As a long time pc user / professional developer and recent purchaser of a mini-mac, its actually a decent spec budget machine once you include 512mb memory and higher speed cpu / 80gb drive - around $700.
Many budget PC machines also require many options to get them to a decent spec level and the included software on the mini-mac is comparable to XP pro rather than XP home edition.
The performance of the hardware / software combination is good for many everyday tasks (other than 3d gaming due to the choice of video) and the OS is full featured rather than budget quality.
The built in Safari browser is somewhat slow compared to IE on the PC or FireFox, but FireFox on Mac OS offers much better performance than Safari.
The OS has many nice ease of use features without all the trial editon versions found in typical budget PC configurations. Sme tasks such as file searching are much faster due to aggressive caching despite the relatively low spec 4200 pm drives (some machines have included 5200 drives but perhaps thats in the 40gb spec machine)
Graphics quality is superb for non gaming usage - very good font, visual presentation and document layout support. However it's a pity Apple did not incude a reasonable cost but more powerful 3d video configuraton such as the ATI 9600 mobile graphics chipset.
One disappointing area is the much touted stability - realistically Windows XP is very stable when using brand name hardware. While I have not noted any stability problems using the Mini-mac software, playing a scratched audio cd on the Mini-mac can result overall slowdown problems that reuire a reboot to sort out - I am new to the Mac so perhaps it's some setting that I need to configure.
While this is not going to replace my much higher spec ( and significantly more costly) XP configuration machines, its a good Mac OS / unix box in a nicely designed small form factor for the price.
The small and quiet form factor is a bonus if you want to have a machine for home entertainment integration or need to fit an additional machine in a small office or home space. While the shuttle pc form factor is small, it does not get as quiet and still requires much more space.
I am not going to weigh in on which OS is better but I am impressed with the overall Mac experience.
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As a long time pc user / professional developer and recent purchaser of a mini-mac, its actually a decent spec budget machine once you include 512mb memory and higher speed cpu / 80gb drive - around $700.
Many budget PC machines also require many options to get them to a decent spec level and the included software on the mini-mac is comparable to XP pro rather than XP home edition.
The performance of the hardware / software combination is good for many everyday tasks (other than 3d gaming due to the choice of video) and the OS is full featured rather than budget quality.
The built in Safari browser is somewhat slow compared to IE on the PC or FireFox, but FireFox on Mac OS offers much better performance than Safari.
The OS has many nice ease of use features without all the trial editon versions found in typical budget PC configurations. Sme tasks such as file searching are much faster due to aggressive caching despite the relatively low spec 4200 pm drives (some machines have included 5200 drives but perhaps thats in the 40gb spec machine)
Graphics quality is superb for non gaming usage - very good font, visual presentation and document layout support. However it's a pity Apple did not incude a reasonable cost but more powerful 3d video configuraton such as the ATI 9600 mobile graphics chipset.
One disappointing area is the much touted stability - realistically Windows XP is very stable when using brand name hardware. While I have not noted any stability problems using the Mini-mac software, playing a scratched audio cd on the Mini-mac can result overall slowdown problems that reuire a reboot to sort out - I am new to the Mac so perhaps it's some setting that I need to configure.
While this is not going to replace my much higher spec ( and significantly more costly) XP configuration machines, its a good Mac OS / unix box in a nicely designed small form factor for the price.
The small and quiet form factor is a bonus if you want to have a machine for home entertainment integration or need to fit an additional machine in a small office or home space. While the shuttle pc form factor is small, it does not get as quiet and still requires much more space.
I am not going to weigh in on which OS is better but I am impressed with the overall Mac experience.