I was parusing through the Clearance section on the apple.com web site when I came accross a Duel-Core Mac Mini for under $500.00.  I have always been a bit skeptical of the Mac Mini due to price.  The iMac includes Apple’s most incredible monitor, camera, keyboard, mouse, etc.  But, I thought what the heck, I have a keyboard from my old iMac G3 and a Microsoft Mouse….let’s go for it.  My real excuse was to replace my aging Dell Mini Tower under my desk that was running Windows XP.

I order the Mini, and it arrives in two days. (They did forget to include the power cable, but sent one to me overnight).  I proceeded to hook the mini up to my old $100 LCD Acer 20″ Monitor.  Surprisingly, the resolution was at 1600×900 and looked very clear.  I did calibrate the monitor with Apple’s built in settings, which indeed did help a lot.  I also want to note that I installed Windows 7 Professional 64 BIT OEM onto a Bootcamp partition.

Windows 7 Professional on the Mac Mini

One of the biggest surprises was how incredibly well Windows 7 Professional actually runs on the Mac Mini Duel Core.  My overall Windows rating was a 5.6 out of 7.9.  Surprisingly, the rating system only complained about the NVDIA 256mb Video chip.  I installed Microsoft Office 2010 Professional, Visio Pro, and Project Pro.  All run superbly fast.  I will be moving my Quickbooks application from the old Dell to the Mini, but I am thinking that I did not allocate enough space to the Windows partition, and it it ALWAYS a pain to move Quickbooks because you have to call them, wait and…well you get the picture.  I allocated 60 Gig to Windows 7 Windows 7 took up a whopping 20 gig..ouch.  The Windows 7 drivers are all located on the Mac OSX disks that came with the Mac Mini.  Installed without issue.  Overall, I have been very impressed with the Mini and Windows 7.  I basically replaced a big ugly black tower that consumes power, has a bunch of unattractive wires hanging out of it, with a small Duel Core box that containes both Mac OSX and Windows 7 Professional for under $700.

OSX 10.6.8 on the Mac Mini

The Mac Mini came with 10.6.8.  My original intention was to replace my aging Dell Diminsion and all the unattractive cables.   Which was a success.  But, this computer quickly drew the attention of my kids, both under 10 yrs of age!  My, son, was very helpful in setting up the Mac Mini.  I created their own accounts for both of them.  My wife has her own account.  We set up Parental Controls on the Mini, established time limits and established blacklist and whitelist sites.

I did order a 8GB Memory kit from Otherworld computing for a measly $65.00.  It has not arrived per this writing, but It will add performance to the Windows 7 partition and to Mac OSX.  My 2TB Western Digital Drive acts as my iTunes library as well as (on-site) data store.  I may eventually upgrade the OS to Lion – $30.00, and then even possibly Lion Server for the $50.00.  Apple really has set the standard for PC’s.  This little Mac Mini has become a hub already for iPods, Apple TV streaming, etc.

UPDATE:

The RAM arrived in great order and it was so easy to install. All 8GB of Ram took approximately 10 minutes to completely install.  Windows 7 operates like a charm!  The one annoying thing that I had diffuculties with was the “print screen” feature.  If you recall, on a Windows keyboard, you can just press the “print screen” key, paste into PAINT and have your screen shot.  With a Mac keyboard, I had to use the Snippet Tool Located in the “Accessories” folder under “All Programs.”  No big deal.  Below is the printout of the Windows performance rating.