Mixed feelings really....
On the plus side, this thing really seems quite comparable to, say, a Powerbook 15" in specs... The video is going to do roughly the same things for you that the video on a Powerbook does. That's to say, good enough to play most games (albeit not at frame rates that'll impress any hard-core PC gamer), and certainly enough for all the iApps, general Internet use, business apps (Quicken, Quickbooks, etc.), web page design, and so on.
Here's why I'm less impressed upon taking a closer look:
1. No keyboard or mouse included?! Come on.... I can see skipping the 1 button mouse that most "switchers" wouldn't want anyway, but not even a lousy keyboard with it? If you're coming from a PC, you're not too likely to have a keyboard that can even physically plug into this machine - much less one with properly labeled function/option type keys.
2. 256MB of RAM is not enough for OS X 10.3. Yeah, sure - it'll *run* with it, but Windows XP says it can run in 64MB of RAM too - and everyone who ever uses it can tell you less than 192MB to 256MB is pretty unusable with it. Especially when you're dealing with a previous generation CPU (G4 vs. G5), you need all the help you can get in other areas to keep performance satisfactory. Including 512MB instead of 256MB (at LEAST on the $599 version of the iMac Mini) should have been the standard config.
3. I'm not certain on this yet, but if it's the way I suspect Apple did it, I'm going to be really upset to find no "access panels" to unscrew or unlatch to get to the hard drive or memory chips. Even their Powerbooks give you easy access to upgrade the memory yourself. On a low-budget system, the philosophy should be that the buyer may have limited funds to plunk down all at once for a system, but should encourage them to do incremental upgrades over time. This is what they almost always do when they buy a PC compatible. Buy the cheapest thing they can get, up front, and a few paychecks later, add some RAM, or maybe a better video board, or bigger/faster hard drive, etc. Make this too hard for them, and the expandable PC will look more attractive.
stevesien said:
What are they thinking, this thing looks great but can't chose a better graphics card?? this is a 5 yr old card, barely enough to run OSX. Forget any games, forget Garageband. With the also outdated G4.
You can internet and word process, maybe a little Iphoto.
Too bad it puts Apple right back to underpowered TOY status.
Steve
