“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.
Honestly, I retouch photos, file my taxes, keep my accounts, create page layouts, surf and email on my Mac.
What am I missing Tom?
Agro? Oh, yeah, that!
So…how come the two hard-core PC sites, Anand Tech and Tom’s Hardware “get it”, and all the hack PC “journalists” don’t?
You really have to cut people some slack on the software comment. While 18,000 titles is a lot, it is a FACT that many many critical business software apps are not available on Mac. If they were, I’d have switched my company to a Mac network. In business, where legacy systems are a reality that must be dealt with, you don’t have unlimited options as to what software ot hardware you can run.
However, the writers SHOULD clearly state that for home users, where a FUNCTION is the key issue of software selection, there is no task/function for which there is not a great Mac app to do the job (most likely better than the windows version, even for MS Office)
Unless your talking custom applications for business. There are more than enough applications to run any business.
SAVE THE PLANET! USE LESS ELECTRICITY!! BUY A MAC MINI!!!
save the planet, save us from the middle east! I say it’s unamerican to waste energy with your pc. the real patriots use a Mac! (700%!)
M. T. MacPhee,
probably because these hardcore PC sites are used to really thoroughly stuff and put it through its paces and therefore detect things the others miss.
A related question: How come it takes a hardcore PC site to come up with some really good arguments for the Mini? I’ve never heard the low energy consumption mentioned before.
Good point, but I think you answered your own question. Tom’s and Anand’s are based on REAL expertise, not BS. Real experts appreciate Apple’s advances, while the hacks…well, there’s a reason we refer to them as hacks.
Cheers.
Now, if National Geographic would just come out with a street map for its TOPO! map series on the Mac!
“Good point, but I think you answered your own question. Tom’s and Anand’s are based on REAL expertise, not BS. Real experts appreciate Apple’s advances, while the hacks…well, there’s a reason we refer to them as hacks.
Cheers.”
OK, I’ll say it…the reason is that they’re morons. And quite possibly paid or ordered by paid superiors to spew their venom.
Tom and Anand are true professionals.
It won’t play my games. I can’t build my own from parts for half the price. It doesn’t come with anit virus and anti spyware software.
What good is it.
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Wow, 700%!!!! That number will come in handy.
RE: critic
The software you speak of are custom-made in house. By your reasoning, not much biotech software is available for Windows.
TH and other’s making the same tied argument are still under the impression that 14 different email applications is the standard measure of software availability.
I wonder how many Applications are multiple versions of the same App? How many greeting card programs do you need?
Granted there will always be more applications simply because of the marketshare but volume does not always denote quality.
How much $$ we lookin’ at annually with the difference in power consumption between the mini and the PC? Rough estimations of course.
It’s good to see sites like Tom’s Hardware covering the Mac now. One big advantage the PC side is that rigorous testing of software and equipment is de rigeur on that side of the fence. Most Mac websites and magazines review things much less rigorously – it’s mostly about look and feel, with a few benchmarks that take less than 5 minutes to run (SpeedMark or Xbench being the most common).
But it’s great that the Tom’s Hardware review is pointing out the energy costs of running a PC. 160 watts is a lot of energy to use, and a lot of the gaming PCs will burn up as much as 400 watts. That’s like getting to the major appliance level. It’s ridiculous, if not irresponsible – it’s like designing a toilet that flushes 10 gallons of water each time.
Wonder if the people who own 400 watt computers also drive massive SUV’s, thus chewing oil at an alarming rate as well??
Unfortunately, medical transcription, dictation, record-keeping, and image-management programs are not yet available for the Mac in any fashion that can match the PC counterparts, nor am I aware of anyone moving in that direction. That market is expanding enormously, but all research and development is directed at Windows-compatible solutions, and will be until there is a complete shift in the market (10-15 years from now, at best).
TB2:
Exact numbers will depend of course on your local energy prices.
Here in Vienna, a kWh averages to 6 Eurocent. If the computer is running 10 hrs/day, you’d save 2.50/month. If it is running 24/7 (webserver &c.), you’d save 6.00/month. If you turn it on only for one or two hours a day, the savings are hardly relevant, especially if you send it to sleep in the meantime instead of turning it off.
“RE: critic
The software you speak of are custom-made in house. By your reasoning, not much biotech software is available for Windows.
TH and other’s making the same tied argument are still under the impression that 14 different email applications is the standard measure of software availability.”
For most industries, you are working with “custom-made” software, as every industry has it’s own unique requirements. However, this does not imply custom-made for every individual company. If this was true, you could “custom-make” software for any platform you choose to run.
However, from a cost standpoint, I am stuck with windows because I DON’T want to pay to have to have a system custom programmed. It just so happens that nearly all of the middle market financial and ERP software is MS only, because MS bought everyone serving that market (Navision, Great Plains, Soloman).
Bleive me, I shopped around looking for a Mac alternative that could meet all of my company’s needs.
Just as you make the arguement that 14 different email applications isn’t a good measure of software availability (presumable on the basis that you only use on, and a lot of them suck anyway), it is also unreasonable to say that just because there is 1 email application then software is readily available.
Unfortunately, with a business application, you often don’t have the luxury of making compromises the way you can with a machine at home.
I am only writing this because I think that die-hard mac supporters grossly underestimate the difficulty of ever gaining significant market share in the enterprise environment and don’t truely understand hoow difficult it is for a business to switch platforms. Whether or not a Mac can run MS Office is not the only deciding factor.
The only problem with windows is there is no windows software
i tried to find software in many different stores, no luck
suprisingly the apple store had more then 2 windows titles
some stores i could not find any windows titles;
aquariums are us
bunnings hardware
macdonalds
tyremart
mills record bar
magic word human as in ‘human error’
Haruspex, how the hell did you work that out?
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did you use the same math when you bought your windows PC
a 100 watt computer uses 1 kilowatt every 10 hours
at 10c a KW that is
24c per day
$1.68 per week
$4.70 per month
$87.60 per year
a 20 watt computer uses 1 kilowatt every 50 hours
at 10c a KW that is 4.8c per day
33c per week
94c per month
$17.52 per year
a 400 watt ‘gaming machine’ would cost $350.40c per year
Imagine these costs when scaled to large corporate enviroments
a 17″ CRT monitor uses roughly 100 watts per hour
a 17″ flatscreen uses arount 20-30 watts per hour
energy prices vary from 6c to 18c per KW world wide
hope that helps TB
Great, great, article about what makes the mini so great.
Watts, watts, watts… and of course the OS.
RadioMoscow,
what’s wrong with my math? The numbers the article gave were 20W vs. 160W, thus saving 140W. Assuming a use of ten hours per day, this is:
140x10x30=42000Wh=42kWh per month,
which, at a price of 6c per kWh (I took the price here in Vienna, I don’t know any others), is 2.52 (these are, of course, Euros, and would be something like $3.20). If the computer is running round the clock, as a webserver would, it’s of course 2.4 times as much, or 6.05.
Anything wrong with that?