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Comment on "Review of Feb 28 Apple Announcements"
by Josh — Mar 01
Just some aimless ramblings...

There are two small things that bugged me about the new Mini:
1) No option to upgrade to a 7200RPM drive. Whats the point of offering a dual core option and not offering an upgrade that may have a larger effect on system performance?
2) It would have been nice if Apple kept around one version of the PPC Mini at a sub $500 price point for those of us who buy for small businesses where cost and flexibility are more important that FrontRow and Dolby 5.1 Sound.

The $499 PPC Mac Mini made it possible for me to switch our office over to nearly 90% Macs where before it was 70% PC's and growing (It was impossible to recommend a $2000 PowerMac for document editing when we could build a PC with the required software for half as much). I'm sure that the new Intel machines will be faster and will work out fine, but it would be nice to avoid that little niggling doubt that you get when introducing a "different" machine into the network. (Every little problem gets "Is it doing x because its an intel?" attached to it...)

Graphics
Strangely enough the one thing that everyone is griping about(Integrated Graphics) is probably the dumbest complaint. As long as it supports Core Image, then it is an improvement. Would we be better off if Apple included a nearly-as-anemic ATi entry level chipset with 64MB of dedicated RAM and took away the extra the second SO-DIMM slot to make room on the PCB? I'd gladly trade 64MB of RAM if I can pack 2GB into the system...
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