Finally the moment was there, I’ve made the decision. I raided the donations pot and picked up my first Intel Core Duo Mac mini. The last update to the mini series, making all models Dual Core and increasing the processor speed made the Dual Core wish I had even more affordable. I had estimated to need a budget of over 800 euro, but the update made the price for a Core Duo drop to 620 euro.

I would like to thank everyone once again for all their donations, without your help this wasn’t possible. You really make all the effort I’ve put in it worthwhile and I hope that I can keep giving you what you are looking for.

I bought the 1.66 Ghz Core Duo machine with 512 Mb memory, 60 Gb Harddisk and combo drive. I’m planning to use this machine as my workstation, as it is the fastest machine I currently own. I’m thinking of exchanging the optical drives from my G4 and the Intel. This will give the Intel a SuperDrive and leave the G4, which will go into server-mode with a combo drive.

The next goal for the donations is getting a 2Gb memory expansion for the Intel mini. 512 Mb is not enough to run everything smoothly as I’ve read in several forums. There was still some money left in the donation pot so the next target is going to be 250 Euro for the 2 Gb dual channel memory extension.

Here are some pictures of the new mini:

Still in the box


Everything out of the box, neatly arranged


All mini’s, and firewire disks, neatly arranged on the desk. The one on the left is the new Intel mini, the middle one is my current workstation and the one on the right is the server which serves all my mail and web sites.