Any alternative yet to the Mac Mini?

[uberlad]

I find myself terribly tempted by the under-the-tv loveliness of the Mac Mini as a foil to my new 30" LCD TV for viewing all the American TV that the internet records for me. As well as offering handy visualisation for mp3s during parties.

It's been out for a few months now - have any of the bandwagon jumpers managed to get anything remotely as cute as it to market? I can get a pretty powerful EPIA board in a box that's pretty much the size of the Mac but it won't have DVI output, which will waste the lovely DVI plug on the TV.

I don't have any real problem with buying the Mac, but I'd prefer it if it was a more than one horse race.

Uberlad

[Nowhere]

I'd definetely go find mini if I could afford it...(well...I can, but I'd have to get rid of pc; but at least it's remotely possible that I'll be able to afford it in not so distant future). I'd say go for it.
Just wait until OS X Tiger will be available (or at least until Apple will give you assurance of free upgrade - perhaps they're doing this already)

[Sasq]

29th tiger release date last i checked.

[uberlad]

I will be able to afford once my house sells. I promised myself one if the house went for £115k+ and the valuations have all suggested putting it on the market at £118+ (one lot suggested £130k ) so I should easily get that.

I'm allowed to cream a little off the top of that before I have to buy a new house. Although I might stick the Mac on the interest free credit card once my sale is agreed. I cannot resist the shiny.

Any idea how long it takes Apple to start bundling products with the new version of OS-X?

A quick look around this morning has shown that there are Pentium M Mini-ITX board with DVI output but the motherboard is £150+ and the processor is £150+. It will easily cost more than the Mac once I've found a wireless mini PCI card for it and stuck in Hd and DVD drive. Even if I use a less than completely legal version of Windows.

Oh well, looks like I've talked myself into it Although any alternatives to investigate would still be appreciated.

Uberlad

[KeiFront]

Every Mac purchased after 12 April is eligible to a free Tiger upgrade.

[Kurt]

Not sure how this will affect the Mac Mini...it's already so underspecced...

The bare minimum it needs is a doubling of the RAM (to 512MB) and a DVDRW instead of the combo drive. Then a new 2.5" 7200rpm HDD (Hitachi is the only ones there 40 or 60GB).

Unless it's your 2nd PC and you do all the real work on the 1st.

[uberlad]

Yeah, I can't see the Mini being a first PC, unless you load it out with a huge amount of stuff. As a Media Centre / Web browser to plug into the TV it's ideal.

So Tiger doesn't bring anything glorious to the table?

Uberlad

[Nowhere]

Not sure how this will affect the Mac Mini...it's already so underspecced...
.

You mean Tiger? OS X has been, historically, faster than previuos version on the same hardware.

(the only problem with Mini I see is that its 32MB of video ram might not allow for full acceleration of GUI in hardware that Tiger will bring - but it will run better than Panther anyway)

[Nowhere]

Yeah, I can't see the Mini being a first PC, unless you load it out with a huge amount of stuff. As a Media Centre / Web browser to plug into the TV it's ideal.

So Tiger doesn't bring anything glorious to the table?

Uberlad

Somehow...I can (work pc; of course 512MB is a must, or better even more)
And Tiger, as pointed above, will probably bring speed improvements and many new features (list should be on apple site...but let's put it this way: every time Apple brings out new OSX, MS moves Longorn futher to the future )

[Kurt]

And as you yourself pointed out, it doesn't have enough video RAM to accelerate OS X already sluggish GUI

[Nowhere]

Sluggish...dunno; I tried doing the expose thing on win2k/XP.
Now THAT's sluggish

[Kurt]

Nah, you really need a dual 2.5+ GHz machine to run it in an OK fashion...

[uberlad]

Just to resurrect this thread in case anyone cared about alternatives to the tiny cute desirable device....

I've been looking around on VIA's site and all their recent EPIA boards have an LVDS socket conected to the gfx chip.

According to them they supply a daughterboard that converts this to a DVI connector allowing me to use an EPIA-based mini machine with my LCD TV without compromising on image quality.

I was almost tempted by this (as it would be quite a bit cheaper than the Mac and have hardware acceleration of MPEG video) until a quick search around the internet suggested that nowhere actually sells the damned daughterboards. Bang goes that idea.

Now if only someone would make an offer on my house so that I can buy the Mac.......

Uberlad

[Nowhere]

Since mini has radeon inside I would be surprised if it didn't have DVD acceleration (c'mon, Apple must have thought about that)

[UtwigMU]

What people see in mini, except ability to run OSX?
- no expansion
- too little ports for external expansion
- external expansion defeats the purpopse of mini
- it's not cheap for it's performance
- laptop HDD

Especially for video/HTPC stuff - get a nice Antec or Coolermaster media oriented case that goes nicely along your AV rack or some off the shelf unit that actually has stuff like more than 1 painfully slow laptop HDD and TV tuners.

SFF: mini - I'd have to put it on a desk or it would be kind of inconvenient to reach to the floor to insert CD-ROM. The 62 cm Chieftec Dragon is equally convenient - takes 0 desk space and CD-ROMs are just bellow desk level.

OS-X - you don't have to be masochist and run ugly Ubuntu if you hate Windows. You can just as well install something with more polished UI and system sounds. KDE 3.4 has experimental transparency, KDE 4 will use transparency for UI.


If I had the thing and money for SFF and butique computers I'd much rather have Iwill Zmaxdp (dual Opteron SFF) you actually get some performance and more expandability than Powermac tower.