New Mac Mini Form Factor? 7.7in vs. 6.5in

[Cave Man]

I can see why built-in Blu-ray drives for movie playback are not really ready for prime time yet.

If the studios encode their BR discs in MPEG-2 or (God forbid) VC-1, then the X3100 will do just fine since it has hardware decoding for these. If they use H.264, then Macs will have difficulty with even moderate bit rates.

 

[Cave Man]

Show me a test stating that your average 7200 rpm hard drive puts out a lot more heat than your average 5400 rpm one, and I'll **** and go home. IMHO, this reflects nothing more than a business decision by apple to hamper the mac mini to encourage people to go onto the imac.

Again, it's not 7200 vs. 5400 vs. 4200. It's the 3.5" vs. 2.5". 3.5" drives have 12V and 5V lines and generate more heat than 5V-only 2.5" drives.