“Its compact size, cool yet simple design and its attractive price set the Apple Mac mini apart from anything the competition has to offer,” Frank Völkel writes for Tom’s Hardware.

“A problem that has plagued the x86-based Windows world of late is that of high power requirements. This has been especially true of systems based on current Intel processors, a fact we already covered extensively in previous articles,” Völkel writes. “During testing, our Mac mini was able to shine in this respect, drawing a mere 20 watts of power; during DVD playback, this rose to only 28 W. In contrast, the power requirements of current Intel-based PC systems is anything but reasonable – under comparable conditions, these power-hungry machines draw up to 160 W, as tests in our THG lab have shown.”

Völkel writes, “Strictly speaking, the Intel system’s 700% higher power draw (!!!) is not justifiable, considering today’s energy costs. And users should definitely be considering the energy cost to run a computer, not just looking at the price tag on the machine. Corporate users, especially, need to think about long-term total cost of ownership (TCO).”

“The bottom line is that in many respects, Apple’s Mac mini is a real trend-setter in the small computer market. The only downside is that there are many fewer applications for the Mac than there are in the Windows world. Office tasks, however, can be just as easily and readily be accomplished on the Mac mini – indeed, MS Office is available for the Mac platform, as are other office suites. Meanwhile, Mac OS X 10.3 offers much greater ease of use than Windows XP,” Völkel writes.

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Note: There are over 18,000 Macintosh applications. Take a week to learn each one and you’ll be done about 346 years, during which time you’ll likely have died at some point, all while untold millions of additional new Mac applications will have been created.