Washington Times: ‘Mac mini raises the bar for what a good, low-price computer can and should do’
Tuesday, February 08, 2005 - 09:25 PM EDT"The Mac Mini's size (think of a slightly overgrown CD-ROM burner) makes it great for small spaces. And, it's built to work with your existing keyboard, mouse and monitor; there's even an adapter for LCDs that have a VGA connector, more common among PC users than Mac ones. As has been widely reported, Apple has aimed the Mac Mini at Windows users who are tired of system crashes," Mark Kellner writes for The Washington Times in an article that's unfortunately headlined, "MacMini's value is in its size" which somehow achieves the dubious distinction of getting both the name of Apple's latest Mac and its value wrong. Although the mini's size is a "value," reading Kellner's full article doesn't lead us to think he believes that the size of the mini is its strongest point. We don't think Kellner wrote the headline; somebody else who didn't fully read Kellner's article must have slapped that mess above the article.
Kellner writes, "My test system arrived with a 40 GB hard disk drive, a 'combo drive' that plays DVD and CD discs and writes to blank CDs, and 512 megabytes of RAM. That extra 256 megabytes of RAM will push the $499 price up by $75. Adding, as Apple did, wireless connectors for Bluetooth devices such as a wireless keyboard and mouse, as well as wireless networking, or WiFi, tacks on another $129. All told, we are just a hair beyond $700 for a machine equipped as tested, sales tax not included."
"For the price, however, even this slightly upgraded Mac Mini is still a bargain compared with other Macs in years gone by. And don't forget that Apple's Mac OS X is a far, far more stable operating system than Windows XP, or that Apple includes a free copy of I Life '05, a suite of multimedia applications including ITunes, IPhoto, IMovie, IDVD and Garage Band with each model. That's a $79 value (if not more) right there," Kellner writes. "The Mac Mini raises the bar for what a good, low-price computer can and should do."
Full article here.
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My mini has been brilliant since I got it last Friday. My G3 400 MHz PowerBook is now in its carrying case, waiting to be sold to a friend for more than the price of my brand-new 17" Nu flat-panel display. Twice the HD space and about 5x the processing power... I'll take it!
[Half].. We haven't seen the [half] of what Steve Jobs has up his sleeve..