Mac Mini: What you need to know

Macworld - The Mac mini has been announced, but it won't arrive until Jan. 22. Until Macworld gets its hands on one to test, we've been gleaning what we can about the new $499 Mac from loving visits on the Macworld Expo show floor and technical discussions we've had with a few Apple Computer Inc. officials.
So here's what you need to know about the Mac mini right now:

The Basics. The two base Mac mini models vary in only three ways: processor speed, hard drive size, and price. For $499 you get a 1.25GHz G4 processor and a 40GB drive; for $599 you get a 1.42GHz G4 processor and an 80GB drive.

However, if you order the Mac mini directly from Apple's online store, you can load it up with extra features that take it far beyond the realm of the $499 Mac.

That means that a $499 computer can become a $1,203 computer very quickly, and a $599 computer can escalate to a $1,253 machine just as fast -- and all without keyboard, mouse or display, mind you.

The Size. Yes, the Mac mini is small. It's so small that you would have to stack five of them to equal the volume of the Power Mac G4 Cube, a system which sure seemed amazingly small at the time. The Mac mini could be smaller, we suppose, but only if you did away with the optical drive. Since there seems to be no end to the reign of five-inch CD and DVD platters, this will probably be the smallest Mac for a good long while.

The Mac mini's diminutive motherboard is exactly the width of its RAM slot. That's because the Mac mini uses full-size PC2700 RAM. Apple could have saved some space by using laptop RAM, but it wouldn't have helped much, given the size of that pesky optical drive. However, the Mac mini's hard drive is the same kind you'd find in a laptop: it's a 2.5-inch, 4200 rpm drive.

The Feel. The Mac mini uses materials we've all come to expect from Apple's latest designs: its top is a white polycarbonate plastic, as you'd find on the iMac G5 or iBook; the sides are a ring of anodized aluminum, just like a PowerBook or iPod mini; and the bottom is the skid-resistant rubbery material you'll find on the bottom of an iPod dock.

The RAM. The most widely criticized aspect of the Mac mini is its meager base 256MB of RAM. However, the RAM slot on the Mac