Desktop platforms Toolkit 
Story: Running Mac OS X on standard PCs
So... a Mini only costs 200 quid... on ebay; right
And... how much did the array of external drives cost? And the RAM upgrade? As for the small footprint blah-blah-blah, take a look at Shuttle XPCs - performance wise, they blow the socks off a Mini, some of them even off a Pro, AND I can put whatever hard disk size I want on them... no need for an external drive array. The Shuttle SN26P and a few others, can take 2 hard disks - I'm working on one now, it has 2 hdd's, one of which runs Leopard. Total cost of components there was under £400 - new. How much does a NEW Mac cost?
So... your Mini cost 200 quid SECOND HAND on Ebay; then you go telling me about how I can't build an 8-core PC for a quarter of the price of a Pro... What, a used Pro on Ebay?
I actually costed the stuff; yesterday I built a PC about the specs of the lowest priced Pro; components cost me 221.76 quid and I spent just over an hour putting it together. AND I can upgrade it later to the spec of the mid-range PRO, or more.
And like you say, who needs all this power, except for very specialized apps?
And upgradability... is your mid-range Mac - the iMac, the one that costs... what, double what my Shuttle cost - is that upgradable?
As for the rest... scripts, NAS storage, what have you - all that can be done on a PC, which costs at most half the price of a similarly specc'ed Mac, and under either of the three operating systems - Linux, Windows or OSX
You're comparing Apples with oranges and talking rubbish, secure in the knowledge that most people won't notice.
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