Mac Mini Review

I originally wrote this review on the Mac Mini in April of 2006 on my old blog. I put it up again here because so many of my friends have mentioned recently that they want to buy a Mac Mini. You can save $30 off and get free shipping by purchasing it from the Amazon Affiliate link below:

The Apple Mac Mini is the coolest desktop computer ever made. The Mac Mini is definitely the shape of things to come. Basically Apple took a laptop, removed the screen and then took the bottom part and made it half as wide and deep, and twice as tall.

Before I go into detail about features, let's take a look at its tremendous size benefits over a standard PC tower. Keep in mind, that even thought the Mac Mini comes standard with the Apple Macintosh OS X operating system, it can also run Microsoft Windows XP at full speed.

In the image above you see the Mac Mini in juxtaposition to a CD. Essentially the Mac Mini is only as tall as 5 CD Jewel cases stacked on top of each other!!! It measures 6.5 inches wide by 6.5 inches deep by 2 inches tall.

I have to ask why anybody in their right mind would want to have a tower computer as pictured above when they could have a Mac Mini. I don't understand why anybody makes tower computers anymore? The mini is so small—it is amazing. It is also very, very quiet.

Just to make it clear, despite its diminutive size, the Mac Mini is a full-fledged, full-powered computer. The Mini comes in two versions but I would not recommend buying the more expensive one because you are paying two hundred more dollars for a slightly faster processor and slightly larger hard drive. In my opinion the more expensive model is a complete waste of money.

The Mac Mini has everything you could want built in, as you can see in the image above. It comes standard with Bluetooth and Wifi. It also comes standard with a remote control and a really cool Apple program named Front Row.

The Mac Mini as a Media Center

Front Row is a really cool user interface that is driven by remote control. Typically people sit in front of their computer with their eyes between 2 and 3 feet from the screen. The challenge is if you want to sit on the other side of the room, say 8 to 15 feet away from the screen, you can't see the screen. This is where Front Row comes in. Front Row has a user interface that is controlled with the remote and makes text super large, and thus really easy to read from across the room.

This opens up a whole new world of options for hooking up a Mac Mini to a TV, large LCD or plasma TV. With Front Row you can play slide shows from iPhoto, listen to music from iTunes, watch DVDs, and watch video that you took with your camcorder and stored on your computer or video that you download from the internet or iTunes music store.

The image above shows the Mac Mini hooked up to a Sony Bravia 40inch LCD TV. This ability really makes the Mac Mini a convergent product because the Mac Mini has a built in high quality progressive scan DVD player, which supports Dolby 5.1 output. Just hook up the Mac Mini to your home stereo system and you have a world class home theater—and don't forget the included remote controls the DVD player as well.

Also if you hook up the Mac Mini to a high definition LCD or Plasma you can watch slide shows in HD, which really looks stunning. If you can afford it, the ideal setup is to attach the Mac Mini to a 1080p LCD TV. Doing so gives you close to the equivalent of a 23 or 24 inch computer monitor–but much larger.

The Mac Mini also does Windows

But the fun does not stop there. The Newest Mac Mini with Intel processors can now run the Microsoft Windows XP operating system using Apple BootCamp. As a matter of fact, the Mac Mini seems to run XP better than most PCs.

If you want to run both Apple OS X and Windows XP at the same time you can do that as well with a $49 program named Parallels or a program named VMware Fusion. I would recommend that if you are serious about running both OSs in tanden you upgrade the RAM on the Mac Mini.

When you buy a Mac Mini it does not come with a monitor, keyboard or mouse, which in my mind is pretty cool. This way if you currently have an old Mac or PC, you simply swap out the old computer with a Mac Mini. No need to have to pay extra for a new keyboard, mouse and monitor.

You can have the Apple Mac Mini delivered to your home or office by just clicking the Amazon affiliate link below: