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Based on my own experience, reflected in a number of anecdotes in support forums, I believe the Mac Mini (and Macbook Pro) is configured not to run the fan at all until the CPU temp hits 80 C (and thermal shutdown at 90), at which point you go from zero dB fan noise to turbine mode. A frequent mistake when opening up a Mini is to leave the fan control lead unplugged, causing the fan to go max rpm the moment power is reapplied.

A workaround is to have the fan spin at a lower rpm, and ramp up gradually as the temperature climbs, for which I use Fan Control. It allows you to set a number of fan speed profiles, and is free speech/beer. My Mini's fan is usually turning at 1500 rpm in a quiet home office, and is largely inaudible to me until it hits 3000. Using this tool in the tropics, I've never had the Core Solo system go beyond 70 C (and 4000 rpm), even while running Handbrake.

And on MacOS, all apps seem to prefer to be lumped in a completely disorganized pile in /Applications. Sure, you can rearrange them, but that rearrangement may break some apps, or at least cause issues with their updaters.

For this reason, I find it cumbersome to use a Mac without at least some sort of programs menu. Currently, I use a little app called MoofMenu, which does the trick.

In regards to the comment about Cisco's clunky VPN client, a better option can be found at http://www.lobotomo.com/products/IPSecuritas/

Admittedly I've only used this to connect to Sonicwall firewalls, but I found the interface clean and it worked for me where other VPN solutions wouldn't even connect.

People may be interested in what I believe is a better implementation:

Fan Control

It's also free and the source is available under the GPL.

Fan Control installs itself as a Mac OS X Preference Pane, and includes a daemon that always runs to apply the desired fan settings instead of requiring an interactive application to be open for the settings to be applied (as is the case with smcFanControl). It also shows a nice graph of the temperature thresholds, current fan speeds, current temperature, and allows you to modify upper and lower temperature thresholds as well, while still using Apple's model for automatic fan control.

Much as this tool is cool and much needed, the one at http://www.lobotomo.com/products/downloads/Fan%20C ontrol.zip is much better. Installs as a preference panel and allows you to set thresholds for temperature in your MBP. Doesn't really give direct fan control, but does give you "baseline" control and allows you to tune the thresholds built into the machine.

Granted, I've only been running it a day or so, but it's awesome. If I'm in a relatively noisy environment (coffee shop, etc) I can crank up the fans to make sure my mac's nice and cool. If I'm at home in the quiet I can crank it down.

Also, if you've installed the Processor Preference panel you can switch off the second core in the CPU allowing better battery runtime and get rid of the "CPU whine".

Hey, the MBP isn't perfect... it was and still is Apple's first attempt at an Intel notebook. The Macbook actually improved on the MBP in terms of "polish" because Apple had a chance to really work the kinks out of that one. The Merom based MBP's promise to be much more polished, and hopefully impressive.

However, despite all the misc problems I've had (nothing critical, just minor irritants), the initial quality out of the box and ongoing quality of the machine FAR exceed anything I could've gotten out of a Dell. The screen doesn't flex at all unless you put significant weight on it, the iSight works like a champ for web-camming with my friends... generally this is one really great piece of kit. It needs tweaking... so what? Do did my last Dell, HP, Toshiba, Sony etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum.

--Stuart

a cocoa frontend for the classic text adventure, "adventure" was released the other day. more info here