We’ve just taken a cheeky advance look at Asus’ new Nova P20. It’s the latest in a line of alternatives to the Mac Mini and at first glance it ticks all the right boxes for a small form-factor PC: it’s tiny, it’s very, very quiet and it’s not beige. You can position it in vertical or horizontal orientations and it has touch-sensitive power and optical drive eject buttons, which help to keep the front looking uncluttered.
Archives for Mac mini category
Macessity today announced the immediate availability of its MX4 Rack Tray for the Mac mini. According to the company, “This rack tray is made specifically for Mac minis. With designated location for each machine at each corner of the tray, your Mac mini can breath easily even in the crowd of Minis, with air slots at bottom to maximize airflow. Additional holes along the side of the Minis was designed for easy cable management, you can use cable ties to hold down excess cabling.
Although we’ll never see this TG LLUON Mini PC here on account of how it’s Korea-only, it looks so good that we just had to show you anyway. Inside the small box is an Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, a 500GB hard drive, DVD burner, GeForce 8400GS and Wi-Fi. It’s $US1500, unfortunately, making it almost three times as much as a Mac Mini. But man, does this look so much nicer. It’s like Darth armor to Luke’s dorky outfit.
We don’t typically expect low-end systems to offer much in the way of 3D-gaming power because of the slow integrated graphics chips common to this price range. Both the Dell and the HP systems offer minor graphics upgrade paths, but the Mac Mini gives you no alternative because of its closed case and notebook chipset. Perhaps it’s not a surprise that we don’t find the Mac Mini suited to gaming, but this also illustrates another of its disadvantages.