What are the chances a Mac Mini sporting Intel's Haswell chip will show up during the summer? I'd love to pick up a new baseline Mini for my wife for Christmas, but wouldn't mind waiting till her birthday in August as, in the meantime, I can let her use my iMac to get used to OSX..
There are those of you who will insist to just buy what you need now, and to you I say I don't need it never, I just want it and will wait for it.
Then, there are those of you who will say a baseline Mini then will only be 10% faster than a baseline Mini now, and to you I say I'm listening, tell me so if that is the case.
The integrated graphics will be the thing that largely improves from this Mac mini to the Haswell mini. Though really, this is the perfect time to buy a Mac mini. As someone who was ready to buy a 15" MacBook Pro when they came out with Sandy Bridge, I didn't wait because the CPUs weren't fast enough. I waited because I wanted USB 3. Waiting for the next CPU architecture to arrive in a Mac that just arrived with the current is a little silly unless there's a feature that will come along with it. If you are hopeful that the FireWire 800 port will be dropped in favor of a second Thunderbolt port, or if you really want those faster integrated graphics, I'd say that those are good reasons to wait.
Otherwise, Apple isn't known to release EVERY NEW Mac with the latest Intel chip on the day it is announced by Intel. Mac minis got Sandy Bridge four months after general availability and they're now getting Ivy Bridge a good eight months after general availability. With Haswell due out sometime between March and June and with these Mac minis having just arrived, I'd say it's a safe bet that you won't see new Mac minis for a good year or so.