THE POOR MAN'S COOL MAC

The Mac Mini is out of the box, and well, looks like the box is not yet open. Cool option, cheap tag. Mac Mini comes without a monitor or a keyboard/mouse. Just 6.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall, the small wonder stands tall among all virus & spy infested PCs. If you already own a monitor, keyboard and mouse, you can get up and running in minutes, says Apple. Or choose any combination of new devices to meet your individual situation. And yes, Mac mini will take advantage of your two-button USB mouse with scroll-wheel and your favorite USB keyboard. Just plug them in.

Manage your music for iPod or organize and share your digital pictures with ease. Connect your digital camcorder to Mac mini and start editing your masterpiece. Or plug in your electric guitar or keyboard and make music. Mac Mini comes pre-loaded with iLife, a suite of applications. Mac OS X is also standard. No need to install extra drivers when you add hardware to the system.

Mac Mini holds a chest of software to finally enjoy the Internet without accompanying hassles. Email, chat and a web browser tools are built in. You also get a DVD player, calendar software, and an address book, faxing and a way to download your contacts to your cell phone or iPod. You can balance your check book with Quicken 2005. 3D games Nanosaur 2 and Marble Blast Gold are also preloaded.

Their engineers, claims Apple, designed the little master from the ground up. Inside its tiny 2-inch tall, 6.5-inch square anodized aluminum body, Mac mini houses a 1.25 or 1.42GHz G4 processor, 40 or 80GB hard drive, a slot-loading CD-R/DVD-ROM optical drive, 256MB DDR SDRAM and ATI Radeon 9200 graphics chip with 32MB dedicated DDR SDRAM. All this technology weighs just 2.9 pounds.

If all this makes you gasp for breath, the Mac Mini has more. You can kick it into overdrive with extras. Add the SuperDrive option to burn DVDs of your home movies or to make a backup of the music or audiobooks you buy at the iTunes Music Store. You can minimize the desktop clutter of cables with wireless connections. Surf wirelessly with an AirPort Extreme Card installed in your Mac mini. Or configure your Mac mini with internal Bluetooth to use wireless keyboards and mice. You can also choose up to 1GB RAM and increase the 40GB hard drive to 80GB. Some of these options must be installed by Apple at the factory; the rest can be added in-store at an Apple Store or an Apple authorized reseller.