Why the Mac Mini is going to be a huge success

Why? Because the head IT honcho at my office, a man who lives and breathes Windows all day, is going to buy a Mac mini.

This seems to be a common refrain in the news reports.

And I think a whole "Mac mini" economy like that which sprang up around the iPod and the Palm is going to develop too. Lots of little USB2 or Firewire or other add-ons that stack underneath the Mac Mini (or beside it; have several stack) with things like hard drives, video switchers, memory card bays, PVR boxes, and on and on, despite that's not being the target market for Mac minis.

Apple may have a bigger market (and additional markets) for the Mac mini than it assumed.

Or maybe it DID know what it had after all. Home entertainment Mac. Home Mac server (get your own domain name here! No more e-mail address switching when you move or switch ISPs!)

If my PowerBook G4 ever needs to go in for a service, I can now go get a $499 or $599 unit to use with an old monitor and keyboard and mouse to tide me over. Much cheapter than a low-end iBook even!

I'm also seriously thinking about using this as a home Internet (web/ftp/mail/news/dns/dyndns/etc) server since it's likely to have a low power options because it uses a laptop drive. I used to use an old PowerBook Duo 2300 as a server because the hard drive could spin down and it could turn off the screen backlight to reduce power usage. I'll betcha the Mac mini can do that too.