Desktop platforms Toolkit
Story: Running Mac OS X on standard PCs
Calling BS on that!
You can build an 8 core Xeon system for that little? I'm calling BS!
FYI: Mac Mini is as powerful as most people need a system to be. Second hand prices on ebay are around the 200 quid mark with a gig or so of RAM. I'm running one as a main media centre. It's plugged into an array of external drives for the expanded storage (no expandability huh?) and the RAM has been upgraded. I'm not bothered about upgrading the internal HD as there's only about 10Gb of 80Gb used anyway, so the spare 70Gb handles temp storage for live PVR recordings (thanks to Elgato EyeTV and a USB freeview tuner) - completed recordings are automatically copied to the external storage and scripted folders move any programmes older than a week into a 'to sort' folder where I can review whether to back-up or delete them. Current storage on the Mini is around the 2Tb mark if I don't include the NAS drives available to it. It also runs a 150Gb iTunes library flawlessly, is plugged into the TV/Stereo via the cinema amp and gives the choice of either S-Video/Composite/HDMI with an adaptor or native DVI output for connectivity. Networking is only 100Base for the wired (Gb would have been nicer), and 802.11G for the wireless (again, n would have been nicer), but it's passable if most of the network activity is only web surfing. For large cross-network file movement, I can live with the speed comfortably. All in all a nice set-up with a tiny footprint and very cheap to achieve (cheaper than the nearest PC for this form factor:power ratio).
It's powerful enough to handle running OS X 10.5 and runs Paralllels for virtualisation. VM OS installs include WinXP, Vista, Win2K, Ubuntu 8, PCLinuxOS - so all bases covered really.
I don't think many users will push this little system to its limits and if you are then you're not likely to be in the 200 quid (400 dollar) market for a PC anyway.
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