 £450
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?
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
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.
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.
celeron? sdram? 9200 se? come on…
the low price dells would probably be better.
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.
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.
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!
“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…
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.
>>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.
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.
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.
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.
>>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.
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 😉
The first wave of Mini’s are shipping…….
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.
Notice I posted the bundled software with HP box.
Replace that Dell box with a HP box (e.g SR1000Z).
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.
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…
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.
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.
The must be some interest it this product.
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-
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.
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.
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.
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…
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… 😉
>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.
“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.
Google +security flaws +virus +”Mac OS X”.
There are 10 reasons to buy the mac mini:
1. Size
2. OS X
That’s it.
What ya trying to get @ mate…
Nothing…
HP specifies “Intuit Quicken New User’s Edition 2005”
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?
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.
Refer to http://news.earthweb.com/bus-news/article.php/714261
“What ya trying to get @ mate…”
Are you implying MacOS X doesn’t suffer from bugs and security flaws?
>>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.
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!
MacMini is built by Foxconn (refer to Leadtek).
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.
mac mini has 9200, not 9200se…
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!
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
…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.
what? Nobody FORCES you to buy the new versions of os x when they are released.
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.
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.
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?
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.
“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=~$800.
I see that “Hammer” has taken my comparisons ( http://www.systemshootouts.org/ ) to task for not including XP versions of several fields (file encryption/zero-config networking/etc.). I will certainly “do more research” on these and will modify the charts as appropriate, but I *am* curious about why he/she didn’t bother tipping me off directly on the site–either in the forums or via email. I *do* try to be as even-handed as possible (as much as an admittedly biased Mac user can be); these were honest mistakes (if true) and will be corrected, but I prefer it if people give suggestions to me directly.
As for the Quicken debate, I’m not sure that I see the problem here–the Mac mini includes Quicken 2005, while the Dell system–as configured–didn’t include *any* personal finance software, and the Shuttle system–as configured–included MSFT Money. In the first case, the Mac got the “point” since Quicken 2005 trumps not having *any* finance software; in the second, neither one gets the point since Money roughly equals Quicken. Where’s the issue?
By Hagge wrote:
> the low price dells would probably be better.
I don’t think so. The company I work for has bought quite a few of those “low priced Dells”. Right out of the box, the damn things take forever to start up. I wouldn’t buy a low priced Dell for home.
I am planning to try a Mac mini.
i went to newegg and made a machine by myself. if i do not use a small form factor a stronger sempron machine with 60GB HDD is something like 350$. 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.
>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.
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…
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
I was mistaken Shuttle doesn’t use Mini-itx boards. But the jist of the post still remains.
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.
I should have said Micro-ATX. Which many manufacturers including shuttle make.
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?
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.
“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.
Most people could care less what a computer looks like.
Sure about that? Most people didn’t exactly have a choice so far.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
“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