The upcoming Mac mini

[kandrathe]

Nah, take a look at the compact barebones you can find around, throw in the parts you miss and you'll end up with similar price and most likely better specs (I didn't even know they did 9200s with just 32 Mb of memory).

But as I said, for someone who does need a Mac for some esoteric app, it's a great idea.
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A comparable PC device would be the AMD PIC (Personal Internet Communicator) -- for $185

But a barebones like the one below is not too expensive either;

Shuttle XPC Barebone System for Socket 754 AMD Athlon 64 CPU, Model SK83G -- $199
AMD Athlon 64 3000+, 512KB L2 Cache, 64-bit Processor -- $135
Western Digital 80GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive, Model WD800BB -- $58
Kingston VALUERAM 184-Pin 512MB(256MBx2) DDR PC-2700 -- $79
MSI ATI RADEON 9600PRO Video Card, 128MB DDR, 128-Bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP, Model "RX9600PRO-TD128" -- $106

Some generic CD+RW drive + Shipping comes in around $600. And, I didn't go with the lowest possible spec, just what any Gamer would find acceptable. The advantage of this config is that if you want to upgrade a particular component (Dual SATA, bigger CPU, bigger RAM, HD) no problem.

Now it is not 2" tall. But for form factor, 8" x 8" x 12" is not a big footprint.

The uses and utility of a barebones like this are different from the low end utility device that the MiniMac, or the PIC.