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?

Comments

Nothing

[arson1]

what PC can I buy instead that will take up as little space and do as much for the same price (or less)?

Nothing comes to mind that can do as much for that price, but I'm sure someone will post all the components that they got for some price you'll never be able to find. They won't account for the OS price, the time spend building the computer, or the lack of any warranty.

Re:Nothing

[Golias]

My suspicion is that we will not see a "mini-killer" from the PC world for about six months to a year, if at all.

Apple thinks they are discovering a new market with the mini. If it turns out they are right, the Windows world will certainly rush to come up with something that reaches that market. Let's see what they could do:

The mini looks very similar to the eMac mobo, or possibly more like the G4 mobo with a single DIMM slot replacing the two SO-DIMM slots. The idea is, it's a laptop-class system in an ultra-small desktop box.

Now, Intel has been trying to find a way to compete with the lower heat and longer battery life of the iBook/Powerbook line for a long time, with very limited success, but they've recently gained a lot of traction with the new "Centrino" line of mobile processors.

Now suppose TI or Intel or some other company who has the capacity to do motherboard design comes out with a 5" x 5" Centrino mobo which uses standard-size memory.

They will probably use integrated video to save a few bucks, rather than patching on an ATI Mobility card the way Apple does, but nobody will care... this isn't a 1337 game system, it's an attempt at a mini killer. Integrated sound would also be likely.

It would probably support USB2 and VGA, and even hang on to PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, but scrap the parallel port and all but one serial port. Since they preserved the PS/2 Bus, it would cost almost nothing to bundle a keyboard and two-button mouse with it.

It would probably work with a standard Targus laptop power supply, and probably ship with a generic version of the same thing.

Instead of the laptop drive, make it a half-inch taller and put in a full-sized ATA HD.

Total cost to buy one of these units from HP, eMachines, or some other low-end company would be $349 and include a default installation of Windows XP Home Edition.

The problem is, hard-core PC users will have spent the better part of a year convincing themselves that such a design is strictly for those gay-ass Mac-heads, and spend their money on a conventional tower system.

The lack of DVI would make it less suitable for the entertainment system (most of your better projectors and HDTV systems now support DVI inputs), and the lack of Firewire or 802.11g/Bluetooth antennas makes it actually harder to expand than the mini, which (let's face it) is not a particularly flexible machine by PC user standards.

If they are really smart, they will spend the extra money to preserve that other staple of PC laptops: The PCMCIA slot. This will present the opportunity to add Firewire, wireless networking, and a few other things which mini users will already be taking for granted.

But like I said, nothing like this is likely to happen until after the industry witnesses the Mac mini selling like hotcakes, and then they will need a couple months of R&D to react.

There's actually a chance that the mini will turn out to be the "Mac cube" of 2005, in which case nobody will bother to copy it, and after it's discontinued used minis will sell for above the original retail price on eBay, just because it will become such a curious novelty of days gone by.

Hey! My Mom Can Build One!

[rueger]

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."

Cappuccino

[attaboy]

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. asp

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.

Re:Cappuccino

[iluvcapra]

I bought a fanless mini pc from CappuccinoPC.

I looked this up and it is a pretty awesome box for an embedded app. For someone who just wants a computer, I think it's probably not worth the hassle.

I get a total of $808 configured thus:

Pentium mobile at 650Mhz (the fastest they'll install for you)

PC133 256MB RAM

40GB 4200 RPM drive

Slot-loading combo drive

DOS-formatted drive (add $159 for XP Pro)

Integrated graphics, (no VRAM cited, so I assume this is shared.)

it does have PS/2 and serial ports, but only USB1.1. It includes a firewire.

I don't think this is the right machine for the application, and even though it is a much lesser machine than the Mini, it still is more expensive.

Cool box, just waiting for hacking, but not for the punters.

The couch

[hab136]

what PC can I buy instead that will take up as little space and do as much for the same price (or less)?

My wife asked me for one thing, how can I give her something else entirely and act all pompous like I went out of my way for her? I like sleeping on the couch.

Buy her what she wants!

[True Freak]

"When my wife asks for the 'cute little Mac', what PC can I buy instead"

Why would you want a PC when a Mac can be had for that low price. What does the PC have that the Mac doesn't?

Get the mac

[nickinho]

I really don't think its hygeinic to have windows in the kitchen, all those viruses and worms

;-)

Re:Sorry, has to be said

[Golias]

If OS X actually does scare away a smart guy like you, why not buy the Mac mini and then load Linux on it.

Seriously. If a Linux box is what you want, and you want it as small and quiet as the mini, than a mini running Debian or YDL is hands-down the cheapest way to do it.

However, before you reformat and pull out those Debian disks, I suggest you give OS X a brief trial.

- It's pre-loaded with the only browser that compares favorably with Mozila's offerings, and Mozila runs fine in OS X if that's your preference.

-Bring up the terminal window and you have access to a bash prompt.

- It has a remarkably simple e-mail app with thread tracking and spam filtering, but feel free to run command-prompt mail programs if you are a hard-core Linux/BSD CLI guy.

- It comes with Apache pre-installed. Launching httpd is as simple as clicking a box in the network preferences.

- The remote desktop tool works great, and also comes pre-installed. ssh is loaded up and ready if you prefer.

- The developer disk (which is not pre-loaded, but ships with every copy of OS X) contains an outstanding set of programming tools.

- Aqua is a more consistent and functional GUI than anything the free *nix world has ever offered. The Finder window in 10.3 or later alone is worth the price of admission.

- BBEdit, the preferred text editor of most Mac users who do dev work in text-based environments, is fairly cheap and far in advance of TextPad (the best inexpensive Windows-based text editor I've seen to date.) If you are a text-based programmer, start using BBEdit and you just might turn into a raving Mac Bigot. Plus, if you really love *nix tools, you can just run Emacs or vi.