Finally an affordable Mac computer
 

Very cool. Still twice the price of the cheapest PC though.

Join the fun in this thread :-)

<<<-- Originally posted by Dylan Couper : Very cool. Still twice the price of the cheapest PC though. -->>>

True, but you might as well point out that Hyundai's cars are cheaper... (for a reason)

<<<-- Originally posted by Dylan Couper : Very cool. Still twice the price of the cheapest PC though. -->>>

Show me a $250 PC! You can't even get Windoze for that price!

<<<-- Originally posted by Rhett Allen : <<<-- Originally posted by Dylan Couper : Very cool. Still twice the price of the cheapest PC though. -->>>

Show me a $250 PC! You can't even get Windoze for that price! -->>>

No problem.
This is from an excellent brick 'n mortar store where I've been buying my PCs for the last 6 years.
http://www.rockpc.com/product_info.p...33db6c99c95e03

That's $326 Canadian dollars, which is about $265us.

Here's another computer store near me, which has poor service, but cheaper computers: They've got 4 under $350cdn.
http://www.atic.ca/index.php?page=showsys1

Did you think I was bluffing? :)

<<<-- Originally posted by briareus : <<<-- Originally posted by Dylan Couper : Very cool. Still twice the price of the cheapest PC though. -->>>

True, but you might as well point out that Hyundai's cars are cheaper... (for a reason) -->>>

We don't allow platform wars on DVinfo, so we'd appreciate if you don't try and start one.

Thanks.

Sorry Dylan, I didn't know you weren't looking for an equal quality and specification computer. I guess if you had to scrape the bottom of the barrel you theoretically "could" find something for almost half the price, but it's closer to half the machine. Sub-par processors, no combo-drives, no USB2, no Firewire, big ugly cases. Really not even close to the same. You want to see something (in my opinion the only thing) that even comes close to Apple in quality and style?

Point your browser to http://us.shuttle.com/

I have 2 of these and they are REALLY fine machines. One running Mandrake Linux 9.2 on a Athlon XP2100+ and the other Windows XP Pro SP2 on a Athlon XP2600+
Some of the newer models have Serial ATA RAID onboard... very nice!

Sorry Rhett, your sarcasm is lost on me.
I said 'twice the price of the cheapest PC", not my fault you didn't read what I said correctly.

I don't really care about the size of my PC, so the Shuttle PC doesn't do anything for me, although it is very pretty.

Sorry Dylan, my point was just that it really is a decent deal, especially for a Macintosh. It would serve them better to make the minimum installed RAM as 512MB because the OS likes RAM with all the sparkle turned on (dock effects and such) which it is by default. It's also difficult to find a computer with these exact specs for this price. I have heard many times how Macs are twice as much as PC's but in reality, they are rarely talking about similar spec'd machines, just the cheapest of each platform. That's almost like saying, why would I spend the money on an SGI Tezro Quad when I can get a Celeron PC at Walmart? They aren't quite the same. (that was a long shot I know, but you get the idea)

The thing I like about the Shuttle computers (besides the small and elegant design) is that they seem to have almost everything you could want (5.1 sound front and rear, USB2 front and rear, Firewire 400 front and rear, SVHS-out and sometimes even a built in multi card readers), but they are a little more expensive than just a plain-jane beige case. And I can stack 2 of them in the same space as 1 full size box.

Being so absolutely ignorant (and honest) about most things technical, I gotta thank you guys for the jousting.....expecially liked the claims by "shuttle" about their being quiet. Piqued my interest all-around. I learn ALOT here; not yet qualified to post; much.....

being able to run osx for $500 is kinda cool... and it has usb ports, so you do have a way to mix a firewire vid camera and an external usb hard drive, without sharing ports.

but the ancient ati radeon 9200 w/32mb of ram is a total joke, as was pointed out earlier... that video card won't begin to support wmv hd playback, so why bother including a 1920x1200 dvi port??

looks like stereo-only audio, if that, no multi-channel hardware, and no audio input capability.

it also uses a 2.5" 4200 rpm laptop hard drive, yuk! even if you use an external hdd for video, this turkey will be slow to operate.

it's a neat little toy to send away with your kids at college, but you can get a lot more expandability and h.p. for the same $$$ with a factory-refurb'ed dell or hp... or even a new emachines computer.

I think everyone misses the point with these platform wars. It's not about hardware, forget that. It's about software. So long as you're (even very) roughly the same in grunt and prices aren't in an order of magnitude higher then software is the decider.

Aaron

Clearly the Mac Mini was not designed as a platform for high end applications. It has a number of compromises in order to keep the cost down and also to avoid cannibalizing too many sales of Apple's more expensive products. However if it meets your needs then it's just one more option available to you.

This might not be a bad time to gently remind everybody of the DVinfo FAQ as well :-)

I think for the average home user, this would be a great computer. It does what most home users need their computer for (surfing, email, etc.). It's fairly cheap, sexy, easy to use, and you don't have to worry about spyware or viruses.

If you want to edit your home videos, you have iMovie which is *incredibly* easy to use. For home users that may be the number one feature they need in editing software. And it comes out of the big with firewire and software installed. Perhaps the one downside to the mac mini is the 40GB hard drive (can't hold much more than 2 hours of DV).

It's definitely a neat computer with potential uses for easy DV editing.

I'm seriously thinking about getting a couple, one for me, one for another member of the family.
This one has standard dvi interface so I can use my exisiting peripherals.

Here's a thought: the slow hard disk and lack of ports really hinder this little wonder from being very good for realtime work, but adding one or more of these to your existing setup and using VNC or console sharing hardware, perhaps it can make quite a cool rendering station, you can use it to render MPEG2 for your DVDs or install FCP on it and have it render stuff while you work on your main workstation.

<<<-- Originally posted by Dylan Couper :
We don't allow platform wars on DVinfo, so we'd appreciate if you don't try and start one.

Thanks. -->>>

Dylan, my point is that you're comparing apples and oranges. The Mac Mini is a small form factor budget system. SFF systems inherently have a price premium whether the form factor is something that you personally value or not. Price comparisons to larger systems are pointless (unless you want to compare to other MacOS systems).

Additionally initial build quality, design, service, and support are items that do matter to people.

As for the specs of the mini, are they really any worse than those of the G4 laptops? People have edited on them with Final Cut Pro, haven't they?

> As for the specs of the mini, are they really any worse
> than those of the G4 laptops? People have edited on them
> with Final Cut Pro, haven't they?

They seem similar, but the mini is more like an iBook. Aluminum Powerbook G4s have a PC card slot, which essentially is a PCI bus. You can add a Firewire card with one or more busses, thus you are not constrained to the single Firewire bus on the unit itself. This is important, because if you are running a disk intensive application like FCP and also using a DV camera through Firewire for real time video monitoring, you do not want to have both the camera and the hard disk on the same bus. There are even some firewire PC cards with multiple Firewire busses, thus you could even run a disk array on an Alum. PowerBook G4, and that is not possible wth the mini, just as it is not possible with the smaller PowerBooks or iBooks.

Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if someone finds a way to use the internal Airport bay to add storage. But that's for area 51 <grin>.

I think the key point made here is that it is, in fact, about the software (OSX, iLife, the "mac experience") and not hardware specs.

Prior to this option, there was no way to purchase a "basic Mac" at this price point unless you got used system somewhere like eBay. This model seems perfectly targeted at casual, (perhaps frustrated) PC users that would "like to try" a Mac, but didn't want to spend $1000 to get going, and also existing Mac users that would like to get additional machines for the house (get the kids off mom & dad's Mac, etc.). IMHO, this looks like a savey move on the part of Apple, releasing a product that probably had a relatively low R&D cost and can directly meet a segment of unfulfilled demand.
Another note is that Macs are still quite popular in schools and scientific R&D facilities. These minis will likely be a great option for upgrading or filling out computer labs.

I'm not sure that these would really be a viable option for "power" PC users, or even as render farms for mac users. The Mini will likely lack the power that an advanced PC user seeks. For render farming, most CGI and compositing apps (even Shake) will run on Linux, so you could get a new $550 Dell PowerEdge 3Ghz, 1Gig Ram, 80GigHD, Gigabit LAN, etc. and have loads of room for upgrades and expansion (even add a second processor). That doesn't address FCP, but I would guess that if you're far along enough to set up an FCP render farm, you could get a used G4 box somewhere for less than the Mini and set it up your self and likely get better performance than the laptop components in the Mini.

After my childehood Commodor 64, my computing life was dominated by Macs in the early 90's, working mainly on the MacII, MacIIfx, and smaller MacIIcx systems. I always loved those systems, but I've become a fairly entrenched PC user in the last decade.

I'd like to get back into Mac-land to work with Shake & FCP, but a Mac Mini just doesn't seem to be the path for that. One of the thinge is AM hoping for is that this price point will drive down the cost of older, used G4s and G4 Powerbooks. If so, I may pick up one of those to start dabbling with Macs in preparation for the day when I can finally justify/afford a Dual G5 loaded with FCP & Shake. :)

> That doesn't address FCP, but I would guess that if you're far along
> enough to set up an FCP render farm, you could get a used G4 box
> somewhere for less than the Mini and set it up your self and likely get
> better performance than the laptop components in the Mini.

Not in my market. The mini is so dramatically inexpensive that you can't get used macs about 1 GHz or dual 450 MHz for such a low price. Well at least not yet.

Then again, in my market the mini will end up costing a little more than in the US. Still, I would prefer buying one of those that a used machine, with no warranty and so on.

<<<-- Originally posted by briareus : <<<-- Originally posted by Dylan Couper :
We don't allow platform wars on DVinfo, so we'd appreciate if you don't try and start one.

Thanks. -->>>

Dylan, my point is that you're comparing apples and oranges. -->>>

I was referring to your comment about cheap cars. You know what I mean.