My "office" has migrated to the dining room as the three kids took all the other bedrooms. Ingrates.
It's actually, not bad, keeps me central and close to where they do homework.
So, when it was time to leave the 7 year old Core Duo mini to the kids and migrate my data, photo libraries, and media server to a new machine, I wanted it where I worked, but didn't have the room for a monitor for my work laptop and an iMac or similar. So I picked up a Dell U2412M monitor (love it), a 2.6GHz quad core mini, added 16GB of memory and a Samsung 840Pro SSD myself, and set it up thusly:
The monitor is shared between the two machines. Work gets a VGA connection and is still able to drive the monitor clearly at full resolution (great for enormous spreadsheets), the mini gets the DisplayPort connection and has no trouble using the RGB color space. It's been calibrated and looks great. The wireless keyboard and track pad tuck underneath the monitor when I'm using the laptop. The Mini hides behind the monitor and just silently does it's thing. I programmed the Dell to have two of the bezel buttons flip between VGA/DisplayPort, so switching inputs is quick.
Really, the whole mess works pretty well.
LOL, just noticed my Ibizian hound photobombed the shot!