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Product: Desktop computer

Developer: Apple

System Specs: 1.25GHz PowerPC G4, 256MB DDR333 SDRAM, ATI Radeon 9200 (32MB DDR), 40GB Ultra ATA hard drive, Combo CD/DVD drive, DVI or VGA output

Retail Price: $499.00

Availability: Out now

Product Page: www.apple.com/macmini/

From a price/performance perspective, the Mac mini is an amazing computer; maybe the most amazing computer Apple's ever made. It's like a full-featured demo of a Mac: giving you access to all the features, and maybe leaving you hungrier for more. Picture a tray of minis at a supermarket, with little toothpicks sticking out of them.

It's impossible not to be amazed by the design of the thing. The clean lines and compact size have astonished everyone I've shown it to, PC people and Mac users alike. They're even more astonished when I tell them the feature set: a built-in CD/DVD burner, iLife '05, and connectivity for all their digital cameras and camcorders. For PC users, you can see the wheels turning in their heads: should I get one of these?

So, I decided to attack the mini review from two angles: one as myself, Mac user and international jet-set playboy, and another from the perspective of a PC user switching over to Macintosh, using existing equipment.

Set Up: Both sides had their difficulties with set up. First off, as a Mac user, I don't have a spare DVI or VGA monitor lying about. Consumer-level Macs have been coming as all-in-one systems for a long time, and if you have such an external monitor on hand, chances are that the Mac you're upgrading from was pretty powerful for its time, so I'm not sure that the Mac mini would meet your modern computing needs.

On the PC side, though, I was able to acquire both a newer Dell flat-panel DVI monitor and a Packard Bell CRT VGA monitor that had to be over five years old, if not more. The mini worked fine with both monitors, detecting them at start-up and establishing a good "native" setup for them in its Displays control panel. The DVI was obviously a lot sharper than the VGA, but that's something to keep in mind if you're thinking about getting a mini: the best video card in the world (and the Radeon 9200, while capable, is hardly that) won't help a crap monitor. And of course, if you add in the cost of buying a new monitor, the actual cost of ownership of the mini loses some of its glamour. Better to get an eMac, which gives you more expandability, a monitor, plus a keyboard and mouse.

Speaking of which, I was stunned at how difficult it was to find a USB mouse from a PC setup. On two of the systems from which I was "upgrading," I found USB keyboards, no problem, but both also had PS/2 mice. Of course, they also had diskette drives, so maybe I shouldn't be too surprised.

Integration: Here, again, a mix of the Mac's amazing ease-of-use, along with awkward problems."

At home, my Mac network is wireless. But since the mini I was sent for review didn't have the optional Airport Extreme card installed, that wasn't an option. Granted, if I'd been ordering this for myself, I'd have that option installed, but it underlines one of the big problems with mini ownership: limited expandability. Unless you're willing to void your warranty and crack the sucker open (which, of course, a lot of people are doing), you have to decide when you buy the computer what options you want. And if you find out later that you want/need more, and you're not comfortable with cracking the shell, you're out of luck unless you want to send it off.

One way I did find the mini extremely useful, though, was as an external hard disk for my Powerbook. Just hook up the Firewire, start the mini up in Target Disk Mode, and boom: external storage and another Superdrive to burn to (useful if you have an application such as Dragon Burn that can take advantage of multiple burners). Plus the mini's compact design make it easy to take along on the road.

On the PC side, though, the mini shone. It was a simple matter of disconnecting the Ethernet cable from the PC box and hooking it up to the Mac, which found the network and connected instantly. Same for the Dell keyboard and Logitech mouse. There was no rearranging of the setup necessary, other than rerouting where all the cables ran to.

In fact, the only snarl I had was due to a design problem with the Mac mini itself. You see, the power supply is a small, oval-shaped plug about the size of a USB port. When you slide the plug in, it holds, but it's not snug at all. The mini was sitting on the desktop, next to the monitor, and when I moved it slightly, the plug fell out. A word to the wise: if you're going to make a computer that fits in the palm of your hand, you've got to expect people to move it about, or jostle it from time to time.

Performance: As a Mac power user, I found the Mac mini to be a useful, if limited consumer-level computer. Which is, of course, what it is. But after the third time of switching the printer for the digital camera on the sole available USB port (the other being used by the keyboard), I got a little frustrated. And if you're using all the features of iLife '05, that 40 GB hard drive is going to fill up quickly.

From an (imagined) PC perspective, the mini is a marvel of integration. I'm still impressed by the ability to burn playable DVDs, and the iLife suite is a perfect compliment to that, making your own songs, movies, and picture disks that are created through a simple, easy-to-understand interface.

It's just too bad that Apple decided to skimp on the work functions, including AppleWorks instead of iWork on the disk. You may write this off to personal prejudice, however, because I simply don't like the way AppleWorks looks. I think it's a hideously designed program that's desperately in need of overhaul/execution.

But if whether you're a user of PCs or Macs, 256MB is simply too little RAM, especially if you're going to be working with GarageBand, iMovie and iPhoto. These are all graphic-intensive programs (even GarageBand, while rendering the songs as you assemble them), and 256MB is going to choke the system. Of course, you can buy more RAM. When you order it. And at Apple's outrageous RAM prices.

The Mac mini was a smart thing for Apple to do. In the first place, it shut up all the people who said Macs are too expensive. In the second, the geek community has really taken a shine to the little feller, cracking them open like a new box of Tinker Toys and figuring out how to get it to do what it was never meant to do. And third, it gave people who don't need to render DNA molecules on the fly a way to find out if the Mac OS is for them, along with a lot of possibilities, with just enough power to make them work.

People who just want a computer to noodle with may love it. But people who want to take advantage of the full potential of OS X are going to be left hungry for more.

And maybe that was the plan all along.

Strengths: Combo drive. iLife '05. Integrates well into PC-friendly environments. Very, very cool. Good price/performance.

Weaknesses: Very limited expandability. You will quickly discover its limits. Limited value to existing Mac users.

Buy the Mac mini

Bill's been using Macs since the late 80s. When he's not making smartass remarks to amuse Kirk Hiner, he enjoys fighting for the user.