MAC mini

I was completely in love with the iMac G5 at the end of the review, and it really hurt to see it go away. I wanted to save up and buy one, but seriously, paying Rs. 87,800 for a non-upgradable machine that doesn't even have a DVD burner is just not something I would be proud of. There are a lot of points to argue on this fact, but still, Rs. 87,800. Think about that for a moment. The economy option from Apple was the eMac - a past-generation Mac with a 1 GHz G4 processor and CRT monitor, that was lower priced than the higher end iMac G5. Even this eMac costs a disorienting Rs. 50,000. Almost half the price and great performing, but still too much money.

Then came the Mac Mini - the entire machine from CPU to motherboard to graphics card to a CD-writer in a tiny box the size of a car CD player head unit. This Mac comes with no keyboard, mouse, or monitor, which is what helps pull down the cost to almost half that of the eMac - Rs. 30,000. This is the number that made me think again about buying a Mac. Let's see if it made me run to the Mac shop at the end of the review...

They sent us the lower-end Mini which has a 1.25 GHz PowerPC G4 CPU with 256 MB DDR333 SDRAM. The lowest end eMac comes with a 1 GHz G4 and the iMac G5 boasts a 1.6 GHz G5, while both ship with the same amount of memory (but DDR400 in the iMac). The Mac Mini has an ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card with 32 MB memory, the same one in the eMac. The iMac G5 has an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra. The Mac Mini stuffs in a 40 GB Ultra ATA HDD, once again just like the eMac. The iMac offers 80 GB. The Mac Mini comes with a Combo drive (CD Writer and DVD-ROM), but the lowest-end eMac only comes with a CD-ROM drive. The higher-end Mac Mini has a 1.42 GHz G4 CPU with an 80 GB HDD.

Specifications wise, the the Mac Mini is quite comparably up to par with the eMac. So it wouldn't be too off track to say that the Mac Mini is essentially an eMac without the monitor, keyboard and mouse.

he Combo Drive is sleek slot loading and is placed on the front side of the Mac Mini. The drive is a Matshita CW-8123, 24X Write, 16X Re-Write, 24X Read, and 8X DVD-ROM drive. No matter what you say, I feel 24X write is slow in this day.