macbook

For all of the things the Mac mini is, there are some that it is not. As the owner five Macs -- from a iMac G4 to a dual G5 tower -- I'll try to help.

(1) If you need a Mac to surf the Web, send e-mails and IM, write the next great novel or screenplay, organize and fix your photos, encode and hold your music library, and do some semi-serious movie editing, the Mac mini is just your ticket. For these tasks, it's downright snappy -- but, please, bump up the RAM to at least 512 MB. (Remember, the Mac operating system, OS X, thrives on RAM. You'll see a noticeable speed improvement between 512 MB and 1 GB of RAM, for example.) In fact if these are your needs, there is no better personal computer to buy. Period.

(2) If you need a Mac to some serious GarageBand multi-track recording, serious movie-editing with long clips and multiple effects (even under iMovie), or heavy photo manipulation, you probably should look elsewhere. If you want to play serious games on the Mac -- and, yes, you'll be able to do that -- you might also want to look elsewhere. (Doom III, soon to come out for the Mac, requires a G5 processor. The bigger and better games will.) For those who fit these criteria, you should seriously look at the iMac G5, or even a G5 tower. Remember, you can get the iMac G5 for just a little bit more than the Mac mini with a screen, keyboard, and mouse. It's a great computer and a real step up from the Mac mini's G4 processor.

Of course, there are other reasons to want the Mac mini. It's a miracle of engineering -- amazingly small and with so much more functionality than Windows computers costing twice as much ... and taking up five times the space! (Don't just go by price tags. Take a bottom of the line Dell and add up the cost of all the extras that come standard with an Mac mini ... a firewire port (essential for many DV camcorders to off-load video), a CD burner and DVD player (for most PC, you might be able to get one or the other -- as an extra), a full blown graphics card with its own 32 MB of RAM (not one of those "on the motherboard" Intel graphics sets that cannibalizes system RAM and does a lousy job of running even rudimentary games), and best-in-the-business photo and movie editing apps, etc.

And on top of all this, you get the best operating system out there. No viruses. No crashes. No fuss, no muss. OS X is a dream ... built from the ground up on solid UNIX foundations. If you've had Windows PCs, you'll immediately know something's afoot ... an operating system that just ... works. What a wonder! And you don't need to but a single anti-virus program or subscription. Not even a utilities program! The price point of the Mac Mini finally convinced me to switch from PC to Mac. Even nicely loaded (bluetooth, airport, 512MB memory, super drive) it only came to about $850 total. If you really sit down, like I did, and do a feature-by-feature cost comparison with a PC, you'll see that this an excellent price, particularly when you factor in the lack of Windows-related spyware, malware, etc. pain.

I am 100% pleased with this device. Set-up was an absolute breeze - I literally unplugged my gnarly cable modem/wireless/wireless music server set-up from my PC and into the mini, and it began to serve wireless internet to my PC laptops, and music to my stereo (you'll need AirportExpress w/AirTunes for this, also recommended) just.like.that. VPN was also easy to install and configure as well - something that had caused me real, ongoing pain with Windows. OS X is rock-solid, relatively simple to learn, and the iLife applications are great.

Let us not forget the bling factor - the thing looks cool, runs cool, is whisper quiet, and consumes minimal power. You'll want to expand your USB ports, and bring them to the front with an external hub - you can do that for $30 or less. I also found that cabling was super-clean - all the ports are placed so closely together at the rear of the machine that you can just run the cables down the back of your desk, cable-tie them into one neat bundle, and forget about it. That was a real, unexpected bonus; the jumble of cables behind my PC often evoked a feeling akin to despair.

Extreme power users, gamers - by all means look elsewhere. For those who want great basic functionality, security, optimal performance and ease of use, I highly recommend looking into this machine.