Put a PC inside that Macintosh..

He murdered a Mac. How sad!

oh my god! you ate the apple!

Man, thats one ugly PC.

Nice exercise, but I would not recommend one.  It looks to be a heat trap whatever you stuff into it.

I'm not really sure of the point of this excercise. I guess like sticking your tongue on a frozen pole, someone has to do it. But wouldn't it would be cheaper to either just use the Mini Mac as is, or not buy one and build a Micro PC from scratch? Do you really want to pay $500 plus the additional money for the components?

Atmos42   ...it appears to be a simple exploration of the possibility/capability to do so.....an indicator that there is nothing especially thrilling or momentous in the Mac ver...as it can be replicated by PC...

It can be replicated by a PC? One noname group decides to put out a tiny logicboard and out it in the innovative Mac mini, and that makes it suck? He had to do way too much tinkering with the Mac mini, cutting and soldering, to make it fit, and it was only running Windows '98. Mac OS X 10.3 is quite a bit better than any Windows OS, as much as Panther sucks.

Mac OS X 10.3 is quite a bit better than any Windows OS

Oh well... Pure matter of taste.

Now you know how much time this man has on his hands

He managed to fit the mbo and HD in but there was no room for a CD/DVD-ROM.

love the Mac Mini concept (it's cheap, it's small, it's a new OS to tool around on) but I'm hanging on until the latest iteration of the OS is out in a few months before getting one. If only it had decent sound it would be just lovely next to my TV.

http://www.mini-itx.com/

...has loads of mini ITX projects. I just wish I had more of an artistic eye.

So the MoBo was smaller...perhaps if the box volume were the same, but the dimensions adjusted...then the Rom drive would fit too.

Point is....it's nothing thrilling or innovative....except it's a cheaper way to get a Mac.

Without the capacity to add/expand/modify it'll remain a toy, or at best a 'single-use' tool, where a decent tower case provides scope/potential to do a heck of a lot more...

The only innovation is the size. I've been a computer hobbyist for over twenty years and have owned dozens of different computers, notebooks and handhelds, often just for the amusement factor. Nowadays the typical guy in the street has a choice of Windows, Linux or Apple - and that's usually boiled down to Windows. For an awful lot of people (like my Dad, hopefully) the Mac Mini could allow them to get back into computers after frustrating experiences with Windows machines. Who doesn't know someone who's given up on the internet and email because of security problems with WinXP and inboxes stuffed with spam? I'm no Mac apostle, the closest I've been to Apple harware is a Newton that delighted me for quite literally hours with the sage interpretations it made of my handwriting (since donated to a niece as a doodling pad), but upgraded with a "Super Drive" what more do most people need from their hardware? As I said, if only it had dolby digital sound output it would make a sweet little media centre (no HD TV in the UK yet, though I know that'll be an issue in the US - Cringely wrote something about Apple using the mini as the basis of a HD movies version of iTunes. Truth be told from what I've seen it doesn't have the welly to decode HD smoothly but who knows.)

Who doesn't know someone who's given up on the internet and email because of security problems with WinXP and inboxes stuffed with spam?

Me.

It was geared as a budget machine, something the Mac community hasn't seen in quite some time...I would still rather build a new PC or upgrade one for that $500 though, but thats just me.