Mac Mini $499.00

[Vasp]

* 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
* 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache running 1:1 with processor speed
* 1066MHz frontside bus
* 2GB of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM; two SO-DIMM slots support up to 4GB
* GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main
* 160GB Serial ATA hard disk drive5

Need I say more.

Never been at this price before

http://www.frys.com/product/6072798

Next lowest is $579 from amazon

No tax in most states.

shipping to VA was $7.xx

 

[Stas]

Crappy product, but a good price.

 

[Kaido]

Crappy product, but a good price.

Eh? I've owned several Mini's and they've all been fantastic! Small, cute, quiet, and your choice of Mac or Windows OS. Fabulous price!

 

[OBLAMA2009]

HMMM, i wonder, should i get this or should i take my $500 and build a windows i7.....

 

[OctaneZ]

It appears to be the Late 2009 refresh, I think it is model MC238LL/A, regular price is $599.

 

[Cheesetogo]

So aside from being small and running OSX, does this have any real advantages? Because $500 is a lot for some pretty crappy hardware.

 

[exar333]

I am not a big Mac fan, but my SO has one of these and it's pretty slick. Sure, you don't get amazing hardware for the price, but without spending $2500+ on a Mac pro, its the only Mac where you can furnish all your own peripherals including a monitor(s). If OSX is your thing, this is great and you can just connect it to your existing monitor(s) and use them. It's very compact and easy to install/move.

 

[DaveSimmons]

You are paying for a tiny, quiet design with a mix of custom and laptop parts. No "crappy" parts though.

Of course a mATX build with off-the-shelf desktop parts from newegg would offer better specs, but the case will probably be 5-10 times as big.

 

[OctaneZ]

OOS so we can all move along now

 

[sanzen07]

Good deal if you're in the market for one....

But horribly underpowered for anyone who does anything more than browse the web, watch YouTube videos, or checks e-mail.

 

[TuxDave]

Good deal if you're in the market for one....

But horribly underpowered for anyone who does anything more than browse the web, watch YouTube videos, or checks e-mail.

What, TurboTax runs slowly?

 

[VinylxScratches]

Crappy product, but a good price.

Negative.

 

[alkemyst]

The 2.26 and 2.53 macs are plenty fast...my wife does PSE 6.0 on her's and dual runs windows 7 and Snowleopard in coherence mode.

It's awesome.

I still like my XP (I'd go to Win7 if all my hardware was compatible though)...but the only people I know bashing Mac's today are the ones that don't know how to use them or experienced them 10 years ago.

 

[VinylxScratches]

The 2.26 and 2.53 macs are plenty fast...my wife does PSE 6.0 on her's and dual runs windows 7 and Snowleopard in coherence mode.

It's awesome.

I still like my XP (I'd go to Win7 if all my hardware was compatible though)...but the only people I know bashing Mac's today are the ones that don't know how to use them or experienced them 10 years ago.

Most of them never used them and value specs over what you actually do on the a computer.

 

[Plester]

Core2 running at or above 2.26ghz is a very quick chip by any standards. Just because insanely fast chips are now available in the form of Core i series does not make Core2 'only good for web browsing'.

 

[alkemyst]

Yeah like this retiree I know that has some 3.6 quad core with a 280 video card and 16MB of ram or some other ungodly specs because he has money and remembers in the day a good PC was $4000.

 

[you2]

Well... this is obviously not a game system so one can forgive the graphics card; but I/O tends to be a bottleneck and 5400rpm drive bites. They obviously do this to reduce heat. Anyways while this pc is great for a bunch of stuff (word processing, web stuff and so forth) I would avoid it for large objects (photo editing and such) where disk i/o can be annoying.

Core2 running at or above 2.26ghz is a very quick chip by any standards. Just because insanely fast chips are now available in the form of Core i series does not make Core2 'only good for web browsing'.

 

[rickon66]

Yeah like this retiree I know that has some 3.6 quad core with a 280 video card and 16MB of ram or some other ungodly specs because he has money and remembers in the day a good PC was $4000.

Hey! Your geting a little personal now. I'm a 60+ semi-retired/unemployeed without a lot of money, but my Q6600 @3.2 with an ATI 5850 gets my email pretty quick. LOL

 

[JeffS]

I have a 2.0 GHz Mac Mini with 3 GB of RAM, and I initially found it extremely sluggish. It turns out that I'm just spoiled by SSDs these days. After I installed an X25-M, it's as fast as my Core i7 920 for day-to-day activities. Of course, that SSD makes the Mini a ~$700 machine. The thing I love about the Mini is that it only burns 14 watts at idle- it makes a great development web server and I never feel guilty about leaving it awake, unlike my i7 box which burns about 160 W at idle. The Mini literally sits on top of my mid-ATX i7 case, so it takes up no desk or floor space. And OS X is great for a Unix-based OS, although I have to say I prefer Win7.

 

[bloodthirster]

Does this come with Mouse and keyboard?