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PC Competition for the Mac mini?
Omega1045 asks: "When Apple announced their Mac mini last week for US$499, it caught my eye. Wanting to buy/build a small PC for my already cramped breakfast bar, I started pricing out similar PC hardware. The results startled me. It was very difficult to price a PC as small (6.5" x 6.5" x 2") as the Mac mini with comparable equipment cheaper than the Mac mini. Indeed, most of the configurations I found were more than the humble $499 of the Mac, often much more. To match price I often had to configure with a much bigger shuttle-style case. What computers are currently on the market to compete with this? When my wife asks for the 'cute little Mac', what PC can I buy instead that will take up as little space and do as much for the same price (or less)?" How long do you think it will take PC manufacturers to answer Apple's latest entry into the market?
Before all of the do-it-yourself system builders leap in, check out this post from Yesterday's discussion:
Leo McGarry said, and I can't think of a better summary,
"Howzabout you buy a computer instead of hand-carving your own microchips?
People love to talk about how you can build a top-flight desktop computer for $3.25 plus two subway tokens and some kind of weird-ass coin that you dug out of your sofa that's got "Røølï" written on it, but what they curiously omit is the fact that if you took all the time you'd spend gathering parts and assembling them and worked a minimum-wage job at some fast food place instead, you'd earn hundreds of dollars. So the real cost of this "It's Shake-n-Bake, and I helped!" special is, in fact, several times higher than the sum of the price tags on the hundreds of inscrutable parts that went into it.
People who say "I can build that for less" are either not bothering to account for their time or just flat-out lying, because the plain truth of the matter is that if they could, somebody already would have, and you'd be able to just go out to a 7-11 and buy the damn thing for half off with the purchase of a medium or large fountain drink."
Three Squirrels
I bought a fanless mini pc from CappuccinoPC. I don't see the exact model I purchased on their site, but it was close to this one:
http://www.cappuccinopc.com/slimpro-sp300-fanless
1.65"H x 5.75"W x 9.84"D
Slightly bigger than the mini-mac, and not as stylish.
They have a variety of other systems, some with fans, some without. Some of them come in a brushed silver color.
They have cases, barebones, and fully functional offerings. I bought a complete PC and it was under $600.
The facts have a liberal bias. --The Daily Show
I did not submit the "lond" part. I am a terrible speller, but that is not my mistake.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
Yes, the Mac mini is a small form factor, and that's part of what makes it so appealing. However, the specs are all far from top-of-the-line: an older processor, 256 MB RAM, 40 GB HD, etc. etc. This all helps keeps the cost down. Trying to build something specifications-equivalent in a PC involves buying a low-end processor and a small motherboard to match (not to mention the other components), and I don't know if it can be done. The integration that Apple can pull together with its hardware enables low-end but tightly integrated computers such as the Mac mini to exist. The componentization of the PC world does not lend itself to a build-it-yourself Mac mini equivalent.
The hard part is the mini-ITX board. A mere PC with comparable software stats can be had from Great Wall Computers for $199 at any Fry's- but it's not cute and it's not small (mini tower case).
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Firefox would include a speller checker
I use a great Firefox extension called Spellbound.
in order to get something of the same size, you're going to have to go mini itx. the majority of the mobos in that form factor will be hovering at or below 1ghz.
if you want something that will perform similarly, you'd have to go for something like this. that's $175 for the motherboard alone, and you're stuck with intel "extreme" gfx and the p4m processor that you'll have to buy separately.
your best shot might be the pentium-m (not p4m) mini-itx combos. those are quite a bit more expensive though (i can't find it on froogle, but the company's site says 674 euros if you buy 100 of them).
with the via mini-itx solutions, you'll get good price/size. with the p-m you'll get good performance/size. as far as i can tell, the mini is the only one where you'll get price/performance/size, which is why i pounced on it right as jobs announced it.
"what PC can I buy instead that will take up as little space and do as much for the same price (or less)?"
Mini-ITX is the way to go. You'll need a motherboard and CPU ($160), a good case and PSU ($70), a laptop HDD ($130 will get you a 60GB Seagate 5200rpm), an optical drive (DVD/CD-RW; $33) and some DDR ($80 for 512M).
Total: $473.
Compared to the Mac Mini:
+ More memory
+ Larger HDD
+ Twice as many USB ports
+ Parallel / Serial Ports
+ Free PCI Slot
+ Audio input
+ PS2 ports
+ Dual Ethernet
- Slower CPU
- Slightly Larger
- No FireWire
Add Linux or Windows.
I have 3 Macs: an 8-year-old PowerMac, a 3-year-old PowerMac, and a 2-year-old iBook. The two PowerMacs have been rock solid from day one. Sorry, no breakage stories there.
The iBook has had the famed logic board problem. Twice. Both times, took it to the nearest Apple Store (about 25 minutes away) and sent it in for repair. Back in a few days, with other, out-of-warranty items fixed too.
The iBook's hard drive died recently, out of warranty. I looked on the web, found a great site with all the instructions you could possibly want, and replaced it myself. I recently dropped the iBook and busted the display housing. Opened it up and fixed that too.
Wanna upgrade? Standard parts. Need to pop open your Mac mini? Check apple.slashdot.org, there's a new article with a link to a video. Sounds promising.
Why the phobia about trying something new? You're a geek, aren't you? You should be salivating over the prospect of a new OS to explore. And really you'll find that it's a familiar friend (unix) with all kinds of crazy cool stuff on top.
Plus - your wife is asking for it right? Why piss her off and get her something YOU wanted. Just get her what SHE wanted! You'll fall in love with it too. Sheesh.
How about just installing the Windows Remote Desktop Client for Mac and remote onto your headless PC? I went tried this out at a local Mac store this past weekend -- the guy walking the floor did a double take when he saw that I had a full Windows desktop (my machine at home) running on a PowerBook... apparently he was not aware of this functionalilty.
I would say that it's even less an issue of the Video RAM, it's the Video GPU itself, it's a Radeon 9200 Mobility, not even with 512MB of Video RAM would it run Doom 3 at any sort of playable state (that didn't look at horrible).
Apple systems are a bit different from Windows machines when it comes to megahertz. OS X (recent versions at least. anything 10.2 or later, with the Mac Mini shipping with 10.3) runs suprisingly well on 'older' hardware. OS X will run just fine on a 500mhz mac with 512mb of ram (128 is minimum, but bump it anyway, trust me). a 1ghz system with at least 512mb is a field day for OS X. My powerbook was top-of-the-line one and a half years ago, with 1 ghz G4, 1gig ram, and a 60 gig HD. That hardware is perfectly capable of doing some of those awesome tricks like having a bunch of hardcore apps running at a time. The final answer is just about any program you throw at it will run excellent, except 'pro' apps, where performance will be acceptable (not great, but if you want to, you can). Example: Video editing with iMovie is WELL within it's abilities, and the step-ups of Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express should move along pretty quick too ...Assuming you do get a ram bump, which I HIGHLY recommend. Other than that, this looks to be a nonissue.
BBEdit, the preferred text editor of most Mac users who do dev work in text-based environments, is fairly cheap
One better: TextWranger -- basically BBEdit without a few things -- is now free.
I like my women like my coffee... pale and bitter.
Woops, guess you're right. Oh well. He could play Halo or UT2k4, though. I think it's worth noting that the Mac mini has a far better graphics chipset than just about any $500 PC.
OS X doesn't support virtual desktops out of the box, but there are plenty of utilities that do a great job. Desktop Manager is free and probably the best of the bunch.
On the topic of little things OS X is missing, Quicksilver is a great application launcher that makes the dock all but obsolete.
Really?
I have a laptop PC with a 2.4Ghz processor and a Geforce 4 Ti Mobile GPu. Doom 3 runs like ass.
I've ordered a Mac Mini tho (not to play doom on), and I'd very surprised and happy if it could play Doom 3. But if it can: why, on such low specs?
I just looked.
First of all, it's a LOT bigger than the mini. It's basically a 3/4 sized pizza box which you are supposed to hide behind your LCD.
No specs listed on if it's quieter, but I'm betting the fan is louder than 22 db when in operation.
That said, going the cheaper "small business" route, I chose the slowest Celeron CPU offered, and spec'd one to match the base-model mini (256 MB, 40 GB HD, no frills...)
In exchange for giving up Firewire, USB2, quiet operation, OS X (going with XP instead), I get a slightly slower computer for...
$1137
Wow. I could buy two minis at that price, and even bump one of them up to 512 MB with Apple's overpriced OEM memory.
What a deal!
This thing is not an expensive answer to the mini, it's a cheap-ish answer to the G5 iMac. (and a lame one, at that.)
http://logisysus.com/catalog/default.php?cPath=74
http://www.boldata.com/html/minipc.cfm
http://www.cappuccinopc.com/default.asp
those are from the first page of a google search
The Mac Mini has a switching PSU; 100-240VAC, 50-60Hz.
Ok if your going get into Labor rates for car techs and not talk about computers you should get your info straight. 1. tech's don't make 80 an hour their company does they normally make from 15 to 30 an hour depending on the car line and their experence. Their company doesn't have a pure profit on the rest of the money they must also pay the service writer, the cashier, the porters and detailers + they have massive insurance, equipment, education/training and ult. cost. Most dealership shop barely break even or post a very very small profit. Car dealers make money selling cars not on their shops. 2. If you are a programmer making $15 - $30 you can pretty much bet your company is charging their customers quite a bit more for your time. 3. You get to work in a nice office, and i bet your not worrying about increased cancer/health risks found in mech. tech. due to their work environment.Your lose of hearing from impact tools and when was the last time you lost a finger due to kernal failure? Or just came home with your hands cut up by the dread blue screen of death. No? That hasn't happened, well techs burn, shock, bruise and cut themselves all the time, next time take a look at their hands - I think you'd perfer you small chance of corp. tunnel to their almost daily dose of abuse. 4. Ya on some jobs they might get the job done in under the standard time and make a little extra money but that's been going down for years and they don't get paid a cent for all the time their filling out paperwork or waiting for the parts guy to pull what they need. Also there are jobs that eat their ass where they get paid much less then they put in. Plus the real bitch is if their dealership doesn't bring in enough work - they're still required to put in their 8 - 10 hour days but they might just get paid 2 or 3 hours for that day. They also have some of the worst benifits and vacation policies. How would you like to spend 50 hours at work but come home with a check for 20 or 30, oh and one of the worst times of year is right before christmas. Anyway I know you guys aren't trying to put down techs really, it's just a sore place for me. Believe me techs don't have it easy - most customers really don't understand or appreciate their techs and think their just trying to screw them but most of them are really good people. Ya there are hacks but there are sucky people in every industry - I mean just look at M$. ;) Sorry to be off topic.
The costs should include software - I think I'm right in saying that the mini comes with iLife, i.e. video editing, photo editing, iTunes and DVD authoring (with the superdrive). If you're into these consumer apps, neither Linux or Windows come anywhere close to their functionality, reliability and ease of use.
See here for a toaster sized box running Linux,. html
http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS5621664618
$160.
geez. whiz.
They Live, We Sleep
In my experience with women (I'm not married, hence the 911 outside, but have a girlfriend)
GIVE THEM WHAT THEY ASK FOR.
If she wants the cute little mini-me apple thing, get her exactly that one.
You are wasting your time fiddling around with PC's trying to get the same configuration in the same package, when that's not what she's asked for. She'll be disappointed and think you're not listening, which you're not.
It's like she's asking for a diamond necklace and you show up with rocks.
Do yourself a favor, get the mini-me and get the "high-end" one. You position youself that was as not only getting her what she wanted, but going the extra mile and getting the best one.
Life will be soooo much easier, you won't spend hours on the phone sourcing parts, worrying about heat, fiddling with installs, the mac will just work and look good while it's working.
Style my friend, style.
On my blog I have posted this:
In my first Build Challenge I set forth a challenge to build a x86 PC to compete with the Mac mini. I didn't get any great systems listed but we did have a good laugh about how sexy Macs are.
I've posted on other sites including The Tech Report and most of the responses tried to compare full sized x86 PC to the mini. I've said how this is crazy. I just want to compare the mini with SFF x86 systems.
That begs the question just what is a SFF system? I can't find a good definition on the web so I'll set my own.
SFF acronym for Small Form Factor: Computer system that is smaller than 925 cubic inches.
SFF system range greatly in size from the Shuttle SB59P at 915 cubic inches to the Cappuccino EZ3 at 63 cubic inches. The Mac mini is on the smaller side at 84.5 cubic inches. The price range also varies greatly as do performance and style. Lets leave out performance since it isn't really an issue for most people in our post megahertz era.
To narrow the challenge follow these criteria:
Size: Must be under 925 cubic inches
Price: Must be under $1200
Style: Must not be ugly
I guess we could argue that last one but I'll accept anything that at least tries to be attractive. Also it has to be ordered built and tested with Windows. Most people don't want to build their own systems and since you can't with the Mac mini it wouldn't be fair to compare it to bare bones systems. Also the systems should match the mini's configuration: 256MB RAM/40GB Hard Drive/Combo Drive.
No single SFF x86 PC meets the mini on all the factors so I'll compare it to three:
Cappuccino EZ3
Size: 63 cubic inches
Price: $823
Style: 5 out 10
Even smaller than the mini. But more expensive and close to ugly.
Shuttle L 5600h
Size: 680 cubic inches
Price: $515
Style: 7 out of 10
Much bigger than the mini. But larger hard drive by default.
Hush Mini ITX
Size: 452 cubic inches
Price: $1159
Style: 9 out of 10
Great looks. But still bigger and way more expensive.
Compare these to the:
Mac mini
Size: 84.5 cubic inches
Price $499
Styles 9 out of 10
And I hope you can see why the Mac mini is the best system overall and the only one that is more than the sum of it's parts. Now for some the fact that it doesn't run Windows means they would never choose it. For others the fact that these systems run Windows means they would never choose them. Let's not have any flame wars over the OS. And I'm leaving out the bundled software that comes with the mini as a factor in the price. But it is a nice plus that you get iLife, iWorks, and Appleworks.
Please post any systems that are better than the three I've listed that meet my criteria.