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Non Apple Mac Mini form factor PC?

E

ezrem

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 14, 2000
Messages
225
Does anyone make anything the size (or close) of a Mac Mini, barebones with no OS, that runs Core Duo processors that is not also ridiculously expensive?

I want something Mac Mini sized, small, cool and quiet to sit on a shelf and run Windows XP RDP...so I don't want to pay for OS X when I'm not even going to use it.
 
The AOpen one is pretty decent, I think it's still going to end up costing me more than just buying a Mac mini, which is just really hard to believe.

I mean, if Apple can sell the thing for $600 with the OS, surely someone else has managed to undercut that price for similar hardware?

That mp3car stuff is nice, but again, more expensive. If I want to get something under $600 I have to really sacrifice performance.

The shuttle X100 is REALLY nice especially with the semi-discrete graphics, but again...ridiculous pricing. I could almost buy a new Thinkpad T60 for that kind of money.
 
The reason why no PC manufacturer has undercut Apple is because the big companies that could release one at a comparable price (Dell, IBM, etc) are uninterested, because not very many people want this small of a form factor. Most users would rather have a laptop.

Just get a C2D Mac and run Windows on it. :D The only disadvantage is the crappy graphics card on the Mac, but it is enough for most people...
 
I'd be interested to know how Vista works, too.

Someday I might want to use this thing with a monitor and peripherals, so knowing if it runs well/runs Aero would be good.
 
I'd think, in terms of Vista on a mac mini, that Aero would not jive. They only have 64MB of shared memory, and that's not going to be enough.
However, should you want to run it without Aero, it'd probably be fine...provided you upgrade to more than 512MB RAM.

Either way, going for something this small is going to involve a big performance hit.
(I still love tiny machines though.)
 
The_Todd said:
Have you checked out Mini-ITX or nano-ITX motherboards? There are a few barebones kits out there that might achieve what you're looking for, though they probably won't perform as fast as a mini. Also, honestly, OSX is handier than you think.

http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/spearhead/mini-itx/
Click to expand...

It's not that I don't think OSX is handy...it's that the things I want the machine for can't be done on OSX...so I don't think I need it.

Anyway, I ordered the mini because I'm sick and tired of looking. Nobody makes anything close to it for that price. I got it with 1gb ram, as I've read some reviews that say the GMA950 is good enough for Aero with 1gb RAM. We shall see.

It's not like I really NEED Vista OR Aero, but I figure if I can run them, why not?
 
I don't know if there'd be some kind of freaky hack (and perhaps only in windows) to try to up the amount of memory addressed by the card. I'd somehow doubt it, but it'd be interesting to look into.
Either way, enjoy the new toy.
 
hound said:
I'd think, in terms of Vista on a mac mini, that Aero would not jive. They only have 64MB of shared memory, and that's not going to be enough.
However, should you want to run it without Aero, it'd probably be fine...provided you upgrade to more than 512MB RAM.

Either way, going for something this small is going to involve a big performance hit.
(I still love tiny machines though.)
Click to expand...

64MB of shared memory for video is more than fine. I'm running Aero on a laptop, and it's only allocated 10MB of RAM to video.
 
I'm using a macbook with Vista Enterprise on it. Everything works great. I like it more than OS X. :eek:
 
You guys know that the Intel GMA950 in Mac Mini's, MacBooks, or any other Intel 945G/GM based chipset machine can allocate up to 224MB right?
 
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