Mac Mini Now Worth It?

I made a fool of myself this afternoon in an e-mail to a colleague in which I lambasted Apple for shipping the Mac mini with only 256MB of RAM. If I'd checked the Mac news this morning, then I would have known that I stood corrected.

I've been working this week on my new-to-me PowerBook G4 12-inch 1Ghz model and enjoying the process. (I got it because I needed a cheap portable with a SuperDrive; it's also got an 80GB hard drive which is handy.) The eBay description said 768MB of RAM, which is one reason I jumped on it... when I got the machine, however, it only had 256MB. Grr. Nothing sucks like feeling ripped off on eBay.

My seller has what sounds like a good excuse -- CompUSA had done some AppleCare work on the PowerBook and might have left the RAM out -- so I'm trying to be patient.

Meanwhile, however, I'm in 256MB purgatory, a place that many a Mac mini owner is probably, too. Running Tiger and, say, one or two other applications works OK...any real, regular computing, though, and I get some...pregnant...pauses...when I switch around or even sometimes when I don't.

It's not pleasant, and it makes my PowerBook G4/500 feel like a workhorse by comparison. I need my RAM.

As would a Mac mini owner. I just did this upgrade for a consulting client of mine the other day -- he got a Mac mini and a 20-inch Apple LCD, the lucky guy -- and upgrading that Mac mini is no small feat. I had to wrench it apart with thin putty knives, then pull the 256MB and drop in his 1GB stick. Now he's got a relatively useless 256MB module that I would imagine eBay is flooded with these day.

So I'm happy to see that Apple has not only upgraded to 512MB, but also offers a BTO option for a clean gig of RAM. Good move. Now the Mac mini is enticing enough that I'm starting to wonder if there wouldn't be another machine in our newspaper office that deserves a little upgrade...