Apple 2010 Mac Mini Small Form Factor Desktop PC

Sep 23 2010 - Apple's recently redesigned Mac Mini with the first HDMI port on an Apple PC has the makings of an excellent home theater PC. Its small profile and silent running make it unobtrusive when being used for video or audio. Now if Apple would just support Blu-ray, this would be so much better. Pricing is quite high for this sleek mini PC especially when it doesn't come with a mouse or keyboard. Still, it is hard to argue for those wanting a small PC to supplement their home theater.

Sep 23 2010 - Apple's Mac Mini received its first major redesign since it was first introduced five years ago. The new design has reduced the overall height of the system to be just under one and a half inches. It also uses the new unibody style of their laptops with a solid aluminum block front and top. It gives it a very sleek look that can easily fit into any home theater environment which is the primary focus of this mini desktop.

One of the big changes to the 2010 Mac Mini is the inclusion of an HDMI port. This is the first of Apple's computers to feature a port that can be used with a wide variety of HDTVs. The link can also carry multichannel audio allowing for true surround sound audio which the previous Mac Mini was not capable of. Apple still includes their mini DisplayPort as well as a variety of adapters for use with DVI and VGA monitors.

Performance has not been one of the key areas of the Mac Mini and the new redesign essentially takes the internals of the MacBook laptop and puts them in a desktop. This includes the Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 dual core mobile processor and a meager 2GB of DDR3 memory. This is below what many companies offer but at least Apple's new design does allow access for the memory to be upgraded. This should be enough performance for your average internet and media streaming but it does fall behind if you use programs such as iMovie for video editing.

Probably one of the biggest disappointments with Apple has been their lack of support for the Blu-ray optical storage format. Because of this, the Mac Mini is unable to playback these HD video discs and has to instead rely on a DVD burner. If it had this one feature, then the Mac Mini would be the must have home theater system. The 320GB hard drive is a bit on the small side but should be sufficient for most people who don't have too large of a digital media library. Apple has also put its first SD slot on the Mac Mini but it is located on the back and is not that easy to reach if it is placed inside of a home theater cabinet compared to if the slot were placed on the front.

While some may hope to use the Mac Mini for video gaming especially with the recently released Steam game distribution from Valve, the graphics subsystem combined with the processor really isn't up to the task. The NVIDIA GeForce 320M is certainly a better choice than the Intel integrated system but it still lacks performance beyond very casual low resolution PC gaming.

Pricing for the 2010 Mac Mini has also become an issue. With a base price of $699, it is quite expensive considering that Apple does not include items such as a keyboard or mouse. Add these two items to the price plus a monitor and it quickly approaches the cost of the higher performance iMac 20-inch with its superb display. Anyone planning to use it as a desktop system would definitely be better off with the all-in-one from Apple instead.