The mini can take 2 2.5-inch hard drives and (unofficially) 16 gigs of RAM. Like I said elsewhere, I do not consider the mini suitable for software development or other demanding tasks. The popularity of smartphones and tablets as ways to access the web will probably prevent web sites operators from increasing the computational demands of accessing the web so much that I will need to replace the mini in 4 years -- online selling and buying and iPhoto being the most demanding things I do with the mini.
The mini weighs 2.7 pounds. When I want to spend a couple of days at the girlfriend's place, I bring it along and plug it into her TV set. (Unlike laptops and netbooks, however, the manual instructs me to power the mini down before moving it, and I do worry a little that it is not designed to survive this weekly commute.)
The girlfriend would have aesthetic objections to my plopping most computers on her living-room floor, but the mini is stylish enough and small enough not to raise any objections.
I guess my overall point is that when you use mobile-class components, like the mini does, you can get away with having just one fan, like the mini does, which saves further electricity, since fans consume electricity, and makes it easy to avoid making noise, and make the whole device potentially very compact and light, which has its uses even in a desktop machine.
The mini can take 2 2.5-inch hard drives and (unofficially) 16 gigs of RAM. Like I said elsewhere, I do not consider the mini suitable for software development or other demanding tasks.
Software development is not a CPU demanding task by any stretch of the imagination.
Professional programmers get just fine on an Air, much more so for a Mini --not to mention with 5 times slower machines just 3-4 years ago.
I don't feel picked-on :)
The mini can take 2 2.5-inch hard drives and (unofficially) 16 gigs of RAM. Like I said elsewhere, I do not consider the mini suitable for software development or other demanding tasks. The popularity of smartphones and tablets as ways to access the web will probably prevent web sites operators from increasing the computational demands of accessing the web so much that I will need to replace the mini in 4 years -- online selling and buying and iPhoto being the most demanding things I do with the mini.
The mini weighs 2.7 pounds. When I want to spend a couple of days at the girlfriend's place, I bring it along and plug it into her TV set. (Unlike laptops and netbooks, however, the manual instructs me to power the mini down before moving it, and I do worry a little that it is not designed to survive this weekly commute.)
The girlfriend would have aesthetic objections to my plopping most computers on her living-room floor, but the mini is stylish enough and small enough not to raise any objections.
I guess my overall point is that when you use mobile-class components, like the mini does, you can get away with having just one fan, like the mini does, which saves further electricity, since fans consume electricity, and makes it easy to avoid making noise, and make the whole device potentially very compact and light, which has its uses even in a desktop machine.