I've tried to take a bit of a break from the forums while MWSF craziness has been rife but I guess it's time to jump back in a whole 24hrs after the keynote
I would just go for the 512MB I think it's enough, if you're careful to make sure you don't try to do too much at once. Then when 1GB dimms are cheaper and people have figured out how to upgrade the mac mini make the jump down the road.
As for refurbs I bought my 12" rev. B powerbook as a refurb and apart from the lack of normal box you wouldn't know it was a refurb. You have the same Apple warranty so I really wouldn't worry about going the refurb route. You may get the odd scratch but after the first look over it your won't notice it again and just think what you could spend that saving on (more ram, iPod shuffle whatever you want). I really would recommend refurbs, it has been known for people to actually get better computers than advertised through refurbs as well (ie more RAM, bigger hard disk etc.) although this is generally on PMs and definitely don't expect it!
Anyway my take on the mac mini and its lack of easy RAM upgradability is a couple of points long. The first and most likely reason it isn't easy is Apple really wanted to keep the price down on these machines, that was their foremost concern. Hence they have cut out the probably time consuming and a little tricky task of making sure customer installable parts are really easy to fit. As they have always been on recent macs, for example the airport card and ram under the keyboard on the ibooks and Ti-Books or the airport card accessible from the battery compartment and the ram from underneath on the Al-Books. Or the twist off bottom on the iMac G4 and now the totally do-it-yourself style of the iMac G5 components. All these must have taken a fair bit of time and money to work out the location of everything, which just couldn't be afforded on the mac mini.
The lack of user expandability has a few benefits for Apple though, they can charge a fair bit for RAM upgrade BTOs because someone can't just slap in ram so they don't have to be as competitive (just when their RAM prices were actually getting more reasonable as well
). Also as Apple Retail Stores take more and more of the market they're going to get the benefit from increased authorised tech installs down the line. Finally the lack of RAM upgrade may stop the mac mini eating into the eMac too much, although we don't really know what they are going to do with the eMac at the moment, or whether they make more on an eMac (I've heard they are expensive to make). The mac mini really looks like a good product for what it is aimed at though, I would be very tempted to get one as a media centre if I had a hdtv and could get in their to put a
big hard disk in.
