Linc: Apple just released your Intel Mac Mini

[Chess]

Caption says it all!

[Chess]

http://www.apple.com/macmini/

[Patrick]

<sarcasm>Wow, $599 and $799. What a bargain! For an extra $200 the higher priced model gives you a DVD burner, a slightly faster processer and an extra 20 gig of storage. $200 extra is definitely worth it! I just ordered mine.</sarcasm>

[Chess]

Apple does have an education/government employee discount program which my wife qualifies for. The prices might be a bit better than the regular price. I'll see if I can find out. Still, hard to say whether it's worth it at all. We have a Mac at home which I never use. I prefer Linux over OS X any day of the week.

Edit - Pfft. With the discount, the lower end one is $563 and the higher end one is $751.

[Tsuroerusu]

<sarcasm>Wow, $599 and $799. What a bargain! For an extra $200 the higher priced model gives you a DVD burner, a slightly faster processer and an extra 20 gig of storage. $200 extra is definitely worth it! I just ordered mine.</sarcasm>

ROFL, Pat you just cracked me up dude!

800 bucks geez! You can go buy a quite decent Dell machine for that sort of money, and go to like say, opensuse.org, fedora.redhat.com or whatever and get a great OS for it! Or buy one of Dell's new workstations with Linux preloaded!

Oh well, hopefully we Linux/UNIX users can hopefully harvest some used Mac minis and put Linux on them!
I'd like to have one of them suckers sitting in the corner running OpenBSD!

Speaking of OpenBSD, Pat did you get an answer from Theo de Raadt?

[Patrick]

Seriously is the $200 extra worth it? You can get a DVD burner from new egg for $38 and an entire 80 gig hard drive for $50. A while back I think Linc or Dan mentioned getting a new CD drive installed by Apple costs $200? WTF?!

Where's our inhouse Apple apologist when you need him?

Allan, are you around??

[Tsuroerusu]

Seriously is the $200 extra worth it? You can get a DVD burner from new egg for $38 and an entire 80 gig hard drive for $50. A while back I think Linc or Dan mentioned getting a new CD drive installed by Apple costs $200? WTF?!

Yeah it's ridiculous man!

Go pick up a USB/Firewire burner, it's cheaper than paying for Steve Jobs' houserent!

[Chess]

Seriously is the $200 extra worth it? You can get a DVD burner from new egg for $38 and an entire 80 gig hard drive for $50. A while back I think Linc or Dan mentioned getting a new CD drive installed by Apple costs $200? WTF?!

I hear ya!

Where's our inhouse Apple apologist when you need him?

Allan, are you around??

I imagine the Apple apologists would say that for people like us, the $200 is not worth it, but for people like my Mom & Dad, or my wife, or really don't know much about computers at all, the $200 might be worth it. They might recognize that they are getting something for that money -- dvd burner, more hard drive space, faster cpu.

[Tsuroerusu]

Where's our inhouse Apple apologist when you need him?

Allan, are you around??

ROFL, he's probably worshipping at the alter of Steve's pants.

First it was Dann, now Steve, oh the humanity!

I imagine the Apple apologists would say that for people like us, the $200 is not worth it, but for people like my Mom & Dad, or my wife, or really don't know much about computers at all, the $200 might be worth it. They might recognize that they are getting something for that money -- dvd burner, more hard drive space, faster cpu.

Or argue that those 200 bucks are a one time fee, because you don't need to spend that on antivirus each year!

[dann]

Seriously is the $200 extra worth it? You can get a DVD burner from new egg for $38 and an entire 80 gig hard drive for $50.

Not to make excuses for Apple, those devices are not going to fit in a mac mini. I believe the proprietary design, the branding on and "Apple Testing" on the hardware and the auto-eject mechanism drive up the price. It's not like you can just buy and mac mini and expect to check any generic hardware in there.

You buy similar products from any of the big PC manufacturers and you're going to pay inflated prices.

For $800, you're pretty to an iMac. Not sure what features the mini has over an iMac out of the box. Same software though...

The educator discount is not much, like $20.00. The pricing is $579.00 and $779.00 (for k12 educators).

[jsusanka]

I will never buy apple again.

they are a proprietary piece of crxx!

I can build one myself and be quite happy both in feeling and in the pocket book.

I just upgraded my motherboard to an AMD64 and it flies - I am very happy that I did it - it also runs 10 to 15 degrees cooler than my pentium 4 does and is a lot faster.

go amd!!

[Tsuroerusu]

I will never buy apple again.

they are a proprietary piece of crxx!

Well said jsusanka! We want openess!

I can build one myself and be quite happy both in feeling and in the pocket book.

Yeah, go look at what a PowerMac costs, and compare it with a highend AMD64 machine, in some cases you can triple the amount of RAM and get a lot more hard drive space for the same price. And judging by real world performance of the Intel iMacs, it seems the Intel iMacs are faster than a dual G5 tower, at least when it comes to launching application and scrolling through photos (Like butter? ).

I just upgraded my motherboard to an AMD64 and it flies - I am very happy that I did it - it also runs 10 to 15 degrees cooler than my pentium 4 does and is a lot faster.

go amd!!

I'm jaloux man, AMD64 rocks big time!

[mowestusa]

Guys, guys, guys,

I know this thread began with a cut against Linc who is having IRS refund dreams with a mac mini in the picture, but I don't think this is about the price. Dann makes a good point. If you just want to build a ATX or mini-ATX with a basic Mini-Tower case you can get a lot cheaper than a Mac Mini. Just looking at a Shuttle adds a lot to the price tag of equally configured computers. Mac Mini gives you silent computing, a really small case with specialized parts, and Apple software. Not very fair to compare a Mac Mini with a white box AMD with no included software.

All that aside, if I remember correctly, Linc wasn't interested in a Mac Mini because of performance or even form factor, but he would like to have a OS X machine which he could use for video editing, since this is one area where Linux is struggling right now. I think the better question might be, why not go with a Windows Box.

There seems to be a lot of talk about if you can't have Linux, or Linux can't do something then the next best thing is a Mac. Well, is that really true? Apple is proprietary to the core. Their hardware and software is proprietary. I have a friend who loves Linux, runs a myth box, a gentoo server, and a gentoo workstation, but he still has a Windows Box because he likes to easily edit videos and play games. Unfortanately, the proprietary OS still do somethings better than Linux. Personally, I haven't switched my company's laptop over to Linux because some of the hardware would become unusable with Linux on it. I don't want to loose the use of some of my ports and features on the laptop just so I can have Linux running on everything I use. I also run a program that has no equal in Linux, so I'm stuck having to use Windows everyday because I need that program every day. I also record a weekly radio program that is broadcast on the local radio station, and right now the best solution is a Windows XP workstation with Cool Edit. Moving to Audacity and Linux would cause troubles with the special audio card I use, and I would loose features that I use and love in Cool Edit.

Personally, I would love to live Windows free. However, I don't feel that living with Linux & Mac OS X is better than Linux & Windows XP. You need the best tool for the job. For Linc, I would suggest that he save some of his tax refund, get an $99 OEM Windows XP copy (by buying some internal component on Newegg with his Windows copy) for his new 3.0 Ghz workstation and dual boot. Then he can just cut over to Windows to edit a video with Moviemaker (simple, but works). However, if he really has fallen in love with imovie, then a Mac Mini is probably the way to go. It is about using the right tool, until Linux meets or exceeds the features and functions that we look for in our digital lifestyle. Linux is already a great server, perhaps it will catch up in the other areas too.

mowestusa

[Linc]

Guys, guys, guys,
..............
All that aside, if I remember correctly, Linc wasn't interested in a Mac Mini because of performance or even form factor, but he would like to have a OS X machine which he could use for video editing, since this is one area where Linux is struggling right now. I think the better question might be, why not go with a Windows Box.
mowestusa

Actually, I like the form factor, The price point for that form factor is good as well. The aopen and others aren't even on the market yet and are expected to be at least a third more pricey (for the same or less config?). Hard to say because they aren't supposed to be on the market for at least another month.

The other thing is I want to be able to piss around with OSX. After all, I *am* a unix junkie and I have used every unix I can find except OSX.

As for using windows, I gave that up when I decided I wanted stability and security. I am *not* above paying for software, but I insist that the software I pay for work and be worth the money.

[Tsuroerusu]

Actually, I like the form factor, The price point for that form factor is good as well. The aopen and others aren't even on the market yet and are expected to be at least a third more pricey (for the same or less config?). Hard to say because they aren't supposed to be on the market for at least another month.

If you're gonna spend 600 bucks, you may want to wait for a "revision b" remember, this is Apple's first Intel Mac mini, maybe you would want to wait for all the Apple zealots to buy it and run into potential issues before you do, because 600 bucks is a hell of a lot of money if you run into problems, that's a hell of a lot of pizza, cola and beer!